Building a bandsaw on the cheap from mostly scrap wood

[glatt]

Thursday 3/24/16 continued

I drilled a hole in the center, ¼ inch wider than the shaft is. There will be an eighth of an inch between the shaft and the wheel on each side.


Each wheel has flanges that are glued to it, and there are spacers to push the flanges out to the sides a little and make the wheels really steady. I cut the flanges to size and drilled holes in them to accept the shaft and bearings.


The bearings are pressed in to the wooden flanges and just held there by friction. I used a 2 inch forstner bit to cut the hole for the 2 inch outer diameter bearing. The bearing can be easily pushed through the hole with my fingers. It’s a nice fit once you line it up, but it just slides right through the hole.

[glatt]

Thursday 3/24/16 continued

The bearing is supposed to be really tight. Like, you have to press or hammer it in to place. You don’t want it coming out easily or the wheel might fall off. I get the idea to use a paper shim. It’s just the right size. With a paper shim wrapped around it in a single layer, the bearing needs to be hammered into place.


Hammering in


In place snugly


Before cleaning up the extra paper with a razor.

[glatt]

Thursday 3/24/16 continued

I carefully put glue on the flange, keeping the glue to a minimum and keeping the glue away from the bearing. The last thing you want to do to a beautiful brand new bearing is get glue in it. So I do the best I can centering the flange on the hole in the wheel and I clamp it down to dry. It won’t be perfect. It will be slightly off center, but that’s OK. We will fix that later.


And here is the other flange getting glued to the spacer so it will be ready for the other side of the wheel when we get to that point.


And here we see that no glue got in the bearing. Good. Also, these are some clamps I made to use when building my kayak. You take a PVC pipe, and cut one inch segments off of it. Then you cut a kerf into the offcut. You can pull it open, and it wants to spring closed. It has about as much force as a spring clamp, and when you need 30 spring clamps, it’s a lot cheaper to buy a pipe and make them than to go out and buy that many clamps. They are very handy.

[glatt]

Friday 3/25/16

This happens to be the 25th anniversary working at my firm, and I celebrate by continuing my spring break vacation.

Glue is dry on the first flange on each wheel, and now I’m about to put the second flange on. This second flange will determine how much the wheel wobbles, so I wait to glue it on until the first flange is dry. I carefully apply the glue, away from the bearing.


Then I mount the wheel with the second flange and I clamp it with 2 clamps. Moderate tightness.


Then I spin the wheel and check to see how much it wobbles from side to side. If it is crooked, I give it a whack with my mallet until it is straight. Then, I tighten those two clamps down, and add two more.
Here I am checking the wobble by seeing if this gap gets bigger and smaller. The wheel edge looks cool.

[glatt]

Friday 3/25/16 continued

With the wheels drying, I turn my attention to the big lower bearing block that holds the shaft to the frame. This is a big hunk of wood, and to cut it, I need my 10 inch saw blade. That blade is filthy with sap encrusted wood stuck in all the teeth, so I clean it in the utility sink. It will do a much better job of cutting if the teeth are clean. Not an interesting picture but important. I use oven cleaner.


And this is the block of wood I wanted to cut up so I could glue it to itself. This was an offcut from a Klondike derby sled axle I made for Scouts, and before that, it was a pole for teaching lashing. It’s been around and has some grass stains on it. Now it will be a band saw.


I turn my attention to the big drive pully that will be attached to the lower wheel. It’s basically yet another wheel to make, so I cut up some more scrap luan.


And I glue it up, alternating the grain pattern.

[glatt]

Sunday 3/27/16 Happy Easter!

The block is finished. It has a one inch diameter hole, the same size as the shaft diameter. This one is a tight fit, but I’ll add a clamp later for good measure. This has four bolt holes to bolt it to the underside of the frame’s lower cross member. If it’s out of alignment, I can loosen it and shim it, so it should be a good system.


I take the clamps off the pulley blank and cut it out.


Cut out pulley.

[glatt]

Sunday 3/27/16 continued

The pulley doesn’t fit over the flanges on the wheel. I hadn’t eased the corners on my flanges enough! So I trace the inside of my pulley and cut off the glued down flange corners. I need to use a chisel to clean up the glue and pry up those cut off corners.


All the corners trimmed


And the pulley fits now! I still need to trim down the outer diameter of the pulley and carve a notch in it for the v-belt.

[glatt]

Sunday 3/27/16 continued

I glued up a few maple boards to make blanks for some other pieces: The guide bar and the guide bar clamping block. Now they just look like wood scraps glued together.


This are the plans I’m following to make these two pieces


Wednesday evening 3/30/16
I need to make another wheel shaped object! This time it’s a temporary drive pulley to drive the wheels and other pulley to make those guys round and nice. This temporary one is fairly crappy, but that’s OK. I cut it out on the jigsaw. This piece started life as a particle board piece of disposable furniture.


And I cut this v-belt groove with a stacked dado head cutter in the table saw. I clamped the fence down the proper distance from the blade, and then clamped a wooded board to the table saw surface to act as a fence on the other side of the pulley. I rotated the pulley on the raise dado cutter. Kind of worrisome because I had never done that on a table saw before, but I kept my hands clear and I don’t think there was much chance of kickback.

[lumberjim]

Enjoying this

[xoxoxoBruce]

Very much.

[fargon]

Very good.

[Griff]

word

[footfootfoot]

Wow. What an excellent job and creative approaches to clamping and machining.

One thought about balancing the wheels, drilling is how it is done with steel and aluminum wheels but since you are using wood you could tack bits of lead or steel washers to the wheel, this would allow you to avoid possibly removing too much material and would make an iterative and tedious process a lot quicker.

This is going to be great.

[glatt]

In that last picture, I was a little annoyed to see there was a hidden metal staple or something in that particle board. The edge of the particle board had solid wood banding, and that was some sort of hardware to help connect the two. I didn't closely examine the carbide tipped stacked dado cutter as I removed it, but cutting through staples can't be good for it.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Or drill a small hole at the light spot, fill it with lead, then drill the lead until it's just right. Maybe the tire store will spin it on the balance machine.