I'm in the process of building a bigger bandsaw
and a lot of people commented on the first video,
"Why do you need to build a bigger bandsaw?"
Isn't it obvious? Bigger is better.
The most obvious way is just in terms of elbow room.
I cut this pantorouter dovetail template on the bandsaw,
and I was making all these cuts,
and I got to about here.
and om the last one, I couldn't cut on my 16 inch bandsaw,
so I had to move over to my 18 inch bandsaw.
So, hitting that post is actually something
that happens a lot, and the further away the post is,
on the bigger bandsaw, the better it is.
And, when I cut out the wheels for this bandsaw,
I actually had to start that with the jigsaw, because
my bandsaws weren't big enough.
The next reason is blade life. Imagine this was a bandsaw blade
and I can bend that in a pretty tight radius
and it will spring back, so you would think
wheels of this size would be plenty,
and I could just have three of them spaced far apart.
But, the problem is if I bend this blade
to this radius, I can do that hundreds of times
and I'll be okay, but if I do it tens of thousands of times,
it will break from something called metal fatigue.
So, instead of this size, if my wheel is this size,
the amount of bending is so much less than it is for this wheel
and that means I put much less strain on the blade
and I won't run into metal fatigue problems.
This becomes especially an issue for using thicker blades
which is why for three-wheel bandsaws, with small wheels,
you have to use very thin blades, you really can't use
the heavy blades, like you would for a larger bandsaw.
And, that brings me to the other comment that I got a lot.
"Why not build a three-wheel bandsaw?"
So, imagine this was a three=wheel bandsaw.
With relatively small wheels, we can still have
a 20 inch throat depth, for a bandsaw
that still fits on a workbench, which has the potential
to save some space. But, with a three-wheeler,
you always end up having at least the width
of the wheel that you need extra space here and you really
don't want to make these wheels too small because the smaller
they are, the sooner they'll break the blade,
whereas if we make a two-wheel bandsaw, we have
just the room here and we need a little bit of extra room
for the post on this side, but the bandsaw isn't that much
wider here than than the throat capacity.
But, in terms of footprint, a conventional two-wheel bandsaw
is actually more efficient, because I don't have this extra
space for the third wheel here. All I need is room for the post.
But, you also need a lot of space around the bandsaw.
So, if I want to cut something off the end of here,
I need a lot of space this way or if I want to rip it
down the middle, I need more room on the back.
With this bandsaw, I have it on wheels
so I can just pull it out, and then I have enough room.
Now Imagine a three-wheel bandsaw on a bench-top.
I'd have to pick it up and move it somewhere else.
It's much easier to have something floor-standing
that's on wheels. And, if that bandsaw
is floor-standing, then I have lots of vertical room already
so it's actually much more efficient to have two wheels
top and bottom instead of a third wheel.
Next problem with a three-wheeler is complications.
I need three wheels, and I have to make sure they're all
aligned with each other, which means this wheel
with this wheel, this wheel with this wheel, and this wheel
with this wheel, and if the blade doesn't track right,
I'm not sure which of these wheels might be out of alignment
Whereas with a two-wheeler, I just have to make sure
this wheel is aligned with this wheel.
I did a quick Google search for three-wheel bandsaws,
and ironically, two of them that came up on the images,
was Mikiono's bandsaw, which she acknowledged
that it breaks blades a lot because you use wheels
that are far too small, the other one was Pekasinfud's
bandsaw, and I emailed him about it, and he says,
he gave it away to a friend, and he wouldn't build a three-wheel
bandsaw again. He had problems with it,
one of which was it broke blades a lot.
There really isn't any general woodworking three-wheel bandsaws
that are made anymore, that I know of.
For some specialty applications there's three-wheelers,
but overall, I think manufacturers have given up
on this kind of saw. Back in the 1970's
it seemed like a good idea, but I think there was just
too many unhappy customers complaining of broken blades
and complications that manufacturers just, kind of,
gave up on making that sort of bandsaw altogether.
So, just to make it clear, bigger is better.
And, three-wheelers suck.
And, don't even get me started about using bicycle wheels.