Tension Up to 3/4" Bandsaw Blades Perfectly!

Hey, Dirt Farmer Jay here from DirtFarmerJay.com. I love having one of these band saws here in my shop and if you have one, you know how handy they are. It doesn't matter whether it is a bench top or a floor model like this one. These saws really are hard workers and allow you to do a lot of great things accurately and quickly. In fact, there's some things that I wouldn't even take on unless I had this saw. But there's one thing that's a little bit finicky about them and that is getting the blade tension correct time after time. And until now, it was a little bit of a finicky process. But there's a great new product out there that allows you to set this dependably time after time with no hassle at all. Stay tuned and I'll tell you all about it. Hey, Dirt Farmer Jay here from DirtFarmerJay.com. Thanks for joining me. Today, I'm going to show you a really cool, inexpensive, and highly effective tool that allows you to dependably set the tension on your band saw, whether it is a floor mount or floor model like this or it is a bench top. The problem is the same. Getting the tension correct time after time. Too tight, you're going to wear out the blade faster than you need to and it's hard on the machine. Too loose and the blade is going to wander. You're not going to get a really good cut, especially on when you're doing some resawing. The tension is critical to get the blade to track correctly, not to deflect. So solving that is a great thing. Now, let me tell you what you're going to experience in the brief time that we have together. I'm going to show you the product. I'm going to give you the backstory about it, how it came to be, because I think that's important. I'm going to give you a little bit of technical expertise on what it is, the different terminologies on this, so that you're accurately describing what you're addressing when you use this tool. And then I'm going to tell you where you can purchase it and direct you to, as well, to another review where I first found out about this tool. All right, let's get started. I am holding what's called the EZ-Tension. Now, this EZ-Tension tool is just really simple, but really cool because it is so simple. It addresses the main issue of what you're trying to take care of when you're setting up blade tension. Now, I'm going to go ahead and raise this guide. And this particular tool comes in two sizes. You're looking at the original EZ-Tension. And to use it, you need at least six inches of blade exposed to be able to fix it to the blade to start to adjust. This is also available in the Mini, which is usually used for benchtop bandsaws. And that allows you, or you need to have four inches of blade to use the Mini. Now, can you use the Mini on one of these? Well, yes. However, the range of blades that can be tensioned correctly using this tool are different between the original and the Mini. The original allows you to tension blades correctly, quarter inch blades, like what I have installed right here, all the way up to one half inch, whereas the Mini only allows you to tension quarter inch to three eighths and get it done correctly. So you need to keep that in mind. And you can purchase these at EZTension.com. All in, it's about $40. And for a tool that allows you to do this quickly over and over again, and if you've got a couple of these saws in your shop, this thing really pays for itself quickly. Now, what was the problem that was being addressed? And who invented this? Well, this great little tool was invented by Mark Juliana, who is one of the staff members. In fact, he is the facilities manager for the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship in Rockport, Maine. He's also one of the professors there. And if you're curious about that school that was founded by the legendary Peter Korn, and you can look him up, K-O-R-N, yeah, just like the band name, and you can look him up and see what this great facility is. Well, what was Mark trying to take care of? Well, in their school, they have about six different band saws of differing vintages, let's put it that way, with different gauge type of approaches, different ages of springs, the compression springs that provide the pressure in the blade. And having students trying to set up these band saws on a regular basis was a real hassle. And the only thing available out before then was expensive gauges that were very accurate. One is made by Starrett, and those gauges you probably just don't want to have out and about or in the hands of students all the time when they're first starting to learn the craft. So over time, Mark Giuliana created this simple little gauge that works on the principle that if you put this on a blade and have a fulcrum in the middle right there, it's going to deflect the blade a certain amount to the side. And so I've already tensioned this blade, and let's show you how you do that using one of these. If you look closely, you can see right off there's a rare earth magnet right there that pivots slightly. There's another one, and then there's an adjustable screw that is adjusted right here using this onboard allen wrench. And then there's also little gauges that tell you right on the front what width blade you are adjusting. And there's two little pockets right on the back to keep those gauges handy. And then you simply use the gauge and adjust the fulcrum to the width you want. Well, let's go ahead and show you how that works. All right, as you can see, the blade has been loosened to a point now that I can put the gauge against the blade and have it stick using the two magnets. It's affixed to the bottom, the top, and you can see the fulcrum screw in the middle pushing and deflecting the blade. See where the blade is bowed a bit there? So that shows that the blade is loose and is not tensioned at this point. Now to bring it to the right tension, I'm just going to step around the saw and start rotating the tension knob at the top of my saw until it starts to tighten up. And I can either watch it, now I'm a little blind here because I've put a block of wood behind it for you to be able to see clearly when the magnet releases. But as I continue to tension it, finally I reach the point that you can see that the magnet releases. And at that point, the fulcrum that has been created by that screw touching the middle has exerted enough side pressure that this pops off and now I'm correctly tensioned, or the blade is. What is the correct blade tension? Well, what you're attempting to reach is about 15,000 psi. And to do that, it takes less pressure or less, yeah, let's say pressure from the knob to get a quarter inch blade to reach 15,000 psi versus a half inch blade. And what we're measuring is how much tension is being created. For you physics types out there, there are two forces that we're talking about here. One would be compression. That is when you take pressure above and below an object and those forces attempt to shorten the object. And the other opposite, if you want to call it that force, is called tension, where you are going away from the ends of the object and the forces attempt to elongate or stretch the item. And so we're creating tension in the blade, which then allows it to cut correctly with a minimum of wear on the whole system and get it where it needs to be. So let me show you how to set this fulcrum to the right side here. So what you would do is simply place the Easy Tension Guide on the edge of the table on your bandsaw. And then using the gauge with the correct width indicated. And in this case, as you can see for the measurement picture, I have a quarter inch blade on this saw. I'm simply going to adjust the fulcrum screw to the right depth on the gauge at a quarter inch. And when that's done, now this set is set correctly to allow me to get that 15,000 psi. The gauges, if you notice right here, you can see that the width or the depth of those notches for the top one is for 3 quarter. We'll switch it around. The bottom one is for 3 quarter. That one's for 5 8. They're slightly different. And you can see it even more so when you look at the smaller items like this top one right here is a quarter inch. Well, you can see the depth is different across the way from the other one. So this is a simple, elegant, and just really cool way that Mark figured out how to make this work. How did I learn about this great little tool? Well, it was in one of my favorite magazines, Fine Woodworking, and this was in April 2020. And right in here was just this little article by Roland Johnson, who is a prolific author with Fine Woodworking, does a lot of reviews. And he put this little review together right here that said, gave me enough interest in it. I said, I got to try it and it works beautifully. If you'd like to see that little article, look in the link below and you can see his article firsthand without having to try to read it on the video. You know, another great tool that I love having around here is the drill press. It is just as handy, if not more so, than the bandsaw. And there's a couple of great accessories that I found recently. You can check that out on this video right here where we did a one's hold downs, and the other one is a drill rack. If you found everything to be helpful today, why don't you subscribe to our channel? Ring the bell when you do so that you can hear about new upcoming content weekly. Until the next time, this is Dirt Farmer Jay from DirtFarmerJay.com.