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Does anyone own a saw which they believe to be the right mix between scrolling and resaw work?

I recently sold my saw due to its limitations. I have some larger timbers, and hope to get more in the future.
There is no room in the house or budget for 2 saws, so I'm trying to find the most suitable saw for my needs.

My short list right now has the Laguna 14SUV suited more for dual purpose, and the Minimax MM16 geared more towards the resaw side of the equation.
I worry that the bigger i go the more complicated setup becomes with small blades, and the smaller I go the ability to cut large wood.

My preference is to spend more and be happy then have to do it all over again because I wasn't satisfied with my purchase the first time.

Any advice or experiences would be helpful.
thanks
gregor

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Wake up and smell the rosewood!

Give me a couple of weeks and I will let you know on this one. Griggio SNA 500, 2hp, 20”, 12” resaw
Before I headed out to the auction this morning, my wife said to me “ get yourself something pretty”.
I think this qualifies, I hope she agrees. Not too bad, 800 cdn plus tax.
Now I have to figure out how to get it out of the truck.

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My memory is so good, sometimes I remember things that never happened.

Curious why you would expect that to be the case. I traded my Taiwanese made 14” many years ago for a 19” Taiwanese-made unit. Never regretted the upgrade, and I have no difficulty with 1/4” or 1-1/4” blades. That same Taiwanese factory makes many of the similar-looking saws you see being sold under many of the common brand names.


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Nice score Brian. I'm not familiar with the brand but it looks like it was made in the mould of the Italian saws.
Do you feel 12" is a sufficient height?

Tim, basically my thoughts are the larger saws have larger guide setups and perhaps the smaller blades get "lost" in them.

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Wake up and smell the rosewood!

Well it says made in Italy in multiple locations and the manual is in Italian, but these days who knows.
I think for guitar work 12”resaw should be plenty. That said I do have a larger saw which can do 17”, but this one is for me, at home.

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My memory is so good, sometimes I remember things that never happened.

Really 9" should be enough for most guitar related apps.

I have the SUV and quite like it. The 3hp motor is nice. I've run 1/4 blades on it no problem. These days, I just leave the RK blade in, and I use it for all my straight cuts. It's basically replaced my table saw.

The SUV is definitely geared towards resawing too, just a smaller saw. With the 16 inch you're going to have more resaw blade options. I would still have a $50 9in bandsaw around for quick random cuts.

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Pat

Yep, blade options are limited with the SUV...

Thanks guys.
Pat, I was thinking picking up a small bench top machine would be an option as well.
It's good to hear another positive comment on the SUV, thx Ed.

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Wake up and smell the rosewood!

I have a ROK 10" saw from Summit tools, for curved cuts, fitted with a 3/8 blade, and it's actually a really decent machine. All metal instead of plastic...Way better than the delta/ryobi/rikon...a right proper tool.

"Now I have to figure out how to get it out of the truck."

Bandsaw story:
Many years ago I went to a government auction and bought a large metal cutting bandsaw (which also had an integral welder) I had tried to gauge the weight of it. It would "rock" on the pallet a little bit, so I thought it couldn't be too heavy. I borrowed my dad's truck to pick it up because mine wasn't running good at that time. I brought my brother to help load it, but luckily there was a large fork lift that was helping people load their purchases. After it was loaded I carefully drove home with it and backed the truck up tailgate to tailgate with my truck. I figured we could slide it onto my truck for the time being, and return my Dad's truck. My brother and I couldn't budge it - It was like it was bolted to the bed of the truck. I got my strong neighbor, Tyrone, to help. The three of us couldn't budge it. The only way I could get it off the truck was to wrap a 10 ton chain hoist around a large limb of a tree and the saw and drive the truck out from under it. I lowered it to the ground and there it sat for a couple of years.

I own 6 BS and have bought and sold about 4 others. I personally would not buy from scmi mini max their CS sucks , when they were in austin , their techie was guido, and I could barely understand his accented italian english. I bought a used laguna 20in and bought a motor ,pulley, and blades from them .Their CS was tops and I was guided through the modification and troubleshooting in a very pro manner . My old ryobi and craftsman 10in do a great job on small parts. I also have an older 20in scrollsaw for very light work usually cutting the outline, templates etc. I found the scrollsaw on CL or your local marketplace app on facebook.

I've been using a Jet 14" with a riser block extension for years. I had a lot of trouble re-sawing with it until I finally made up a tall fence that could be adjusted for the drift angle, with a setup for pressing the wood in against it. A had figured out a good way to touch up the saw teeth with a cutoff wheel in a Dremel a while before that, so I'm always working with a really sharp blade. Now I can re-saw reasonably consistently, and am getting comfortable enough with it that I'm working things a bit thinner off the saw and getting a better yield. All bandsaw blades drift, and the only way to work with them is to take that into account.

Keep in mind that smaller saws can't carry adequate tension for wide blades. My saw is happiest with 3/8" or 1/2" blades. IMO the setup is far more important than any other single factor, such as wheel size, so long as the saw is stable with the blade you have on it.

I use a 14” Jet with a riser block, too. 105” blades come in all the sizes I need. But, I am sure a heavier duty saw would handle resawing easier. As long as you can get smaller blades for the larger saws, and you can afford the larger saws, that sounds like a good upgrade if resawing is the reason you want to go bigger.

An engine hoist would do the job. I borrowed one to get a 600lb thickness planer off the back of my truck by myself.

Alex

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"Indecision is the key to flexibility" .... Bumper sticker

I have a 9" Craftsman/Rikon benchtop with a 1/4" blade and a 20" MiniMax with a 1" blade. I rarely use my tablesaw for ripping favoring my large band saw for safety and use the small band saw far more often than the $50 I paid on Craigslist. It needed the belt cleaned and tensioned.

