Category: Bandsaw 2015

Balancing a wheel can take time,  normal practice is to remove weight by boring out material around the circumference but I prefer to add weight in the form of metal washers. During the balancing process I use masking tape to hold the washer(s) on to the side of the rim and when finally satisfied with the position (or run out of patience) I then glue and screw it/them on.

It’s not a good idea to balance the wheel as it is…on it’s 25 mm shaft. Bearings of this size have far to much friction so what I do is temporarily mount the wheel onto a smaller set of bearings (10mm) that have a much lower (relative) friction.

Above: I don’t have any small bearing left so we had to ‘borrow’ the pair of thrust bearing from the lower blade guide assembly.

Continue reading “Bandsaw – prepping for wheel balancing”

Back in the shop and had a tidy up, here is video to show the results of my efforts to minimize wheel wobble. Before I put the wheel back onto the saw I will need to balance it again so that’s the next task.

The main challenge when mounting bearing flanges onto either side of a wheel is to minimize wheel wobble. Run out is not an issue here, that can be taken care of later. The purpose of the 4 holes in the wheel is to allow clamps to be passed through to hold the flange bearing during the gluing stage.

The wheel needs to be mounted on the workbench so I removed the lower shaft from the saw and made a temporary mount for it which is clamped to the workbench.

Continue reading “Bandsaw – mounting new flange”

I have made a new flange block and pressed in the 6205 bearing.

Purchased this hole saw set from the local Sunday market for $25 bucks and for the outlay it’s surprisingly decent quality. The bearings I’m using are 6205’s (52OD/25ID) and the closest hole saw size in this set is 51mm so after drilling the hole and careful clean-up with my improvised drill press drum sander to achieve a nice press fit into the block using a bench vice.

I have removed the lower shaft from the saw because I’ll need it to mount the new flange onto the wheel – more to come on this.

The saw looks a bit sad with no lower wheel.

The table, supports and lower blade guard box (old kitchen drawer).

A closing pic of the bearing guides.

While using the beast today noticed a strange creaking noise emanating from down below underneath the cutting table? Stopped the saw and removed the lower blade guard box to have a look and noticed that the front bearing was separating itself from it’s wooden flange which has cracked/split on one side.But wait…the front bearing can’t move forward because it’s secured with a hose clamp on the 25mm bearing shaft? Had a look around the back of the wheel and no hose clamp to secure the rear bearing – my bad. So…except for the front bearing everything else (wheel and rear bearing flange) has been slowly working it’s way along the shaft to the rear exposing the front bearing – good thing I stopped to investigate!

The bearing should be flush with the flange – which has split!

The saw is finally sitting on it’s base which I just finished constructing.

Continue reading “Bandsaw – base with castors”

When the saw is running there is a lot of shaking so went looking for the cause(s) of that and discovered there was excessive flexing between the saw base box and the main vertical beam – we need some more bracing.

Added a bracing panel with another one below the top one (out of picture) which fixed a lot of the shaking and vibration.
Continue reading “Bandsaw – excessive vibration”

Just a simple hinged door, at least now my fingers are protected from the top of the wheel when I reach up to adjust the blade tension.

Bandsaw Update-
Friday is cleaning day, finished my bit and off to the workshop for a little session before I take Holly for her rehab walk.