# HF 4-speed woodworking band saw



## amckenzie4 (Apr 29, 2010)

I just bought one of these after reading a lot of reviews. One problem I had in making a decision was that the reviews I was finding were almost all at least a few years old, and there have been some changes to the design of the saw since then. So, in hopes of helping out people who are looking now, I thought I'd post my thoughts.

To start off, I have almost no experience with bandsaws; I've used one before, but mostly for metal cutting, not wood. Bearing that in mind, here we go..

0) What I didn't use.

I knew from the reviews that a link belt was highly recommended. Since I was at HF anyway, I bought theirs. Other than that, everything is stock, although I'll be replacing the blade as soon as possible.

1) Moving and packing.

It's a heavy box, but not completely unmovable. I got it out of my car on my own by sliding it onto a furniture dolly, then rolled it into the garage. Getting parts out of the box was an interesting experience. The base and table were on top, right up against the cardboard, set into a molded styrofoam tray. Removing the tray revealed the rest of the saw, assembled and with a blade in it, and the motor. No evidence anywhere of fasteners or a manual. Why? Well, because those were UNDER the saw. In a little nook that was completely hidden until you'd lifted the saw. Anyway. On the plus side, everything was in the box (with one odd sort-of-exception, which I'll mention later), which rather surprised me.

2) Assembly.

A) The base. This went really smoothly. Contrary to my expectations, the instructions were quite clear, all the parts were there, and all the necessary screw holes were cleanly cut and lined up where they were supposed to. The base looked like it was going to have a lot of gaps, but tightening down the fasteners with a wrench closed them all up. As a side note: except for the belt guard housing, every nut and bolt used in assembly is 13mm. I recommend making sure you've got a 13mm box wrench AND a 13mm driver on a ratchet before you start working. You'll want them both.

B) The saw. There wasn't much to assemble here. It was all pre-built, with a blade installed, and all the fasteners tightened down. That's a bonus, because this is where the manual was least clear. The table and its mount DID need to be installed, which was quick and easy. It was also where the "sort-of-exception" I mentioned above came in. The instructions claim you're supposed to use two M8x30 bolts to attach the table bracket. By that time in the assembly, I only had one of them left. However, I also had an M8x35 (more or less) bolt that wasn't called for in the instructions anywhere. As it turned out, it was exactly the right length for the right-most of the two holes I was supposed to be bolting the bracket into, so I decided to just use it and not worry.

C) The motor. Installing the motor was a pain, but not terribly difficult. It absolutely required two people; the motor has to be held upside down under an angled bracket, and then bolts have to be run through from underneath and nuts put on them from the top. I can't help feeling like there must have been a better way to design that. 

I'm also going to mention the belt-guard box here: that also sucked, and was probably the hardest part of the entire assembly. It requires putting four fairly small pan-head bolts through four similarly small holes, all on the inside of the assembly, and the drive pulleys pretty much meant I couldn't get my hands anywhere within four inches of the rear holes. A long pair of needlenose pliers solved the problem, but it was a nuisance after everything else being so easy.

Assembly probably took around an hour and a half, including checking to make sure the wheels and pulleys were lined up and tensioned correctly.

3) Fit, finish, and accessories.

I'm favorably impressed by the saw as a whole. While the sheet metal edges on the base aren't rounded over, they're also not as sharp as some bases I've worked with. Once all the nuts were tightened, everything seemed quite solid. The blade tension was really low (essentially no tension) out of the box, but the tensioner works well, and the knob on the new version sticks up above the top of the saw, so it's easy to use. While the table bracket looks and feels like plastic, it seems to actually be cast aluminum with a plastic coating -- tap it and it rings like cast aluminum, and it's too heavy to be plastic.

One frequent complaint in the old saw was that the side panels that cover the wheels aren't hinged. Well, they are now. That's mentioned in comments on a few older reviews, but I thought I'd make it part of the body of this one. The lower panel on both my saw and the display model has to be really slammed shut to latch; I'll likely replace the catch with a magnet eventually.

Something I haven't seen mentioned anywhere is that the new model has a brush set to sweep off the lower wheel, out of the box. I'd planned to buy and install one, but now I don't have to. 

