Equipment for sharpening/setting bands?

[high grade lumber]

Im new to the sawmilling world and dont know much about it but i picked up a breezewood bandmill. I have milled some wood and it seems to work well for an older mill but now i would like to see how much work it would be to sharpen my own blades. If someone could tell me what i would need for starters or what they think works well it would be greatly appreciated.

[Magicman]

Hello    high grade lumber, and Welcome to the Forestry Forum.  I use Wood-Mizer Resharp program and do not sharpen/set blades, so I will let the other members answer your sharpening question.   

I would like to hear more about your sawmill though.

[high grade lumber]

Thanks magic I never could find out much information about breezewood sawmills. I have 30 foot of rails and the biggest diameter log it will cut is 24 inches. It has hydraulic up and down as well as feed. I never could find one like it and wish someone could tell me more about it.

[thecfarm]

high grade lumber,welcome to the forum. I just did a search on the forum. Found 2 pages. I put in breezewood into the search bar,upper right and changed "this topic" to "this board" Because we are in the sawmill board. 19 years old and you have a sawmill. 
May not be a bad idea to start another thread about your sawmill and put breezewood in the title. We all don't read every post.
What's the plan for all the lumber.

[Chuck White]

Welcome to the Forestry Forum, High Grade Lumber!

[dutchman]

Hell-o and welcome.
I'm in SW PA., outside of McKeesport, PA.
I sharpen my own blades.
If you want to see what it takes send me a PM, or email, maybe we could get together.
If you want to check prices on sharpening equipment try Cook's Saw Mfg., in
the sponsors on the left of the page.

[high grade lumber]

Thanks everyone. I really dont know what im going to do with all the wood yet for right now its all just drying but im sure someday i will find a use for all of it. I really enjoy making use of trees. Dutchman im from latrobe so you arent far from me at all   

[bandmiller2]

Welcome Highgrade,it is entirely possible your mill was a home built and the fella just gave it a name.Good sharpening equipment is expensive and depending how much your going to mill it may not pay to buy it.You could go the Majicman route with WM bands and resharp at least until you know milling is your thing or not.It is practical to buy new bands ,use them til dull and dispose or sell them.A new band will cut a lot of lumber if your carefull.If you can find someone local to grind and set your bands more the better. Frank C.

[thecol]

breezewood were made in pa i have some litature on them  will dig it out there is a breezewood 2000 i think the number is on it 15 mi from me

[kevin19343]

Greetings from a fellow Pennsylvanian!!!  (Philadelphia area)

I sharpen and set my own blades. It's really pretty easy once you get the hang of it.

All my sharpening equipment cost less than $1000, but the fancy shmancy stuff that's available out there could easily set you back 3-4 times that amount. I only sharpen about 5-8 times a month so I'm happy with the basic set-up.

Welcome & good luck!

[two-legged-sawmill]

Welcome to the FF, High Grade Lumber, Breezewood is a very good and well
built Mill. It was a top of the line for their Era, 20 to 24" logs was most common sawn at one time. I am not sure of why they stopped building them,anyone in mfgr has many obsticale to overcome! Right here in NY there has been several good mills that just could not make the Grade. Latobe,pa noted for studs for tires,and many high grade Carbide Tips. I have delivered  several Oscar's in western PA. You will most likely get lots more info on your Breeze Wood, keep your band sharpe and tensioned correctly and you will do fine! Dan sr

[Mountain Guardian]

I went and bought a brand new bench grinder for about $70 and then shaped the fine stone with a diamond shaper tool that came with the grinder.  I just shaped the stone to the same shape as the gullet of the blade and I use the flat left of the stone to sharpen the tooth. I carefully set it up there and just lightly tick it to the right and move on to the next tooth. It takes me about five minutes or so to sharpen a blade.




This is a pic of my grinder set up, simple and pretty ease to use.  I have all my blades at least twice some of them up to about 3 or 4 times over the last year an a half of operation, I have 16 blades total that cycle through.  I cannot say for sure how long this sharpening method would work on a single blade, but I think I can guarantee at least five to ten sharpens per blade from my experience thus far.  I am hoping to get 20 sharpens per blade before blade replacement with this system.

[high grade lumber]

I'm surprised you can be that precise just doing it by hand. Have you had any trouble with all the teeth not being the same?

