Laguna Bandsaw Guides

[John King]

Anyone out there using Laguna guides on their bandsaw - Laguna bandsaw or other? I have read some articles on the Laguna guides. Some are complimentary. Some are not so complimentary. Looking for some user experience with these guides. Easy to adjust? Durable? Easy or hard to install on non-Laguna bandsaw? Any thoughts/comments will be appreciated. - John

 

[Steve Worcester]

Which guides? They have the ceramic and the Euro.
I have a large Laguna with the ceramic guides. The work great unless you let the blade wander into them with a hard shove or something. It will take the set out of the blade or break the ceramic. They are easy to replace though, heat them with a torch and super glue another one on.
I have heard complaints about the sparks, but I understand they are too cold to start anything to smolder. They are easy enough to adjust, but I usually leave them pretty loosely set anyway. I run 3/4" or larger blades usually and mostly fairly straight cuts.

 

[MichaelMouse]

I'm using ceramics on the standard Delta 14, and it's the greatest thing for wet wood I've found. They're slick, sturdy, and virtually wear-free. I have a set of phenolics for thinner blades, but for 3/8 up, gotta love the ceramics.

Advertising notwithstanding, the sparks are hot. I've smoldered dust under the table on two occasions when cutting very dry punky wood. Pay attention and make cleanup a ritual and it shouldn't be a problem.

I've got both guide and thrust surfaces, BTW, and worth having if you have one of the ubiquitous 14 clones.

 

[Jerry Hall]

Work for me

the last 7 years on my Laguna. I had one of their first sets. I imagine that they don't gunk up with wet wood and may keep the blade a bit cleaner than the roller guides, but don't know. Rotate them every so often to start a new groove in the ceramic. Occasionally I use a 1/8 blade and duplicated the form factor in end grain hardwood soaked in oil. I just put them in the carrier and wrap the guide around the blade. Works fine. Sand a bit off each new time I use it. The current Laguna carrier design might be harder to duplicate in wood.

I like the sparks. Nice show. Unnerves visitors tho.

 

[John King]

Steve - I should have been more clear. I am interested in experiences with the Laguna ceramic guides. - John

 

[Steve Worcester]

That's what I have. I have used the euro guides on my first Laguna the 16HD. My current 24x24 has ceramic guides

 

[robo hippy]

I like the ceramic guides better than the roller type. I did have some fine shavings/dust in the guides start to smolder once. They were wet, and I didn't clean up after for several days and they had a chance to dry. I really don't worry about that too much because most of what I cut is wet. The dry stuff doesn't accumulate where it can get a hot spark. I did hear of one guy who had a fire start inside his saw, but never heard anything final about it. They don't gum up like the roller bearings.
robo hippy

 

[David J. Borek]

Laguna Bandsaw blade guides

I have a Resaw Master with the 2" wide wheels so I use 1.25" and 2" bands mostly I cut lots of woods like burl and logs since I built a 48" X 40" Aluminum sliding table with 9 Thompson linear OPN .75" bearings on 3 precision ground rails. I purchased the blue ceramic guides when they first came out and I still have the same set and it worked great with the size bands I use. I needed another sled type of a table as the one I designed in the WOODSHOP NEWS cover story 9/96 I had in my figured wood shop in North Bend, WA http://www.blankity-blanks.com/woodnewscover.pdf & http://www.blankity-blanks.com/WSNletter.pdf It was a lot larger band saw setup! I used Black Diamond brand commercial blade guides made of HSS and they would wear out too soon. Plus they were expensive replacing every three weeks or if a blade would creep around the big 2.5†back bearing and destroy one of the HSS guides. I was changing out the two HHS guides often. I wished they had the ceramic guides back in the early 1990’s when I was burning up so many HSS guides on my Commercial Saw when I was cutting up semi loads of burls full time. As I said earlier, I needed a smaller unit so I purchased the Laguna Resaw Master and removed the table and its entire fixture on the machine. I welded up a steel stand and fitted the three rails to it one on the left side of the blade and two on the right side and I added three OPN bearings on each of the three railings. I first tried the old stock guides and they just came out of tune too often for me so I installed the ceramic ones and they work great with no complaints. Being ceramic I understood that they can break if they bet a hard hit or if a rock or get a wedge I cut stuck in between the blade and the guide. On cutting with the ceramic blade guides, I would not be happy if I had to change back! Living in Austin, Texas now with my woods and my wood lathes couldn’t be more fun.

 

[Richard Baker]

Hey David,
In case I missed it, welcome to the forum and the Austin area. As you probably know by now, Austin is a veritable hotbed of woodturners.

Dunno about Laguna guides, but replaced my worthless plastic blocks (14" Jet) with ceramics and like 'em so far. The rollers do not make sense to me, as it seems (intuitively, at least) that they would mash trash onto the blade, whereas the ceramics would tend to scrape it off and keep the blade cleaner. Just an opinion.

