Building a bandsaw on the cheap from mostly scrap wood

[glatt]

4/24/16 Sunday afternoon I had an hour or two.

I mostly just straightened up the shop. The wheels are basically done. I'm going to put the tires on them before I balance them, and the tires (14 inch inner tubes) are coming this week some time. But I put away my wheel turning station and swept the floor, put tools away, etc. I was all out of empty horizontal surfaces and needed room to work.

But I did make some progress. I had an old bed frame I dug out of the neighbor's trash.

It's made of nice thick maple, used as a secondary wood, with some sort of tropical hardwood in the showy places. I tore off that tropical hardwood years ago, and it splintered badly so I threw it away. But I had these nice maple bed frames. I need a big hunk of wood to be the top bearing block, and it's a very intricate shape. So I cut up part of my bed frame and glued it up into a nice block. I wish I had a thickness planer. It would be easier to do this stuff.



It was getting to be dinner time so I stopped there. I'll make all the intricate cuts next time.

[Gravdigr]

Is that 11 clamps there?

[glatt]

Yes. Yes it is. 11 clamps. Seems like a lot in hindsight, but at the time, it felt right.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Can't have too many clamps.

[glatt]

4/26/16 Tuesday evening. I got 1.5 hours in tonight because the kids were doing homework and my wife was at a meeting, so nobody would really notice if I scampered down to the workshop for a while.

I'm continuing to work on the top axle mount. I started off making cuts with the table saw, but the block was so big, I had to have the blade high, and I couldn't use a blade guard, and figuring out how to clamp the thing down was tricky. It just wasn't fun. And setting the angles and blade height was tricky, getting the calipers out.

So I switched to hand saws, and it was much more pleasant. Japanese pull saws are a joy to use.

So this is what I made tonight.

[xoxoxoBruce]

No problem, just throw that block in the CNC mill and watch it work, while shooting footage for utube.

[footfootfoot]

That looks like maple.

[xoxoxoBruce]

But there ain't no bucket.

[glatt]

5/14/16 Saturday - My wife and daughter drove down to Richmond to look at a college, and I stayed home to fix a leak I discovered when fixing the dishwasher last week, except the part hadn't arrived yet. So I had a whole day (five hours or so) to work on the band saw.

I found some more scraps of that maple bed frame I was using before. It's the PERFECT thickness for this next batch of parts. 3.2 cm thick.

First up is the frame that holds the shaft mount for the top wheel.


Each side of the frame is a different width and length, and the top and bottom need lips cut into them or holes drilled in them


My table saw's scale seems less exact at narrow widths, and it shifts slightly when I lock the fence down, so I use a caliper to measure things. Here, I'm setting up to cut notches in the ends of the side pieces. I think. Stop block on the miter gauge. One of these days I'll make a sled.


And this is the frame being glued up. After this dries, I'll cut 4 slots for splines in each corner. This needs to be a strong joint and it's way too weak glued up like this.

[glatt]

While that frame is drying, I turn back to the top shaft mounting block. It needs a 1 inch hole for the shaft.



And it needs a hole for the tracking adjustment bolt. A T-nut too.



This is with a sample bolt installed. Turning the bolt will tilt the mount and the shaft in the mount and will adjust the tracking of the blade on the wheels.



The mount goes in the frame I just glued up. And the frame is held to the big saw body frame with a couple of L brackets. So I made those L brackets.

[glatt]

And now I turn to balancing those wheels I made before. I decided that I didn't want to drill holes in the wheel. So instead of drilling holes in the heavy side, I added weight to the lighter side.

I drove screws into the pulley on the lower wheel. As I got closer to the balanced weight, I switched to smaller and lighter screws. Once when I put a screw in that was too heavy, I backed it out and put a smaller screw in. Not quite as ugly as a bunch of holes, and the pulley is held on better now.


And I forgot that I had picked up some inner tubes to use as tires. A 14 inch inner tube on a 16 inch wheel stays put pretty well. So I put these "tires" on the wheel, and checked the balance again.
The top wheel was in better shape. It only took a few screws to balance.

[Gravdigr]

Thanks for documenting this project, Glatt.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Blessed...

[glatt]

Saturday 5/21/16 - 1 hour

I did some measuring of the frame and temporarily fit the lower shaft mounting block to the frame in its exact location.

I marked the location for drilling the holes for the lag bolts and then drilled them.


Sunday 5/22/16 – 5 hours. I got a big chunk of time this day to make some progress.

I had left the frame only partially constructed so a drill could fit into the space where the holes would be drilled for those lag bolts. Now it was time to finish gluing up the rest of the frame.
I had to trim some of the pieces I had pre cut because they were a millimeter or two too long for the frame as I had glued it up.


And this is the completed frame all glued up.

You are looking at the underside of the foot of the frame. That wide glued up slab is where the motor will be mounted. It looks a little uneven, and not exactly flat. In hindsight, I should have tried to glue it up on a solid surface. Oh well, if it is wobbly, I can shim it as needed to make it sturdy. I guess that’s the nice thing about making this myself out of wood. I can always add wood or take wood away as needed to make things flat and square.

[glatt]

Sunday 5/22 continued

I had made the frame for the top mounting block last time I was working on the band saw, and I need to reinforce the corners. It will be holding the tension of the blade, so the corner joints of this box need to hold a couple hundred pounds of force each. So I need to take those weak butt joints and reinforce them with splines. Kind of like making my own plywood.

I started by figuring out how to hold the frame at a 45 degree angle to the table top. I had picked up this knife storage block off the curb in front of my neighbors’ house on trash day years ago. They were moving out and put a ton of stuff on the curb. I never knew what I would use it for, but it seemed like it would come in handy some day. Today is that day. It’s my jig for holding the frame at 45 degrees. Here, I’m holding it next to the saw blade to set the blade height.


Next I put the fence in the right spot and visualized how the cut would go. I wasn’t happy with it. The fence was too short and the work piece wanted to rotate over the fence when I pressed it to the fence. It would ruin the cut and might cause a dangerous situation.


So I dug out an auxiliary tall fence I had made for a router table that I never use. This tall fence was made from a counter top I dug out of the trash at work. The counter was perfectly good, but they were redoing the space and tossed it. Nice melamine over very thick particleboard. I also put some blue tape on the knife block jig to tell me how high the blade was. This felt much more secure and sturdy. I’m happy with it.


So I made a bunch of cuts. 20 to be exact.