There are many uses for a table saw in guitar building. “A joiner is used to put a straight edge on a piece of wood. This can be especially helpful if the piece of wood is three feet long or more. It is also used to flatten one face of a board before putting through the planer. If you buy rough cut lumber both faces are bump and far from smooth. One face will need to be flattened before it goes in the planer or there will be trouble. For guitar building an 8” model will suffice. “For guitar building a 12” table top model will suffice.
Hate to rehash some things that I know have been discussed in general, but I’ve got some questions and am eyeballing a couple specific models for guitar building, Grizzly G0555 and G0555x. Grizzly seems to offer a good value for capable bandsaws. I have regretted purchasing “Good enough for now”.
“Basically the standard and correct answer I think is you want some form of a well built Delta or Delta style 14” bandsaw. I hunted on Craigslist for a few weeks and there were quite a few Deltas. I ended up with a Delta with a Riser and I think a 1hp motor with the enclosed base for $375. “It was missing a few parts and needed a bit of tinkering but really was a quite nice saw. All the Delta type saws are more or less interchangeable parts wise. I put a Kreg fence on it the other day which is pretty great. And I got the orange replacement tires on ebay. I put a 1/2″ blade on it and it’s pretty amazing. The older the Delta saw, probably the better, as long as the motor is good. I also have a really crappy Sears 3 wheel tabletop saw. It’s really handy, I have the Delta in my dustroom and the little sears can sit on my bench when I need it, with the little blade it’s very good for cutting curves. You could get something like the Ryobi 10″ or something, two saws makes a lot of sense, the big one with a 1/2” blade perfectly adjusted and a little one with a thin blade for cutting curves.
As others have stated, what bandsaw to get depends on what you want to cut and what you want to spend on the saw. I’ve cut 9″ deep rosewood and cedar on it, amongst many other things. With the 6″ riser installed, there is a lot of “bounce” in the upper wheel reducing cut quality: unless the riser is needed for capacity, I use the saw without the riser.
Bandsaws are one of the most important tools that luthiers use in order to cut guitar fingerboards, shaping guitar bodies, necks, and other pieces repeatedly with little to no deviation from the intended measurements. Hand cutting movement isn’t as precise as the bandsaw’s, and also the blades will heat up more, which eventually leads to breaking and losing their cutting edge. While bandsaws are excellent for building guitars, they also enable you to optimize and repurpose wood, cut curves for molds, cut 2 or more pieces in a consistent way together on top of each other, book matching that beautiful piece of wood, and building totally unrelated objects that will be useful nonetheless.
Now the next step was the get a decent band saw with a rip fence to cut the sites, neck, etc. I was close to getting a 9inch from Harbor Freight yesterday, but no rip fence stopped me. Now I could always get a Kreg Rip Fence but at the point I’m close the price of a Grizzly 12 inch, with rip fence.
I’m thinking of purchasing a bandsaw for cutting out contours and jigs and possibly re-sawing wood someday. The good ones are in the same general price range as the bandsaw you mention. Tools like bandsaws are apparently to be found second hand easily enough in the US and if you know what you are looking for, or have someone who knows tools to help you, you can apparently get really good tools very cheap when people are clearing out workshops.