Building a bandsaw on the cheap from mostly scrap wood

[footfootfoot]

OK, this has been bugging me so I have to put my oar in the water.

I'm all for re-designing the wheel but if you are going to do that you should improve it. The leaf spring concept is silly at best. First of all, if they are made of wood the tension on them will eventually cause them to set and ultimately lose their spring. As they are made of wood, their springiness will be forever changing with age, humidity, and sideways glances.

You can tension a bandsaw blade by ear if you need to, or use the deflection rule of thumb. The leaf springs will not break before the blade in any type of realistic scenario. If you try to over tighten a blade to the point where it snaps you'll see it isn't something that happens by accident unless you've got a 24" cheater on the end of your wrench.

If I may propose a simpler solution; replace those leaf springs with a solid bridge of steel or rock maple or anything that will not flex. Then put a proper spring in between two washers on top of the bridge. Run your threaded rod through the bridge, washer, spring, washer and up into your tightening nut. You could also replace that nut with a handle so you don't need to have a wrench to adjust it. (looking at the photos it seem that wold require re-doing the fixed nut on the bottom so maybe not worth the time.)

If you wanted to go bonkers you could even affix an indicator for proper tension for each blade width.

You can get tensioning springs like this anywhere or google bandsaw tensioning spring and order one.

That leaf spring is my only 'nails on the blackboard' moment in your truly awesome and inspiring project. And I'm an asshole.

[glatt]

Not my design, so my feelings aren't hurt. So what does a spring in a band saw even do? The nut on the bolt tensions the blade. Why even have a spring? Off to Google this shit...

SOME WEB PAGE:

the blade heats up while cutting the wood and expands its length. This allows the blade to become slacker and lose its tension. To overcome this, the bandsaw has a compression spring that allows for the expansion and keeps a constant pressure on the blade. The spring will compensate for the expansion in all but the most severe cases, such as cutting very hard, thick woods for long periods of time.

I think the wood slats will work as springs. I've seen beds with wood slats that serve that very purpose.

I'm going to try it with the wooden slats and if it performs poorly, I'll check out replacement springs.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Yeah, I had the same hemorrhoid.

[glatt]

I was working on the little bracket thing on the right last night. Spent about an hour, but then it didn't fit. At first I couldn't understand it, but then I realized I had built my frame a little thicker than the plans called for since that was the thickness of the wood I had.

So now I need to be mindful that when I'm making parts that fit along the thickness of the thing, I've got to measure against my own machine "as built," and just use the plans for guidance.

[xoxoxoBruce]

One of those Doh moments when it all becomes clear. I never know whether to kick myself for not thinking straight, or hug myself for finally figuring it out.