Giant band hand saw.

"BaconSandwich is tasty." (baconsandwich) 01/27/2018 at 16:12 • Filed to: Garagelopnik, Woodworking, Shoplopnik

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Before Christmas I broke a band saw blade. I was curious - could I turn it into a giant hand saw? The answer is yes.

The string across the top snapped when I tried upping the tension a bit more. Was it sketchy? Very. The band saw blade was pretty thin, and I only had it screwed into the two uprights. I was able to try cutting with it, and it did cut, but I didn’t want to end up with a face full of snapping band saw blade so I called it quits when the string snapped. I was basically trying to replicate a homemade buck saw, like this:

As a proof of concept, it did work. If I were going to do it again (and more seriously), I’d definitely use a much wider band saw blade. Also, preferably a sharp blade, rather than a dull, snapped one.

Oh well - nothing ventured, nothing gained!

Echo51 > BaconSandwich is tasty. 01/27/2018 at 16:24

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Experimentation like this is golden. Don’t have a ratchetting tie-strap handy to use for top tension? ;)

You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much > BaconSandwich is tasty. 01/27/2018 at 16:34

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I wouldn’t worry about snapping a band saw blade in that set up. They generally break on the weld, so the rest of the blade hasn’t actually lost any strength.

BaconSandwich is tasty. > You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much 01/27/2018 at 17:14

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Thing is, there wasn’t much metal around the screws by the time I finished drilling a hole in them. A wider blade would definitely have been nice.

BaconSandwich is tasty. > Echo51 01/27/2018 at 17:15

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I did, but things were already getting sketchy. And the blade was fairly dull to start with. I’m really wanting to build my own band saw mill, but that’ll have to wait until I finish a few other projects first.

Echo51 > BaconSandwich is tasty. 01/27/2018 at 17:26

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For when you want to build one, Matthias Wandel on Youtube/his own page has some very nice videos/plans on making quite a few different ones :)

BaconSandwich is tasty. > Echo51 01/27/2018 at 18:18

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I’ve seen those! I’m almost thinking I might want to go with a metal frame. I actually started making some wheels for it back in the fall, but decided to go the chainsaw mill route instead. That worked well until my chainsaw stripped a gear, and I’ve still got one very large log left to mill.