Category: Bandsaw 2015

Video of the bandsaw running with a banding tape blade.

Short video of the new pulley mounted on the 12mm shaft at the rear of the motor. I pre-cut the groove on the router table with a V-bit and then mounted the pulley on the motor shaft to finish turning with my “V-groove file” and yeah it runs quite true. The shaft has two flats so I drilled and tapped the pulley to accept two grub screws.

Over the last couple of days been trying to recover from a major setback, while trying to turn the crowns on the fattened wheels the V-drive pulley, which is bolted to the impeller, keeps separating itself (spinning off) from the threaded motor shaft under the heavier loads – crikey. I was wondering if this would come back to bite because the motor originally ran CCW and the impeller screwed CW (opposite direction) onto the motor shaft. The blade needs to run …CW so I reversed the motor direction with the added benefit that the motor could be mounted towards the back of the saw. Continue reading “Bandsaw – motor pulley problems”

With lots of grinding I put a V point cutting edge on one of my old files to turn V-groves on pulleys and drive wheels.

Plodding along…and yes moving forward in the right direction.

Until now the bearing flanges were just screwed on but when the wheels are spinning under load from blade tension there will be something like 150lbs (70kgs) of force being thrown outwards in all directions from the centre of the wheels. This is the final glue up of the four flanges using Titebond Original wood glue – classic yellow glue. The wheels have already been trued for wobble but I will need to check that again by mounting them on the lower wheel mount shaft and spin each wheel as I tighten the screws. Continue reading “Bandsaw – upper wheel mount/tension assembly.”

The upper and lower wheels are basically finished and run true with minimal wobble, however there is one more task – fatten the rims.

The wheels are made from 17mm laminated chipboard of which I have a good supply. I need to fatten the rims to 34mm with another layer in the form of a doughnut or ring which will then be glued and screwed. The final operation will be to turn the rims true and then cut the 5 degree crown.

Continue reading “Bandsaw – fatten wheel rims”

The lower wheel has a drive pulley with a V-grove to accommodate the notched V belt. To cut the grove in the drive pulley I need to some how spin the thing so I made a smaller pulley and cut a V grove in that on the router table with a V grove bit, then attached the temp pulley to the drive pulley so I could spin it up off the motor – crikey. I don’t have any wood turning tools so I hade to make my own to cut the V-groove by grinding down a old file to the correct V profile and then put a cutting edge on it. Once all this prep work was done actually cutting the V-grove was quite straight forward.

I need some bearings for the blade guides and fortuitously came across a skateboard (kids grown up & left home) while putting stuff out for our annual council clean up – nice.

Skateboards have 2 bearings per wheel so I now have a set of eight – how many do I need? Continue reading “Bandsaw – skateboard bearings”

The new motor pulley that I made needs some grub screws to secure it to the motor shaft so back to Masters hardware.

Two packets of assorted grub screws – nice. Continue reading “Bandsaw – new motor pulley”

Browsing through Masters and came across a nice little hardware section down in one of the back rows.

All sorts of threaded rod and other metal stuff so with the bandsaw blade tensioner in mind grabbed a 300mm length of 5/8” rod along with some washers, nuts and couplers.