Building a bandsaw on the cheap from mostly scrap wood
 

This is a placeholder.
I plan to come back and update this thread from the start to show the process of me building a band saw.

But for now, here's a picture of bearings being glued to the unfinished wheels.
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Popdigr just bought a pawn shop table-top bandsaw for $30.

That man can find some deals, he can...

The #1 secret of getting deals is having cash, with you, right there in your pocket. Driving a vehicle you can take it home on the spot is #2.
I've had too many people back out given time to think about it, or a buddy tell them they could have gotten more, while I went to the bank or borrow a truck.

Damn, I just took a peek at Craigslist. $125 for a beautiful old Craftsman.

I had been looking at craigslist around here for a while and there are no tool deals at all. Tools can be found, but good ones are rare, and they are overpriced. I think it's because there is almost no industry in this town, so you don't get that critical mass you need to support that market. Plus I don't have a truck to run out and pick up a tool within hours of seeing it posted online.

This band saw will hopefully wind up costing about $200, including the brand new motor, bearings, and steel shaft from Ebay. The wood is mostly scrounged scrap wood, but I did need to buy about $50 of new pine boards for the frame. I'm at about $200 right now and I still need to buy some bolts and knobs and stuff, so tt might be $20-$50 more. I've gone through most of a gallon jug of glue already.

What I'll end up with is a 16" bandsaw, which would cost at least three times what I will spend. But this isn't about saving money. If I add the value of my time into the equation, I come out way behind. This is about having fun making something that should hopefully be pretty good when I'm done. In theory, I can make this tool be better than one I could buy. I won't know until I'm done, how good it is, but I'm hopeful.

And it's a big project. My goal is to finish in 2016. If I can keep up my current pace, I should be done by summer.

Shit, the braggin' rights alone is worth at least grand. :thumb:

This will allow you to level up significantly on the DIYS cred. I love that you're giving your kid this experience.

What's your game plan for balancing the wheels?

I'm going to spin them on their shafts and turn them down to size with a chisel, just like on a lathe, and then balance them by putting them on little roller blade ball bearings on a screwdriver, and just remove wood as needed with a forstner bit until they are balanced. They will look a little ugly with holes drilled in them, but they will work well.

This project is building a band saw based on plans by Matthias Wandel. I wish I could take credit for designing this band saw, but that would be a considerably more time consuming undertaking. I paid $21 to Matthias for the plans, and despite numerous spelling errors throughout, the plans are very detailed and helpful. I’ve deviated from the plans in a few places, but only in the techniques I use to do the same thing.

I share some of the same concerns as UT in wondering if it’s a bit self-centered of me to post a diary style thread, but I figure people can skip it if it bores them. This is a big part of my life now, and it’s important to me now, so I’m sharing it.

OK. Let’s get this thread started for real.

Sunday, 2/14/16
I come back from Home Depot with a gallon jug of glue and a bunch of boards. I spent a lot of time scratching my head in HD trying to figure out what boards to buy. They didn’t have the sizes I expected, so I did a lot of rough calculations standing in the aisle. Turns out I bought too much.
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Monday, 2/15/16 Presidents Day!
I spent all day cutting everything for the frame to the correct size and width. I made a lot of sawdust. The frame is sandwiched lumber of varying sizes so that the joints overlap as you build up the frame. Great idea, but it means every piece is pretty much a custom piece. It’s getting complicated, so I label every part.
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This is the plan on top of some of the boards I haven’t cut up yet. The plan prints out over multiple pages and my son and I used a glue stick to glue this together at the dining room table.
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Sunday, 2/21/16
You can see that I’ve taken a few of the pieces and cut them into triangles. Seems simple, but I have to pay attention to make the grain go the same direction as the hypotenuse in the triangle. This makes the frame stronger and requires that I cut the other two legs. I want a frame with tight fitting joints, so I take my time and try to cut the triangles as accurately as possible.
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Saturday 2/27/16
It’s the next weekend and time to start gluing these pieces together into a frame. I decide that instead of clamping all these layers together, I’m going to screw them together as the glue dries. This is a utilitarian machine and I don’t need a furniture quality finish to the thing. It’s much more important that this frame is nice and flat and square, and by using screws, I can just build the frame up from a flat bottom layer. To ensure it’s pretty flat I use the cast iron table saw top as the glue up table. I lay everything down on the full sized frame plan to make sure everything lines up correctly. Here you can see the table saw in the background with the frame starting to be laid out, and all the pieces lying on my workbench waiting for their turn. Some in the middle have slightly complicated notches cut in to them
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Laying the first layer out on the table saw. Making sure it’s lined up just right. You can see the light colored board is just slightly thinner than the darker boards. I hadn’t really noticed this yet, and it’s going to be a pain later.
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Sunday 2/28/16