 

[Jred]

I have a laguna saw with ceramic guides. I don't love them. They are a pain to set and when I raise or lower the guide height they need readjustment. I've thought about replacing them with roller guides.
I'm not overly impressed with my Laguna saw (LT16) in general. I've been even less impressed with customer support and service.

 

[Bill Boehme]

Hey David,
In case I missed it, welcome to the forum and the Austin area. As you probably know by now, Austin is a veritable hotbed of woodturners.

Dunno about Laguna guides, but replaced my worthless plastic blocks (14" Jet) with ceramics and like 'em so far. The rollers do not make sense to me, as it seems (intuitively, at least) that they would mash trash onto the blade, whereas the ceramics would tend to scrape it off and keep the blade cleaner. Just an opinion.

I have a MiniMax that I bought in Austin and have tried every type of blade guide known to man or beast and have decided that the simpler and cheaper, the better. In fact you can use the guides designed for Cool Blocks or ceramic guides and, instead use some hard oily tropical wood. I have used cocobolo and also Argentinean lignum vitae which I don't believe is the same species as the real lignum vitae from Haiti. Anyway, the hard tropical woods work wonderfully after a blade has been properly dressed with a fine pocket stone to remove roughness and sharp corners (something that should be done in any case). The good thing about wood is that accidentally hitting it with the teeth won't hurt it. A good cheap source for these "guides" are pen blanks.

I can back up what Richard says about roller guides -- they are the worst guides of all. I bought a set of Carter guides thinking that they would be an improvement over the Euro guides -- I should have though harder and longer -- the roller guides are good at one thing: acting like rollers. They will mash down all of the resin and sawdust into a hard rough mess on the blade that really raises the blade vibration and decibel level as the blade rumbles through the rollers. Besides that, adjusting the Carter guides is a real PITA compared to any of the other guides.

The Euro guides are sort of half way in between and about the only really good thing about them is that they are easy and fast to adjust. They run with more clearance than the others and don't really keep the blade clean when you are cutting green wood. For kiln dried wood, they are fine.

 

[MichaelMouse]

I have a laguna saw with ceramic guides. I don't love them. They are a pain to set and when I raise or lower the guide height they need readjustment. I've thought about replacing them with roller guides.
I'm not overly impressed with my Laguna saw (LT16) in general. I've been even less impressed with customer support and service.

It's not the guides, they are just held by the saw. It's the saw that's at fault. Sometimes it's easy to find and trim/shim the guide holders back into shape, sometimes, as with a couple of Grizzlys I've fought with, it's a casting problem, and there is no help.

I think Duginskie has a section in his book on the subject. Good book, in any case.

 

[robo hippy]

I missed this last post. I agree that the problem is with the saw. I have the 16HD, and have the same problem. The post that holds the guides isn't square/plumb to the table, and there is movement as you raise and lower. The only way to adjust this is to armstrong it. I don't really think any of the other saws are any better. You have a post that will raise and lower 16 inches total. To my way of thinking, the post should be square, and fit into a chamber/slot/guide of some sort that has jibs that you can adjust to fine tune the saw. Other than that, you have to set the guides a bit wide to accomodate the movement, or be prepared to adjust the guides every time you move up and down very much.
robo hippy

 

[Bill Boehme]

I missed this last post. I agree that the problem is with the saw. I have the 16HD, and have the same problem. The post that holds the guides isn't square/plumb to the table, and there is movement as you raise and lower. The only way to adjust this is to armstrong it. I don't really think any of the other saws are any better. You have a post that will raise and lower 16 inches total. To my way of thinking, the post should be square, and fit into a chamber/slot/guide of some sort that has jibs that you can adjust to fine tune the saw. Other than that, you have to set the guides a bit wide to accomodate the movement, or be prepared to adjust the guides every time you move up and down very much.
robo hippy

I don't know what brand saw that you are using, but the MiniMax MM16 is adjustable. The blade guides are at the end of a telescoping assembly that also serves as a blade guard. Inside the telescoping guard is a heavy duty rack and pinion height adjustment arm that is the actual support for the guides and telescoping guard. The alignment screws inside the upper wheel housing allow the arm alignment to be fine tuned so that it runs normal to the plane of the table. I can run the blade guide through its full 16 inches of travel without any need to adjust the guides.

 

[mrGeeze]

i have a 20" Laguna with ceramic guides and a 5hp baldor motor.

Its a little more tempermental than i would expect from a $3000 bandsaw. It cuts fine for resawing & general flat works. But i go through a lot of blades when i'm cutting bowl blanks from green wood.

the saw in general is ok, the guides don't seem to be significantly more wonderful than any other set of guides.

Sometimes (today i was cutting crotch figure out of 20" walnut stumps) the saw is a joy to have.
Personally, If most of my work was for bowl turning I'd probably buy a cheap 16" and be done with it.