There are two places where there are angle gauges: the table tilt measure, and the miter gauge. Neither is perfect, but both are adjustable. The table's gauge was off by around a degree: once I'd squared the table to the blade, I reset it to zero, then used a Wixey digital angle gauge to check the rest of the readings. They're certainly very close - within two tenths of a degree, as far as I could tell -- and should do for most purposes. For anything really precise, I've got the digital gauge, which is easier to read anyway. 

The miter gauge... what can I say about it? It's cheap plastic with numbers molded into it, and it's screwed to a cheap piece of aluminum c-channel that more or less fits the miter slot. The tick marks for the angle indicators are a good eighth of an inch across. We're not talking "high precision" here. If I need to set an accurate angle, I'm going to use a protractor, rather than trusting the miter gauge. It does have an adjustable needle, so I can set it to "90 (or 30, or 45) degrees plus or minus a little", but that's about as good as it gets. It also doesn't really slide through the slot cleanly, because it gets hung up on the mouth for changing the blade. I'm planning to round off the front corners of the gauge, to see if that helps. It does more or less lock in place, but I suspect it will cease to do so pretty quickly. I don't expect to need the gauge all that often, though, so maybe it won't really matter.

A number of people complained about the drive belt being lumpy and uneven. While I didn't use the one I got -- I'd bought a link belt, so why bother with it? -- it seems to be OK. I'd still say go with the link belt: by all accounts they decrease vibration, and the added expense brought the price even with the Ridgid and Porter-Cable 14" saws, rather than above them. (Actually, if your local Lowes/HD won't accept HF coupons, it's still a lot cheaper than either...)

The blade that came with it is, as you'd expect, not very good. I made a couple of test cuts in some scrap 3/4" ply, and it works, but not well. It did cut fairly straight, and with essentially no drift across a six inch cut, though, so it's probably passable as an emergency backup. The manual claims it's 6TPI and 3/8" width. I haven't counted, but I would have guessed 8 or 10 TPI from a quick look. I did notice a couple of damaged teeth before I used it, and I suspect there are more, so it's not going to get used much, if at all.

4) Final thoughts

I had just about been convinced to buy a Grizzly before I bought this. It occurred to me, though, that I know for a fact I was going to want to cut metal with it, and the Grizzly just doesn't step down to speed that I'm comfortable with for that. Between that and the option to save $200, the HF model seemed like the right choice. If money hadn't been a concern, I probably still would have gone with the Grizzly, and bought a cheap low-speed benchtop or something for cutting metal. As it was, versatility won out over quality.

I do plan to buy the riser kit for the saw: it's currently available from HF parts for $85 + shipping, although it can't be bought in the stores. I'll be building a fence -- there was a fairly nice set of plans in the most recent ShopNotes for a rip and resaw fence that can accommodate for drift -- rather than buying one, and I have pretty much all the parts for that. So with the addition of the riser and a couple of good blades, I'll have a tool that should do everything I need (and most of what I want) for a pretty good price. 


Overall, I'm pleased with my decision, and suspect I made a right choice, if not THE right choice.


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## woodnthings (Jan 24, 2009)

*metal cutting on a wood bandsaw....*

This issue is the blade is moving at a rate that's too fast. Usually metal only bandsaws have a blade speed of around 300 feet per minute. and under. That's about a 10 to 1 reduction from 3000 FPM. Unless the manual states what speed the blade is cutting... around 100 FPM I would advise against cutting anything ferrous. Brass and aluminum can be cut at wood cutting speeds unless they are thick and heat builds up. Here's a link that explains it:
http://www.ehow.com/how_5566754_cut-metal-bandsaw.html 

another on cutting speeds: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutting_speed#Cutting_speed

This saw has variable speeds form 150 - 3000 FPM.:
http://www.grizzly.com/products/Vertical-Wood-Metal-Bandsaw/G0621X


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## cabinetman (Jul 5, 2007)

amckenzie4 said:


> I had just about been convinced to buy a Grizzly before I bought this. It occurred to me, though, that I know for a fact I was going to want to cut metal with it, and the Grizzly just doesn't step down to speed that I'm comfortable with for that. Between that and the option to save $200, the HF model seemed like the right choice. If money hadn't been a concern, I probably still would have gone with the Grizzly, and bought a cheap low-speed benchtop or something for cutting metal. As it was, versatility won out over quality.


