Band Saw Blade Alignment Gauge
By Vince Bloom
No matter how good your band saw is, if it doesn’t cut square it’s not living up to its potential. Usually setting a band saw blade square to the table involves a lot of cutting and checking of scrap stock — or you could clip this blade alignment gauge to the blade and check the alignment easily with a machinist square.
MSC sells the Starrett version for $54 (up from $27 in the 2006 catalog) and the Lenox version for $6. I own the Starrett, and it works great, but I doubt it’s nine times better than the Lenox version. If you work with a band saw, there’s no reason not to have the Lenox, especially for $6.
Band Saw Alignment Gauge [Lenox]
Starrett Gauge [MSC]
Lenox Gauge [MSC]
Via Amazon [What’s This?]
October 2nd, 2008 at 12:40 pm
I assume this is used for adjusting your saw for drift rather than setting the blade at 90 degrees to the table. If you aren’t changing blades all the time, cutting halfway through an 18-24″ long piece of scrap, flipping it over and continuing the cut - after adjusting your fence to be parallel with the cut line, works just fine. I guess for $6 it’s worth trying out, but I wonder if it really makes it that much easier.
October 3rd, 2008 at 10:28 am
The 1-1/2 inch blade on our big Marvel saw doesn’t drift much - but then again we don’t use it in our cabinet/woodworking shop.
On a more serious note - we might try this out for our Lagunas.
October 3rd, 2008 at 10:49 am
Looking at this tool again - I’m not sure that it is meant to deal with drift.
Starrett says that theirs is meant to check perpindiculrity of the blade - and I can see how that might work. I can also see that it might give you 2 points of reference to check blade to fence distance at the blade and at a point projected forward or back from the blade by the length of the gauge. That still won’t correct drift.
By the way has anyone out there tried the new Laguna Drift compensating fence - the one with the handwheel adjuster? We thought to give one a try - but the $395 price makes me want to check out how it works first.
October 3rd, 2008 at 11:59 am
I use the Starratt version of this tool a few times a week to check out my customers saws. Indispensable tools for saw set-up and troubleshooting a crooked cut.