The gluing is really going forward this next day. I used screws that are designed for pocket holes. They have almost ¾ of an inch of unthreaded shank and then about ¾ of an inch of thread. And they are flat headed with a sort of built in washer. Perfect for pulling the top layer down onto the lower layer. These screws are self tapping, but I drilled pilot holes because I was shifting the boards around when I tried to just use the self tapping feature. It required too much force.
Attachment 55808

This is when I added the third layer later in the day. It took a couple hours for the first layer of glue to dry enough to take all those screws out and reuse them to glue down that third layer with a second glue joint.
Attachment 55809

I used a lot of glue because I was noticing little gaps here and there between layers and I wanted the joints to be strong. So there was a lot of squeeze out of glue. This is why I put plastic down onto the tablesaw surface first.
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Saturday 3/5/16
I got a straight edge out to see what was happening and realized that I’d have even stronger joints if I planed down the high spots after each layer had been glued on. So I started planning down high spots and testing the fit on the next layer. After this, the layers fit each other much better.
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I glued down a fourth layer.
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And after it dried and I took out the screws, I planed that surface down to prepare for a fifth layer.
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I glued down another layer or two, but didn’t take pictures of those.

Sunday, 3/13/16

I was basically done with the frame and used scrapers and planes to clean up glue squeeze out and make sure the frame surfaces were level, plumb, and/or square as needed.

Then it was time to make the wheels. I had tons of scrap quarter inch luan plywood that was 25 years old or more. I had pulled it off the poorly finished basement ceiling when we bought the house and just stacked it in the corner. I used several sheets to build a kayak 15 years ago, and now I’m making a band saw with some more of it.

I took a pair of dividers and taped a pencil to one leg to make a large compass. I drew a bunch of slightly large circles on a scrap of plywood.
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Then I used a nice compass to draw a smaller circle that will be the same diameter as a flange for lining stuff up later. And I drew a medium sized circle to locate the 4 clamp holes later.
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I cut these circles out square and glued them up, alternating the grain direction of the outside surface of plywood. I used lots of glue again. I want these to be glued well, and I’ve got a gallon of glue.
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Maybe I used too much glue. :) Better too much than too little here. What a mess!
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Wednesday 3/16/16

It’s a Wednesday, but in an unprecedented move, the DC Metro system decided to give me a day off. Thanks, guys!

I’m getting better at the amount of glue I use. I’m still deliberately using too much, but at least it’s not ridiculous any more. Here, I’m working on what will be the other wheel. I used layers of quarter inch birch plywood for this one. I don’t remember where this plywood came from, but it’s cleaner looking. I think I was more careful with the glue this time so I could keep the pretty wood pretty.
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Saturday 3/19/16
I double checked the plans, and my wheel blanks aren’t thick enough. So I glue another quarter inch of plywood to each one.
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Thursday 3/24/16
It’s spring break, and I’m back from college tours with the family.
I use a handheld saber saw to cut a rough wheel for the bandsaw. I cut it slightly oversized so I can fine tune it later on its axis.
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There’s sawdust blocking the view, but check out that edge. Gluing these thin sheets of plywood really resulted in a nice end product. These wheels will be nice.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Hammering in
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In place snugly
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Before cleaning up the extra paper with a razor.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Attachment 55832

