Ben kindly lent me a dusty old bandsaw he discovered lurking in his basement recently:
Fired it up last night and it seems to handle 3-5mm MDF no worries and would probably be good for 10mm plywood. Although I can see why you had trouble cutting decking timber with it Ben. Did the blade scrag or was it just really slow work? Anyhow you can cut a reasonably small arc with it but the blade width probably dictates the size of the arc. I assume you can get thinner blades Ben? Time to Google bandsaws!
I used it to cut a few more bases for the simple WH40k rock spires I’ve been throwing together:
The painted ones were cut by hand with a hacksaw, unpainted were whipped out in 2 minutes with the bandsaw. It’ll be good for cutting some river/road sections as well.
Also spent so time re-re-organising the FOW Infantry HQ and first Infantry Platoon back onto their bases ready for painting. I need two more Infantry Platoons and some more 25pdrs to complete the force. Looks like I have some painting to do…
The 2 Universal Carrier and 2 Stuart Honeys are also primed and based and ready for detail painting.
Hey top stuff. I’m glad it’s actually of some use, rather than sitting under our laundry sink gathering lint from the dryer.
Yeah when I tried to cut 30mm timber, it was really slow going. I think it was because the blad is actually fairly slow, which makes it good for detail work.
I grabbed that blade from Placemakers, but a specialist tool store would probably have a better selection. It would pay to take that one with you, because they come in all sorts of different lengths.
The bandsaw is good and I believe you could definitely make some nifty kid’s toys with it. I was a bit nervous about forcing the blade too much while cutting tight curves. I hate to think what happens if you manage to snap it while it’s running! I assume there was an existing blade in the bandsaw you replaced? If not how on earth did you pick the right length?
I got the length via fiddly and highly inaccurate use of a flexible tape measure :)