Within the group of luthiers in the area, the Grizzly G0-513/514 17" and 19" models are popular and handle down to 1/4" blade without issue and larger resaw blades. Plenty of power for a Woodmaster CT, and dust collection is fairly good if both 4" ducts are connected. The current saw in this shop is the 19" G0-514X2B with motor brake...large table and a footprint that is not all that much larger than a 14" saw.

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For the times they are a changin'

- Bob Dylan

I have a 14" older Laguna bandsaw, and I tried using it as my single saw with the required frequent blade changes. I really hated changing blades on that saw. The lower guides require three small hands to be placed in a location that is only large enough for one of my oversized mitts. A truly awful blade guide adjustment system. Nice guides though once they are finally adjusted!

I have since bought a $200 10" Rikon, and use that most of the time. The Laguna always has a resaw blade on it now, so I never have to touch those difficult guides.

This is what I did as well. The little Rikon has a smaller blade suitable for light duty cuts, mostly cutting out the shape on tops and backs. The bigger saw (in my case also a Rikon 14" ) stays set up for resaw. I bought the magfence from Carter and two extra magnets from Amazon (the cheaper MagSwitch magnets fit the Carter fine, I would imaging they OEM the Carter fence). With all four magnets I can easily switch between the two saws and still have plenty of clamping power.

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I've got an old Delta 14" with a riser block. I added a Kreg fence and since I started using
Timberwolf/Viking blades, I have not needed to account for drift. Resaws most woods just fine.

It's to much of a hassle for me to change blades since I go from resawing to scrolling all the time.

2 saws is the way to go.....

Buy something heavy for resawing.

You can get a great 14" saw for $300. (or less) if you keep scouring craigslist.

I noted a post above generally approving of the 19" Grizzly. I had one that was dedicated to resawing. It just couldn't be persuaded to cut straight in spite of trying every setup and alignment and adjustment strategy that I could find. It failed with reasonably good blades like Woodslicers and very good blades like the Woodmaster CT. Maybe I just got an incurable lemon. I got tired of wasting good wood. Eventually I gave up, sold it at a significant loss (with full discloseure to the buyer) and bought a MiniMax 16. It works marvelously well and dovetails nicely with the Driftmaster fence. I don't swap out blades, though, as I prefer to have a smaller saw readily available with a 1/4" blade.

saltyri:
Did you try a tall fence that could be adjusted to match the drift angle of the blade? In over forty years of working with a bandsaw as my only power saw I have only come across blades that will track right a few times. They almost always want to pull in or out relative to the fence when that's set up as shipped from the factory. Sometimes you need to skew the fence eight or ten degrees to get the blade to track parallel to it.

My current Jet saw is particularly bad that way. I bought a 'floor demo' model when Jet changed the design, and got a riser block to go with it. The riser is the 'new' model, and the locator pins don't match up right. It's impossible to get the wheels to line up, so the blade tracks toward the front of the upper wheel. This contributes to drift in the cut. After trying a number of things I finally made up a tall fence that attaches to the rip fence, and it hinged along the line of the front of the blade. A couple of setscrews allow for adjustment of the angle.

When I put on a new blade, or (more often) sharpen the one that's on the saw, I'll take the fence off and put a couple of pieces of masking tape down across the table in front of and behind the blade. Then I draw a line parallel to the edge of a piece of waste, such as a 2x4, and rip it. I push the wood through from the back, and adjust the angle so that the blade tracks along the line. When I've established the line I stop the saw and mark the edge of the piece of wood on the tape. This gives me marks to use to align the fence. I usually finish the rip, and do a couple more just to double check the angle, and make small adjustments as needed.

I also made up a set of rollers on arms, mounted so that I can clamp the assembly to the table of the saw. Springs push the rollers against the wood just in front of the blade to hold it in on the fence with uniform pressure. I brace the fence against the pillar of the saw with a large turnbuckle, to keep it parallel to the blade vertically. This has worked very well.

Again, cutting off the line and pulling or pushing the stock away from or toward the fence is not usually a saw problem with bandsaws; it's a blade problem. Proper tension, a well made saw, a good guide setup, and a sharp blade help, but in my experience it's still a matter of luck to get it to work unless you can adjust the fence. With the right fence it's fairly easy.

Alan, your comments are right on and I appreciate hearing your thoughts. Yes, I did try adjustment for drift angle with that infuriating saw. And various blades. And various samples of the same blade. And returning a Resaw King to Laguna to check the grinding of the teeth. And co-planar adjustment of the wheels. And a fence at least as tall as the plates being sawn. And a nifty shop-built set of urethane rollers to hold the workpiece against said fence, similar to what you describe. And every other trick that I could fish out of a number of written and on-line references. After all of that, I was still wasting costly wood, not to mention a lot of time, because the thing couldn't be trusted to cut in a straight line. Granted, that was my first foray into the world of saws larger than the common cast-iron 14 incher and the education it gave me was worth something but perhaps not what I spent on blades and the loss on resale.

While the MiniMax is expensive at the outset, it's a far less aggravating machine. It simply does what it is supposed to do without any drama. Of course, I regularly do drift test with scrap and then use the adjustment feature of the Driftmaster fence to null out any observed drift.

Love my scraper, by the way! For what it's good for, it's the best.

Another option is getting a larger band saw and a good jigsaw. I used the cr@p out of a used Pro level Bosch jigsaw with a zero clearance insert and their Xtra Clean blades before I got the smaller band saw. You need to take your time and set it up correctly but I can get very clean cuts in 1.5" Ash solid body electric blanks with one.