Then I mount the wheel with the second flange and I clamp it with 2 clamps. Moderate tightness.
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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.
Attachment 55833

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.
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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.
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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.
Attachment 55837

And I glue it up, alternating the grain pattern.
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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.
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I take the clamps off the pulley blank and cut it out.
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Cut out pulley.
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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.
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All the corners trimmed
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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.
Attachment 55844

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.
Attachment 55845

This are the plans I’m following to make these two pieces
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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.
Attachment 55847

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.
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Enjoying this

Very much. :thumb:

Very good.

word

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.

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.

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.

That thought crossed my mind too.

Lo siendo! Staple no es mas macho que carbide.

Cement, on the other hand...

Monday night 4/4/16

The plans call for a 47 inch long v-belt to drive this thing. After a scout meeting last night, I swung by Advanced Auto to buy a belt. They don't keep the belts out front, and they don't organize the belts by size. You have to know you car model and what kind of belt you need for your car. They look it up in their system to get the part number, and they go back and get the belt.

The guy at Advance Auto was nice, he told me to just go in back and get what I needed, and pointed out where the ladder was if I couldn't reach. The belts didn't have consistent labeling. Some had dimensions, and some didn't. So I looked at all the belts and wound up just buying one that looked about the right size. I didn't have a tape measure, but the floor tiles I was standing on looked like they were a foot. So I bought a belt that almost reached across two tiles. Took it home and noticed tiny printing on the side of the belt. 48 inches. I expect it will be close enough. I really only needed it right now to spin the wheels, and that is totally adjustable, so it would work for that.

I took a wheel. I screwed the temporary crappy finished particleboard pulley to one face, centering it as best I could. I screwed the permanent nicer unfinished plywood pulley to the other face, centering it as best I could, using calipers to measure from the bearing edge at the center of the wheel. I mounted this wheel on my ƒucking METAL BAR, clamped everything down. Clamped a motor down. (I bought this 1/4 hp motor at a flea market years ago for $2. Using it now for the first time.) Put the belt on, and fired the sucker up. It spins nice and quiet. It's nice. I clamped down a tool rest and tried cutting a little bit.
Attachment 55901
It was too late at night to really give this the attention it deserved, but I played with it for about a minute.

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This is gonna work! The bar is clamped a little loosely and sways a little bit back and forth. I'll fix that before I begin seriously shaping the edges of the wheels and drive pulley.

Very good. The auto parts stores drive me crazy with that shit, but I guess they've adjusted their business model to their customer base's knowledge... clerks too. But when the data entry into their system is wrong it's a pain in the ass.

I stopped to pick up something at pep boys one time, and coming out of the store noticed something hanging down under the car. It was a belt that had split with the inside half in place but the outside half had come off. Strange failure. Well the outside half had the size printed on it so I took that back in and told the guy what size I needed. He starts the make, model, year thing, telling me it's the only way he can find it. Then he brings out a belt 6 or 8 inches too long, and argues with me when I've got the right size in my hand. It was a Plymouth Horizon, but to get the right size he had to enter Dodge Omni, which was identical, but somebody had screwed the system.

My old hardware store had a belt measuring tool. You bring in the belt, they measure it and you get the size you need. I think it disappeared when computers made everything so much more better.

Yes, I've used one of those many times, some stores kept them long after the computers took over, but kept them hidden in the back not to anger the IT overlords. They're ok when the size has worn off, but a lot of people didn't have a belt to bring in, didn't know there was a problem until the belt was long gone. The manufacturers confused the issue when they started using belts of different widths, and in an effort to make the whole package more compact, designed in less than an inch of adjustability.

This thread are interesting.

