Bandsaw 38 - Full view photo

It turned out to be quite a large beast! Using a old measuring stick I'm 6'2" and the saw is 6'9", no wonder 

I had to use a small stepladder when working on the top wheel tensioner assembly which also facilities blade tracking.

Bandsaw 37 – The old tyre

This is the lower wheel tyre that I just replaced because it has stretched quite a bit.

I mentioned in the previous post that I did not do a good job of cutting out around the valve…and you can see that in this picture. I suspect this contributed quite a bit to the tyre stretching.

Bandsaw 36 – Tyre change

While replacing the damaged lower wheel outer bearing flange it got me thinking just how much load/strain is placed on the lower (driven) wheel and it’s related components. When fitting the tyre back onto the wheel I noticed that is had stretched quite a bit as it went onto the wheel too easily!

Putting the tyres onto the wheels last year was a real struggle so why has this one stretched ? will the upper tyre the same ?

Had a closer look and can see why it stretched, I cut out to much around the valve base and created a week spot. Decided to put a new tyre on the wheel so off to Kmart to buy another 12” kids bike inner tube for $5.00.

Same procedure as before cut neatly and exactly around the inside middle of the tube.

Bandsaw 35 - checking wheel balance

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 them on.

Bandsaw 34 - Prepping for wheel balancing

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.

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

Bandsaw 33– Flange repairs done

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.

Bandsaw 32 - Mounting new flange

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.