Resawing is where a workshop finds out what its saw is worth. A board comes in at 50 mm and has to leave as two boards of 24 mm, with a cut face flat enough to glue and an equal thickness across three metres of length. A table saw will not do it. A beam saw is built for sheet goods and will not hold a cant.
That job belongs to a horizontal band saw, and the two on this site split on a number most buyers never ask about. The number is the saw wheel. Nobody asks.
Both machines carry 3928 in the code. The MJA is listed as MJA3928-300/400/650 and the MJB as MJB3928-400/500/650, each suffix a working width.
Same family. Same naming logic. Six machines between the two model codes, and in the middle of the range they are close enough that a quotation will feel like a formality rather than a choice.
The differences sit in the wheel, the blade and the feed, and they widen as the working width grows — so a shop buying the 650 mm variant is making a different decision from a shop buying the 400 mm one, even though both are looking at the same two pages.
A band saw has one job it cannot fake: keep the blade running straight under load. Everything that decides whether it can do that scales off the wheel, which is why the diameter is the first line to read and the last line most buyers remember.
Bigger wheel, longer blade. Longer blade, more teeth in the wood at any moment, and more steel to carry heat away from the kerf. A bigger wheel also bends the blade less on every revolution, which is the difference between a blade that lasts a month and one that cracks at the weld.
The MJA runs a 711 mm wheel. Blade size is 4572 / 4572 / 5172 × 27 × 0.9 mm across the three widths, so the two narrower variants share one blade length and the 650 mm variant takes the longer one. Feed speed 0–20 m/min. Air pressure 0.5–0.8 MPa.
Two blade lengths for three machines is a stocking fact, not a technical one. A shop running two narrow MJA units keeps one size on the shelf. Add the widest one and you keep two, and the second is the expensive one. Stocking cost, decided by a letter in a model code.
The MJB steps down to a 650 mm wheel with a 65 mm rim. Saw length is 4330 / 4885 / 5435 mm, one length per width, and feed speed drops to 0–14 m/min.
Three widths, three blade lengths, no shared size anywhere in the range. Stock three, or accept that moving a machine between widths costs a blade change and a tracking setup every time.
Smaller wheel and slower feed point the same direction. Conservative on purpose, and on hard timber the slower figure is not the handicap it looks like in a brochure.
Here the two ranges stop lining up. MJA starts at 300 mm, jumps to 400, then 650. MJB starts at 400 and steps through 500 to 650.
If your widest cant is 350 mm, the MJA has a machine for you and the MJB does not. If you cut between 400 and 500 mm every day of the week, the MJB has the closer fit and you are not paying for width that never gets used.
At 650 mm the two meet again, and the choice reverts to wheel, blade and feed — which is where it should have been all along.
Feed speed is where the sales conversation usually goes, and it is the least useful number on the sheet without the species attached to it.
Twenty metres a minute is a machine limit, not a cutting recommendation. Rubberwood at 20 m/min and a dense tropical hardwood at 20 m/min are two different outcomes, and only one of them leaves a face worth glueing. Your timber sets the number.
What the ceiling does tell you is margin. A machine that reaches 20 keeps some headroom when the job gets easier. One that stops at 14 has none, and it also runs less blade speed through a deep kerf, which is exactly where sawdust needs clearing.
The MJA lists a cutting thickness of 3–200 mm and a maximum working thickness of 300 mm. Read both lines before you order. They are not the same claim, and the gap between them is 100 mm.
The MJB lists a working thickness of 2–200 mm and no separate maximum. On that machine the two figures collapse into one, and 200 mm is the wall.
If you resaw 250 mm blocks, that difference decides the purchase on its own. Ask the question in writing, with your block size in the email, and keep the reply with the quotation.
Total power is 16.68 / 20.18 / 23.68 kW on the MJA as the width grows, and 16.47 / 20.37 / 20.37 kW on the MJB. The narrow machines sit within a rounding error of each other. The widest ones do not, and the MJA is the one that keeps climbing while the MJB flattens out at 20.37 kW.
Nearly 24 kW on a single machine is not a detail for an electrician to discover on installation day. Put the dust collector, the compressor and the rest of the board beside it and the supply size stops being a formality.
Ask for the electrical schedule with the quotation. Two-minute request. Settles the question before the machine lands on your floor.
The MJB page lists a cutting length of ≥ 300 mm. Read plainly, that is a minimum workpiece length rather than a capacity, and it decides whether the machine suits a shop cutting short components or only long boards.
The MJA page publishes air pressure at 0.5–0.8 MPa and the MJB page does not. The MJA also splits cutting thickness from maximum working thickness while the MJB folds them together. Same family, different hands writing the page.
None of that is a defect in either machine. It is a reminder that the missing line is the one you have to ask about, and that a supplier who answers it in one sentence with a number is worth more than one who sends a brochure, a video and a link to a factory tour that never quite gets to the thickness limit you asked about. Ask. Then keep the answer with the quotation.
Worth saying clearly, because the two get quoted against each other. A band saw re-cuts solid timber along its length with a narrow blade and a continuous cut. A beam saw or a vertical panel saw breaks down sheets with a circular blade and a scoring unit.
The comparison between beam saw and vertical panel saw covers that side of the shop. If your throughput is panels, a horizontal band saw is the wrong purchase and no feed speed figure rescues it.
The blade deserves its own note. A 27 mm blade at 0.9 mm is thin enough to wander once the guides are tired, and a wandering blade leaves a face that needs planing instead of glueing. The sharpening routine for saw blades and planer knives is the other half of a straight cut, and it costs nothing to read before the machine arrives.
Weight runs 1800 / 1900 / 2000 kg on the MJA and 1700 / 1900 / 2050 kg on the MJB. At 650 mm the MJB is the heavier machine by 50 kg, which is the opposite of what a smaller wheel suggests. Frame design sets that figure, not wheel size.
Overall dimensions separate the two properly. MJA: 2700 × 2300 / 2300 / 2400 × 2000 mm. MJB: 2300 / 2400 / 2600 × 2550 × 1950 mm. The MJB is narrower and deeper, the MJA wider and shallower at the same width class, and that decides which aisle the forklift uses and whether your infeed run still fits.
Then measure three things. The widest cant that actually reaches your yard. The thickest block you resaw in a normal week. The length of the shortest part you run.
Those three pick the machine. The wheel and the blade length only confirm it afterwards. Every horizontal band saw in the range sits under saw machine, beside the MJR1325 reciprocating saw, which cuts a different way again.