4/7/16

Last night I reconfigured the way I had the steel shaft clamped down. I removed the sloppiness that was there before, so the bar isn't swaying 1/8th of an inch back and forth with each turn of the wheel. It's rock solid now. I turned the wheels a little bit more, but was very tentative because I didn't know how much material to take off. I knew the wheels were a little oversized, but during glue up, the plywood panels had shifted around slightly, and it was possible some spots on the edge didn't have much material left for me to remove.

So I looked up what the finished diameter was supposed to be, and I measured the circumference with my wife's cloth tape measure, and see I have about 2 inches of circumference or so to remove, and around a quarter inch of radius to remove. So I can be less tentative about this and really make some sawdust. The size of the wheel doesn't have to be exact, but the two wheels do need to match one another pretty much exactly or the band saw blade will not be plumb.

Working for 20 minutes or so during random evenings after work, you don't make much progress. Hopefully I'll get some real work done this weekend.

Nothing like the weekend for making a big mess to clean up. :haha:
The upside of the 20 minutes on random evenings is you get lots of time to think about it in between. Going over the things to do and the right order, you may spot a flaw in your plans, or think of a better way. Either way, you'll get it done and we'll be here to watch.

Slow and steady wins the race.

As long as there are no binder clips involved.:stickpoke

:p:

You are adding rubber tires, yes? and crowning the wheel?

Yes and yes.

In fact, the beauty of this is that even if the wheel has a little wobble in it from warped plywood or whatever, when I crown the wheel, the crown will be centered so the wheel wobble doesn't matter. It may add a little vibration to the machine, but won't affect the blade tracking. The blade will ride the crown.

But you are getting ahead of yourself. I've barely begun to shape the wheel. Stop peeking into my brain!

I too am pleased with this thread. As you were.

But your brain is so mesmerizing!

4/9/16 Saturday (and my birthday)

Busy day today. Full of fun, and I even had about an hour to work on the band saw.

I started off by turning the wheel down a little bit more. I’d make what seemed like a lot of sawdust and flatten and square the edge, unplug the motor and then pull out my wife’s cloth tape measure and measure the circumference. Still a long way to go. It was taking a while, and I just wasn’t into it at the moment.

So I decided to shift my attention to something else. I was going to need to also turn down the pulley and make a groove in it for the v-belt, but the pulley was too far from the board I was using as a tool rest. No safe way to reach it with a chisel. I decided to make a tool rest extension. Pretty straightforward.

First I cut the vertical part. Then I drilled some holes in what would be the horizontal support.
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Clamped the vertical tool rest part and used some of those pocket hole screws to screw it together.
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Holding the tool rest in place to see how it will fit. It’s still not as close to the wheel as I would like, but it would be too much effort to set things up to get it closer.
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4/10/16 Sunday

I had about half an hour after mowing the lawn, so I turned the wheel down some more. I’m pretty close now to the right size.
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4/15/16 Friday afternoon

I had a solid hour after taking my elderly cousin to a doctor’s appointment and before dinner.

I started off by measuring. These plans are for a “16 inch band saw.” This size refers to the wheel diameter, but the plans are in metric because the guy lives in Canada and comes from Germany, so his plans actually call for wheels that are 40 cm in diameter. That works out to 15.75 inches. So they are a little smaller than a true 16 inch band saw. If you are measuring the circumference of a 40 cm wheel, after the metric to English conversion and doing the πr calculation to get the needed circumference, you find these plans call for a pair 49.478 inch circumference wheels. That was the number I was aiming for. The more I thought about it though, the more I realized the size just didn’t matter as long as it was close. The only thing that really mattered was that the wheels matched one another, otherwise the band saw blade would not be plumb and cuts would not be square. In fact, if I really wanted a true 16 in band saw, I should be shooting for a circumference of 50.265 inches. It was time to stop removing material.
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Time to start shaping the pulley. The tool rest I made works pretty well. It’s not metal and the wood is denting a little as I rest the gouge against it, but I didn’t care. The tool rest only needed to last for a half hour or so. I smoothed the rough uneven surface of the pulley and made it round.
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I got it nice and smooth. I didn’t worry about the diameter of the pulley. I could change the speed of the saw by adjusting the size of the pulley, but probably not by much, so I didn’t bother worrying about it. I didn’t even know what the speed should be and there were other variables that factored in to the speed that I could always change later.
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And then I started cutting a notch for the v-belt. I just guessed at first but then compared it to the actual belt I had to fine tune it.
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4/15/16 continued

