In order to establish a mechanistic model of cutting force, specific cutting pressure was first obtained through cutting experiments. The band sawing process is similar to milling in that it involves multi-point cutting, so it is not an easy matter to evaluate specific cutting pressure. This was achieved by making the thickness of workpiece smaller than one pitch of the saw tooth, analogous to fly cutting in the face milling process. Then the cutting force was predicted by analysing the geometric shape of a saw tooth. The tooth shape used was the raker set style that is generally used in band sawing. A set of teeth comprises three teeth, ranked as left, straight, and right. The mechanistic model developed in the research considered the shape of each tooth in a set. The predicted cutting forces coincided well with those measured in the validation experiment. Therefore, the predicted cutting forces in band sawing can be used for the adaptive control of saw-engaging feed rate in band sawing.