A very good write up. Enjoy your new saw. It sounds like you are well familiar with metal cutting and wood cutting speeds since you have bandsawed metal before, and you know the speeds of this saw.












 







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## amckenzie4 (Apr 29, 2010)

woodnthings said:


> This issue is the blade is moving at a rate that's too fast. Usually metal only bandsaws have a blade speed of around 300 feet per minute. and under. That's about a 10 to 1 reduction from 3000 FPM. Unless the manual states what speed the blade is cutting... around 100 FPM I would advise against cutting anything ferrous. Brass and aluminum can be cut at wood cutting speeds unless they are thick and heat builds up. Here's a link that explains it:
> http://www.ehow.com/how_5566754_cut-metal-bandsaw.html
> 
> another on cutting speeds: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutting_speed#Cutting_speed
> ...


And hey, it's only $900 more than I spent!

Seriously, that's a fantastic saw, and I'd love to have one, but it's more than I need or can afford.

The HF saw will go down to 600FPM. While that's still high for steel, it's passable for just about anything else. The Grizzly I could (just barely) afford had a minimum speed of 1500FPM. That's faster than I'm comfortable with for cutting most metals. Sure, it's technically safe for some things, but I'm not happy about it.





cabinetman said:


> A very good write up. Enjoy your new saw. It sounds like you are well familiar with metal cutting and wood cutting speeds since you have bandsawed metal before, and you know the speeds of this saw.


Thanks! While I still wish I'd been able to make room for the Grizzly for wood and another dedicated machine for metal, it wasn't going to work in terms of either space or budget.


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## woodnthings (Jan 24, 2009)

*Here's the one I have*

http://www.rollinsaw.com/band_saws/EF1459_vertical_band_saw.htm

It's got 4 speeds: pretty slow, slow, slower and even slower.
I've never changed the speeds.
My other metal BS is an old Craftsman 4 1/2 " and been a real work horse.... after a few necessary mods to the drive train. Some engineer forgot you have to get the blades on and off.
I weld my own blades both for wood and metal and buy the stock in rolls... saves $$$ !
If I wanted to cut steel, a simple jack shaft off the motor with reduction pulleys would drop the speed down. If you are at 600 you'd only have to reduce by 3 to 1 to get 100 FPM. A hinged motor would make switching the belts easy. Maybe some day..?

BTW Nice write up also!


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## JohnK007 (Nov 14, 2009)

Well written, honest review! Thanks !


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## amckenzie4 (Apr 29, 2010)

JohnK007 said:


> Well written, honest review! Thanks !


No problem!


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## cocheseuga (Dec 15, 2010)

Nice review. The motor can be done with one person, I just wouldn't want to do it again.

And the price I got quoted on October 14th was $71.xx plus shipping on the riser, I hope they didn't raise the price that quickly.


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## amckenzie4 (Apr 29, 2010)

A quick update, now that I've used it some.

The blade tensioning/tracking system is a pain to use. Adjusting the tension also adjusts the tracking, and vice versa, so every time you tweak one, you have to tweak the other. I'm not sure whether this is standard, since I've only used one other bandsaw (which has been modified by a long string of owners), but it's a pain.

I bought a couple of cheap Bosch blades for the time being, while I wait for my tool fund to build back up to buy the riser. The half-inch 4TPI blade works great. I was able to resaw a piece of 6" wide red oak with no problem at all once I got the feed rate down. It does take a pretty slow feed rate, but it cut fine. I also bought an eighth inch 15TPI blade that I haven't been able to make work at all. That's where the problem with the tensioner came in. I spent about 20 minutes trying to get it to track cleanly at a reasonable tension, and then gave up. I'll try it again at some point when I'm not in a hurry, but at the time I just wanted to try making some curved cuts. I solved the problem by putting the stock blade (I think 3/8" 8TPI) back on and picking some thicker stock to experiment with. The blade isn't great, but I was able to make some fairly clean curves in some scrap cedar deck boards. I think the roughness of the cuts was more due to my inexperience than anything else.

Overall, I'm still pleased. The saw is quiet, it starts and stops cleanly, and while the tensioner needs some work the rest of it is pretty good. Not bad for a really cheap saw.


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