The plywood wheel had a couple small voids in the core of one of the layers. Not a big deal.
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I put some glue in the void.
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I scooped up some sawdust from the turning, and dribbled some glue in it.
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Mixed it together until I had a sticky blob.
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4/15/16 continued

And I smeared the blob into the glue filled void. Pressing it in as deeply as I could with my thumb.
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4/17/16 Sunday
After mowing the lawn, I had about an hour in the afternoon to play in the shop.

I cut the v-belt notch in the pulley a little deeper and wider.
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I test the fit. It’s petty good.
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I smoothed out my sawdust patches and got the wheel to its final outer diameter. Somewhere between 16 inches and 40 cm.
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The plans called for a 5 degree bevel on each side, so I set the bevel gauge to 10 degrees total so I could eyeball things.
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4/17/16 continued

I beveled each side a little and wound up with a slight crown. Pretty close to 10 degrees total, but I didn’t get a picture.
[4Attachment 56112

Then I grabbed some coarse sandpaper and a wooden block and sanded the edge of the wheel while it was spinning. This is my drive wheel basically finished. I need to varnish it and put a tire on.
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Time to move on to the top wheel. I used a set of calipers to try to center the temporary pulley before I screwed it on.
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Top wheel is almost done! This one went much faster. It’s birch plywood, I think, and cuts a lot easier than the luan plywood did. Remarkable the difference between the two.
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Turning is messy, you could have roughed it in closer if you only had a bandsaw. :haha:
Seriously though, it's looking good, good work and good progress. :thumb:

Fun

Very interesting & cool.

You're knocking this off faster than expected.

This kind of project isn't my thing and I'm not following closely, but it's obvious you know what you're doing and are documenting it very nicely. And happy late birthday!

It's really wonderful to watch your progress and read your thoughts on this. Would having metric wheels cause a problem when buying blades or is there enough adjustment to the wheel to take up slack caused by a smaller wheel?

Could you mount one of the wheel axles on an adjustable base for fine tuning blade perpendicularity and as I am typing this I realized it is irrelevant because the table is adjustable. So even if your wheels are not perfectly sized and perpendicular that can be fixed. I guess the most important thing is that they lie on the same plane.

I can't wait to see it finished.

I vote that you take it to a body shop and have flames painted on it. And racing stripes. Candy apple red with metal flakes.

I want videos of you cutting up random shit with it when it's done. Like watermelons and old cell phones and James Bond action figures

Oh, and what's our total monetary investment at this point? I'm holding you to that On the Cheap part.

My recollection is that I'm at about $200 right now, but that may be a selective memory.

I paid for lumber when my original plan was to only use scrap wood. I have a lot of scrap wood, but using it for the frame would have been considerably more work because I would have to edge glue narrow pieces to get the wider pieces I needed, and then I'd want to thickness plane everything, but I don't have a thickness planer. Anyway, that was probably around $80 for the wood. I don't have the receipt anymore but I bet that's close. It was a medium grade pine that I used. Maybe cheaper. Maybe $50. Let's say $80 though. Look at that pile of wood at the beginning of the thread and you tell me what you think it cost.

The Everbilt 2-Speed 3/4 HP 115-Volt Evaporative Cooler Motor was $27.98 on ebay including shipping.

The 24" shaft and 4 bearings were from Amazon for $61.07.

The glue was about $20 from Home Depot.

Current total is about $190.

I forgot the belt, The belt was about $5.

$195.


I need to buy some hardware. Bolts, knobs, etc. And a blade.

Even if you end up spending as much as you could have bought a new one for, the fun of doing it and learning makes this a win.