You can buy fancy aftermarket blade guides for most bandsaws.
For example, like these blade guides.
And, I've always wondered does that make much of a difference?
So, I've got three different styles
of commercial bandsaw blade guides,
plus of course my homemade blade guides,
and in this video I'll compare the four of them
to see if they make much of a difference.
First up, my homemade bandsaw blade guides.
Next up, the cheap blade guides that came with
my 14 inch bandsaw that I bought 20 years ago.
The way I set the lower blade guides is so that the guides
almost pinching the blade, but it still slides freely,
and the thrust bearing maybe a millimeter
to a half a millimeter behind the blade
so it doesn't normally engage.
I can't say that felt any different from using
the blade guides that are made for the saw.
Next up, some fancy aftermarket blade guides.
These ones are from sawblade.com
but they look pretty much identical to the ones
you could get from Carter.
Next up, these blade guides from my friend, Ted.
Only problem is this doesn't actually fit here.
But no problem, I just made some more spare parts
for my bandsaw.
So, this is not the most secure way of attaching the table,
but I'm only using it for one test.
And, fortunately this part here doesn't fit on,
because it hits the blade guides.
So, results are
here's all my samples, these are with the homemade guides,
with the cheap ones, with the sawblade.com ones,
and with the guides that Ted sent me,
and then the homemade ones again.
And, I have to say when I was using them,
I really couldn't tell the difference other than by
looking at them, they all guided the blades perfectly well
perfectly stable.
And, looking at the samples,
again I can't tell the difference between
one blade guide and the next.
So, in terms of how well they guide the blade,
and how clean the cut is, no difference.
So I'll focus on other aspects. One aspect I expected
my homemade ones to do worst in
is adjust-ability, because these guides are kind of
annoying to adjust. But, I actually find these ones
kind of annoying to adjust as well partially it was because
my Allen keys just barely fit in there, so I had
a hard time getting a grip with them and then twisting
these things around to get the spacing there,
not so easy.
These ones have really nice adjustment knobs,
but then getting the fine adjustment on them
was kind of awful, the easiest to adjust I found actually
were these really, really cheap ones.
Next criteria is bulkiness.
These ones are the worst in that regard.
They just obstruct the work piece too much.
Especially if I'm trying to fail them or just trying to see
what's going on, so I didn't like these at all.
These ones were the best because they're tiny.
And, then I think these ones are still a little bit smaller
than the homemade ones. So, for that one,
the cheap ones win.
Next criteria is looks.
Well, these ones just look way cool.
My second favorite, in terms of looks, is the homemade ones,
then these ones, then the big ones.
And, looks are actually quite important, because
the difference between these blade guides
is largely psychological,so if the guides look really nice
and precise, you'll feel better about them,
and you'll probably do better work with them.
The clear losers in the test were these blade guides.
They were sent to me by a friend, Ted,
who replaced the blade guides on his bandsaw
with Carter blade guides
and so he didn't need this anymore, and I thought I'd have
a use for them to replace the blade guides on a bandsaw
at my dad's shop, but I never got around to that.
Really, these ones are meant for much wider blades,
but I was running all my tests with a quarter inch blade,
because the narrower the blade is,
the more the blade guides matter
If it's a wide blade, it's much easier to guide the blade.
I have some concern about using blade guides like this,
especially below the table, because all this sawdust
kind of falls down right next to the blade,
and these, if they're adjusted to be really close to the blade,
they tend to kind of roll that sawdust,
to compress it onto the blade, so that's not such a good idea.
These ones, they do roll very quietly,
I mean they're brand new, and they look like they're
very high quality ball bearings so they weren't really noisy
in that regard, although that could change if they're used
for a long time. Now, of course some people say,
you're meant to adjust these so that the rollers don't actually
touch the blade, but then if you have a significant gap
between the rollers and the blade,
well then you're not really effectively guiding the blade.
These ones were the easiest to adjust,
you just loosen those screws, and lightly push the blocks
against the blade, and tighten them, and then make sure
it's not too tight. And the thrust bearing is pretty
easy to adjust too. And, they're very small,
I think there was originally some set screws in here
but I replaced them with these bolts just so
I didn't have to look for the Allen key all the time.
This lower blade guide, I don't think is entirely optimal
because you adjust it just by loosening the screws that
attach it to the frame, and also I think it would be better
to have the guide blocks above the thrust bearing
instead of below, just to get the guidance closer
to where the stock is, but neither these blade guides
nor these ones, can be used with particularly wide blades,
whereas these homemade ones have go really wide
guide blocks and then I can have the blade actually sticking out
past the back of the guide blocks, so I can run these with
an inch and a quarter saw mill blade,
which is something these can't do,
although these ones could use a saw mill blade, as well.
So, my advice is whatever blade guides your bandsaw came with,
they work just fine.
And, if you have to replace your blade guides,
maybe consider getting some really cheap ones,
because I actually like those the best.