Bandsaw speed for Bubinga

[smorris]

I'm making a bandsaw box for Christmas for my future DiL and am using some very nice Bubinga I picked up. I'm trying out some scrap and am not sure if I have the speed for the saw right yet. I'm cutting a 5 inch block with a 4 TPI 3/16 Timberwolf blade at medium speed on a HF 14" BS. It is slow going which is to be expected but I wonder if I need to slow down or speed up the blade some to get it to cut a little better. Any suggestions before I start moving belts around in trial and error?

Thanks,
Scott

[LCHIEN]

most all woodworking BS are usually run around 3000 FPM. I posted sometime earlier this year how to compute the speed of your bandsaw for both 1 and 2-belt BSes.

http://www.bt3central.com/showthread...=bandsaw+speed

[smorris]

Thanks. I'll get out the tape measure and do the math and see where I'm at.

[Uncle Cracker]

I could be wrong about this, but I think most people tend to leave the speed setting the same for their saws, except maybe for the most demanding of cuts. I know that I swap the blade to more or less TPI if I need a more or less aggressive cut. I do not mean a wider or thicker blade, which would mean additional blade tuning, just one with a different tooth count. Certain saws, like mine, make this easy. Other saws might make speed changing easier. As always, YMMV.

[smorris]

With the advice given I was able to determine that the blade speed was almost spot on and was able to concentrate on cutting the box. It WAS one of my better jobs and the grain I had spent so long orienting came out beautifully. I was starting to sand when it tumbled off the sander and snapped in half on the floor. The fracture looked more like how ceramics break then wood. Needless to say I was very bummed after all that work and trying to do it just so to make a nice gift for my sons gal.

So, I'm back to square 1. Couldn't find another piece of wood as nice as that one so switched to padauk. Got a nice board with lots of nice grain showing. I'll let the blanks acclimate for a couple days and glue it up then start all over again. I've already discovered that the saw dust is very irritating from that wood and I suppose the shop will develop a nice red hue, dust collector or not.

I should have known it wouldn't end well when the bottle of glue split while I was applying it. I wasn't even squeezing very hard, just a normal grip to make a bead to squeege around. Oh well, I still have 10 fingers so it wasn't all bad I guess.