Found a trick to keep my band saw from wandering on pork shoulders

I was fighting with my band saw all week slicing through bone-in pork butts for a big order in Tulsa. Switched to a 14-tpi blade with a wider gullet and slowed the feed speed by about 20 percent. The cuts came out way cleaner and I saved maybe 45 minutes across 12 shoulders. Anyone else mess with blade pitch for different cuts?

2 comments

2 Comments

riley_taylor7d ago

Last fall I ran into the same issue slicing through a batch of bone-in picnic shoulders here in Kansas City. I switched to a 12-tpi blade with a skip tooth pattern and slowed my feed rate way down, maybe 25 percent. The wandering stopped almost completely and I didn't get those ragged edges that make trimming a pain later. Someone told me that wider gullets on a lower tpi blade give the meat room to clear without binding up. Have you tried a skip tooth design versus a regular raker set?

josephbutler7d ago

The skip tooth is all I run now on anything with bone. I had a buddy who used to swear by raker sets for pork but he switched after watching me go through a rack of ribs without any of that chatter you get with the regular teeth. The wider gullets make a difference for sure, I noticed less heat building up too which keeps the blade from warping mid-cut. I remember one year I was trimming briskets for a comp and my blade started walking on me bad, switched to a skip tooth and the difference was night and day. It's funny how something as simple as the tooth pattern can change your whole rhythm on the cutting table.