behemoth bandsaw

[yanai]

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between renovating the edo/meiji era farmhouse, trying to replace all the machines i had to leave behind in the states, and the pretty insane price of lumber in japan; i've discovered that one good way of finding material is to keep my eyes out for businesses going under and buildings being demoed. the other day i drove past a place that seemed destined for demo and eyed this behemoth of a bandsaw in the shadows. bad picture, i only had my cell phone with me. i walked by several times before mustering up enough courage to ask in my disastrous japanese what the story was. sure enough the building is being demoed.

after discussions with the current owners i found out that i can have the saw, but it's going to cost me a bundle to get the thing out and brought to my place... about $1500. i won't have the electrical for it until spring and i won't have a real home for it for a couple of years, so i'm debating. the sliding table on this beast is about a 1m X 1m and it stands about darn close to 2.75m tall. i can't read kanji yet, so i'm not sure of the manufacturer.

beside the saw is thousands of board feet of beautiful lumber; keyaki, nara, tamo, white oak, sugi... all taken. missed it by that much. but they did lead me to the two floors adjacent and said i could have anything in there. turns out it was the "ikea" side of things, but i'll take what i can get. several hundred sheets of hardwood unfinished plywood, a few hundred sheets of finished hardwood plywood, cabinets, furniture, some solid wood, and a really nice plotter. i'm not sure what to do with it all, being that i'm trying to get away from schmeer work... but the plotter makes it all worth while.

[Chris Hall]

I wish there was a bigger picture. I was a bit intimidated when I bought my Hitachi Resaw but it has proven to be such a sweet machine I'll never let it go. Still, one has to think seriously about whether an industrial resaw is going to be a little more than you need. One issue with the hulking resaws is that you can't usually fit any other blades to them, so they can only be used for Resawing. I need to get a second bandsaw to cut curves.

And yeah, I remember how expensive wood is in Japan- it's nice material, well-seasoned/dried, but not for the faint of wallet.

[yanai]

i'll try and take a better picture of the saw once the demo guys are cleared out. i don't want to get in their way.

i'm not sure which hitachi resaw you've got, but this beast makes the ones i've seen look like garden gnomes. this is definitely more than i need unless i start resawing huge logs, but when has that ever stopped any of us? this is even bigger that the giant martin i had in hawaii.

in the next few weeks i'll try to source a place that can (really) sharpen blades. i need to find a good place to do my tablesaw blades and bandsaw blades. everyone knows someone, but no one knows anyone doing a good job. my inadequacies with japanese are hindering me now, but that's coming around little by little.

ah wood... yeah, i was looking at walnut. not even decent walnut was around $3000 for a 8' x 10'' piece of ¹²/₄ ouch... i found a great domestic replacement for walnut. you know dark woods are not common or as highly valued as light wood here, but enju is absolutely beautiful. color ranges from walnut tones to rosewood tones and mills beautifully. so the search is on.

[yanai]

Here are some better pictures of the band saw. Turns out I won't be getting it though. The new property owners have decided to have it refurbished and told me they are looking to get about $20,000 for it. Yeah, good luck with that.

The kanji says Ōi Seisakujo, but in a quick search nothing turned up. I've included some of the other signage on the machine as well. I believe the large white shroud was added later for safety.

[Mathieu]

Extremely similar to the bandsaw at East Wind! Same wheels, same arm to move the table etc. Beautiful machine and cuts pretty fine for it's size.
20.000$ wow .... In Belgium you can find machines like that for about 800euro if you don't mind tuning them.
Way overpriced I would say, even in refurbished condition.

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[yanai]

Exactly the same bandsaw as the one at East Wind! Beautiful machine and cuts pretty fine for it's size.
20.000$ wow .... In Belgium you can find machines like that for about 500euro if you don't mind tuning them.
Way overpriced I would say, even in refurbished condition.

My thoughts exactly. In fact the owners were going to give it to me until "a friend" visited the site and suddenly the owners started asking for money and the saw was no longer free. In Japan you cannot just throw waste away, it costs a pretty penny to have it disposed of. For example a small k-truck (see pic) with the bed filled level with drywall costs about $300 - $400 to throw away. When I pointed that out to them they stopped asking for money, but wouldn't change their minds about the saw.

It would have been nice, but I'm sure there will be more opportunities to pick up a big band saw one of these days.

[Chris Hall]

I would think to read '大井' as 'Daishō' instead of Ōi, however after checking I find it is indeed 'Ōi'. The company is still in business and they go by the name of 'Oh-i'

Here's the next level of that machine- a double re-saw station:

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Here's their website:

http://www.ohi-japan.ru/index.php?pg=1&lng=en

Looks like they must do a fair amount of sales to Russia.

[roberts]

How about this one ?
Until about 3 months ago this stood in a sawmill, also in Belgium (in Pepingen, Mathieau) and was in daily use to saw trees into planks*.
It had sawn a peach tree and a pear tree of mine.

Sadly (and perhaps wisely) the sawmill has closed down and will become a "polyvalant space" for the village.
I made a few photos before the axe fell, as it were.

Enjoy,
Rob

* what are the technical terms of this process ? Wiki says the sawn planks are called flitches.

[Chris Hall]

well that one has an impressively tall throat but a surprisingly skinny blade.

A flitch is a confusing term these days. I take it to mean a slice of a log- a board. A log which has been flitch cut would be stacked as a bundle with each board slice in the same position as it came from the tree. Flitch also means a stack of schmeer. Flitch also is synonymous in some places with 'cant', the slab of a tree from which thinner boards or schmeer are sliced. I think the etymology of the word is 'a side of bacon', and a flitch also refers to a fine cut of flesh from a fish (especially halibut).

[yanai]

well that one has an impressively tall throat but a surprisingly skinny blade.

A flitch is a confusing term these days. I take it to mean a slice of a log- a board. A log which has been flitch cut would be stacked as a bundle with each board slice in the same position as it came from the tree. Flitch also means a stack of schmeer. Flitch also is synonymous in some places with 'cant', the slab of a tree from which thinner boards or schmeer are sliced. I think the etymology of the word is 'a side of bacon', and a flitch also refers to a fine cut of flesh from a fish (especially halibut).

Ok, now you're just making me hungry.