Building a bandsaw on the cheap from mostly scrap wood

[glatt]

I even bought a metric tape measure and used metric units every time I measured anything.

The plans said that US dimensional lumber could be used for the frame, but I wish I had bought a thickness planer and run the boards through to make them all the standard metric thickness when I started this thing because this is the third time I have run into an issue with the frame being thicker than the plans called for and it caused a problem.

At least it's in my basement where I can fix it. If it was on Mars, I would be out of luck.

[footfootfoot]

And stationary rather than travelling at 24,000 KPH

[glatt]

I spent all weekend taking it apart and tweaking it.

The biggest improvement in eliminating vibrations was re-balancing the wheels. It's possible there was moisture in them from the glue up and as the glue dried and the wood around the glue dried, the balancing I did before had to be tweaked a little. Although it's also possible that I just did a shoddy job last time.

Also, a big improvement was that the pulley on the drive wheel was 20 thousands of an inch out of round. So I spun that wheel up again and very carefully used a chisel to get the pulley groove round. I could feel the chisel wanting to rock back and forth with the pulley as the wheel rotated each time, so I really held it tightly against the tool rest and just eased it ever so slightly against the pulley to nibble gently away at the higher side as it came around. I could hear a bit of a pulsating cutting sound as it only nibbled away at the high side. Once the sound became constant cutting, I stopped. When I measured it again, it was 5 thousandths out of round.


Then I turned my attention to getting the wheels lined up better. And I started taking pictures.

To get the top wheel directly over the bottom wheel, I needed to pull it forward by 8-9 mm.

So I started by removing the brackets that hold the entire top wheel assembly in place. Fortunately they are just screwed on. No glue.



Then I cut two shims 8 mm thick.



I glued the shims to the uprights.



And clamped them to dry

[glatt]

Maybe this was another metric vs. USA issue, or maybe it's just a bad detail in the plans, but the notch I cut in the table support to make room for the lower powered wheel isn't long enough to pull the wheel forward and remove it from the shaft. To remove the lower wheel, you have to take the table off. So after removing the table to get the wheel off, I chopped the notch a little to make getting the wheel off easier in the future.



And here's is the top wheel reassembled after putting that shim in.



I don't have enough hands to hold a long straight edge and take a picture at the same time, but this picture is supposed to show that the top and bottom wheel are coplaner now. Yay.



With the top wheel pulled forward, the blade guard made out of the oil can doesn't fit around the wheel any more. So I have to make a bigger one. Fortunately, I have another one of those big olive oil cans in my junk pile. This time, I plan to use the English side of the can.

[glatt]

It will be as wide as this blue tape.

I didn't get a shot of the completed guard yet. But it's done and installed.



The saw blade is tracking well now, and the vibrations are much improved.

Now I have to work on the cover again.

[Griff]

Bravo!

[glatt]

Working the last couple of nights on another cover. This time I'm measuring from the frame instead of following the plans. It should fit, and I will be embarrassed if it doesn't.

The front cover is a cm wider.


And the sides I'm gluing on are 2 cm deeper to account for how far forward I moved the top wheel and to provide a bit of clearance.

[glatt]

As I was making the cover, I noticed that when cutting bird's mouth joints on the diagonal boards that support the edges of the cover, the cuts weren't square in the front-to-back vertical axis. It was off by about an eight of an inch over 5 inches. Pretty bad. The table supports were a few thousandths different from one other and the support arm was too. And they actually lined up just wrong to multiply the error. Anyway, I put a couple broken off hacksaw blades under the support arm to act as shims, and brought the table into squareness.

Here, I'm pointing at the ends of the hacksaw shims barely visible in the picture between the frame and the table support. Using a hacksaw blade as a pointer.


And checking the squareness of the table to the blade now. It's still not absolutely perfect, but it's close enough. Maybe off by 1/16th of an inch over a foot.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by footfootfoot

He needs a lathe...

Yes...

[footfootfoot]

Yeah, but where can you get excelsior these days? Everything is styrofoam peanuts now.

[footfootfoot]

Originally Posted by glatt

And checking the squareness of the table to the blade now. It's still not absolutely perfect, but it's close enough. Maybe off by 1/16th of an inch over a foot.

That's nearly a quarter of an inch to me.

[glatt]

This is the state of my art in the shop right now.

[glatt]

That click click clicking you hear is the weld in the blade hitting the blade guides. I have little experience with band saws. How normal is that?

[xoxoxoBruce]

Usually blades are welded by heating red hot and pushing them together which causes a bulge in both sides. That's why the big Do-Alls have a welder and a grinding wheel to clean them up. You can grind off that extra weld on both sides od the blade if it was welded properly.

[footfootfoot]

Duginske describes how to deal with that in his book