Is your bandblade gumming up?

[Tom]

Is the sap sticking to your bandblade? Is the sawdust building up on the blade and wheels?  

Think HEAT.

When the teeth begin to lose their edge, you have to drive the band harder and generate heat.........the blade gums up.

When your blade is offset and trys to climb or dive in the kerf, the body of the band rubs and generates heat....the blade gums up.

When your blade is underset, the body of the blade rubs, generates heat......the blade gums up.

When the blade guides are improperly set, there is a twisting stress on the blade, heat is generated.....the blade gums up.

Water or some other liquid used for lubricant will help to solve the symptom but try to determine what is causing the problem.  It makes for a more pleasant day to fix it rather than live with it.

No,  you can't always get rid of the problem, then you have to live with it. Some logs just refuse to leave the blade clean.  

Sometimes though, it is an indication of a dull blade or other problem with the mill that can be fixed and lead to higher production and fewer headaches.

I have changed blades and solved the problem only to find that I had improperly set or improperly sharpened some of my blades during the last sharpening session. I have even traced problems to a dirty clamp on the sharpener.  

[Tn...Andy]

Hey Tom,


I don't seem to have much problem with gumming except in white pine....I've been cutting a lot of southern pine beetle killed timber off my place and the trees put out an abundence of pitch trying to fight off the beetle larva I guess, and sawing them will gum up a brand new blade right out of the box.

Turning the water up on the LT40 will keep it off the blade, but I just bought a gallon of cleaner/degreaser, the Orange stuff from Home Depot, and intend to try a diluted solution of it with water to see if that works any better.....I know Woodmizer sells a solution of some kind, but I've never tried it.....

Anybody here tried anything in their water jug ??  

Opps....forgot I was talking to a bunch of wiseacre sawmillers and should have specified the  WATER JUG ON THE MILL

[Brian_Rhoad]

I use Band-Aide for wood from Lenox. Costs $85-$90 for 5 gallons. I mix 1 quart to 5 gallons of water for hardwoods and 2 quarts to 5 gallons of water for Pine. It keeps the blades clean and doesn't gum up the guide bearings. I've heard of using dish detergent and water mixture, but I haven't tried it yet.

[Tom]

It's a good thing you qualified that......I was primed.........

I use dish soap some times.  I used to use it all the time but the bearings on my blade guides had a very short life and I determined that I was washing the grease out of them.  May or may not be true but when I stopped using the soap, my guide wheels lasted a lot longer.  It made me wonder if the solution may be getting into other bearings, like those on the bandwheels for instance.

I've found that water and real sharp blade stops most of the gumming.  I refuse to use petroleum products because of contamination of the area and the destruction of belts and hydraulic hoses.