Fretboards and bandsaw woes

I brought some special pieces to the larger workshop by the cottage to resaw them into fretboard blanks on the bandsaw. 

First piece was this, a floor board sample from a shop in Buenos Aires, pilfed on a work trip a few yeara back. It says ”lapacho” on it, which I gather is another name for ipe. It’s an insanely dense and hard species. 

This is the profile it had, as it was a floor board cut off. 



But what now?! The dried out old belt on the bandsaw decided it had had enough. It snapped and I was yet again up shit creek without a paddle. Finding and ordering a new one would take me ages. 



Luckily I had string and duct tape. I made a loop with some 15 turns and put the tape on so it wouldn’t separate. It works! If anything it runs smoother now. 



So here we are, three fretboard blanks and a cut off for bridges. Onwards, let’s resaw the ebony!



Ok. I got three blanks sliced off before there was a clunk, a sproing, and a sudden appearance of a wheel tyre on the sawtable. Now finding and ordering new ones will take me ages, I wonder if I have some self vulcanizing tape somewhere...