[Mountain Guardian]

To be honest with sixteen blades to work with thus far it is hard tell exactly.  At this point my blades seem to cut quite well, but the most any of them has been sharpened is 4 to 6 times, many of them only once or twice.  I also maybe remove 1/128th to 1/64th inch when I tick it against the wheel, so as yet I have not removed a great deal of material on the blades.

I have noticed that I am loosing the angle on the teeth as I am sharpening them and have had some concerns about that, though at this point they all still seem to cut great.  From some of the comments on here I am beginning to wonder if I will start having trouble before long having no angle on the teeth.  In my mind it seems like that might cause me to float more on knots and things like that while cutting causing uneven cut.

I was thinking about yesterday and this morning I thought maybe I should build an angle on the deck in front of the stone so that I can have the angle on the teeth.  I will only be able to angle one direction the first time through sharpening every other tooth with that, but I should be able to flip the saw blade inside out and go back through the other teeth with the equal opposite angle on the same set up.  It would take a bit more on sharpening, but might well be worth the extra effort in the end.

As for accuracy, not too hard really you just have to be very careful, with the stone shaped like the gullet I get it set in place about 1/32 inches from the stone and it is pretty easy to see when everything is even to the tooth and the gullet and then just a slow slide to the right just a tiny bit ticks it against the stone lightly.  Over time it is sure to get off a bit, but how accurate does it really have to be to cut rough milled lumber.

The amount that I will save sharpening myself will over the first hopefully five years save me as much as it costs to buy the next blades.  So far I have cut up around 30, 000 to 35,000 board feet of logs on these 16 blades over the last year and a half and they are still cutting well.  While it may not be perfect, it does work.

[Nomad]

     MG, when you say "losing the angle on the teeth," what are you talking about?  Do you mean the original angle the teeth were cut to?  Like 10° or whatever?  Or are you talking about a side angle like a chainsaw chain has?
     A bandsaw should be sharpened straight across.  No side angle like on a chainsaw tooth.  If you're good enough to sharpen free hand that's great!
     But the thing you need to be concerned with is the set in the teeth.  That is, the side bend of each tooth.  One will be set to the left, one to the right, and one raker with no set.  This dimension must be the same in both directions, or the blade will not cut straight.
     When you sharpen teeth without resetting them, you remove a little of the set each time you sharpen.  Without enough set the band will not cut correctly.  You will soon have a band that, although sharp, will not work well.

[Mountain Guardian]

When I sharpen with my set up I get a flat 90 degree face on the tooth, wheras the original face on the tooth is angled.  I would imaging the angled face helps to cut better and to clear debris better than my straight 90 degree face.  As I have not taken much off in my sharpenings I still have some of the angled face left on my teeth.

[customsawyer]

If I am understanding what you are saying then the 90° will cut better than the angle face. The angle on the face comes from when they make the blades they are sharpened first and then the 25-30 thousandths of set is put on these teeth causing the angle you speak of. If you look at a raker tooth it should be at 90°. 

[Sawmill Man]

Customsawyer I think he is actually talking about his hook angle

[Brad_S.]

Welcome high grade lumber.

My first mill was a used Breezewood. Mine had a chair you rode in. I never got it to cut well but I know now it was the idiot in the chair, not the mill.

At one point I took it down to the manufacturer in DuBois, PA. A guy named Andy Riss owned the company and he bent over backwards to help me out. Great guy. I believe he worked for another mill manufacturer for a while after he closed his shop in the early 90's. I ended up selling it through Timber Harvester in order to buy one of their mills. Sadly, they are gone now as well.

My biggest complaint about the Breezewood is that it had an expanded metal band wheel cover. (or, at least mine did). Throwing a blade off the wheels meant certain destruction of the blade in that metal. In contrast, the TH had wooden doors. I thought they looked chinzy when I first saw them but it only took one blade throw to see the logic!

[high grade lumber]

The only thing about mine i Dont like is I only have 24 inches bettween my post and sometimes that's not enough. It also has the steel blade cover. What diameter log would have fit on your breeze wood Brad?

[Brad_S.]

It was over 20 years ago and I don't remember, but I think Breezewood only made one model and they are all the same.

[Brian_Rhoad]

The first Breezewood mills were smaller. I think they used 19" band wheels and were called a B1900. The newer ones used 20" band wheels and were called a B2000. The B2000 is 30" between the blade guides at there widest setting. The B2000 will cut a 30" log. If the saw could be raised more it would cut 36".