Building a bandsaw on the cheap from mostly scrap wood

[footfootfoot]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

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.

[footfootfoot]

Originally Posted by glatt

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.

Lo siendo! Staple no es mas macho que carbide.

Cement, on the other hand...

[glatt]

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.

It was too late at night to really give this the attention it deserved, but I played with it for about a minute.





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.

[xoxoxoBruce]

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.

[footfootfoot]

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.

[xoxoxoBruce]

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.

[Gravdigr]

This thread are interesting.

[glatt]

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.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Nothing like the weekend for making a big mess to clean up.
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.

[Gravdigr]

Originally Posted by glatt

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.

Slow and steady wins the race.

As long as there are no binder clips involved.

[footfootfoot]

Originally Posted by glatt

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.

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

[glatt]

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!

[Griff]

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

[footfootfoot]

But your brain is so mesmerizing!

[glatt]

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.


Clamped the vertical tool rest part and used some of those pocket hole screws to screw it together.


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.


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.