14” Bandsaw – prepare upper wheel shaft

Something I’ve been putting off is to prepare another shaft, actually aluminium tube, to mount the upper wheel.

I bought a length of the above for the current bandsaw project because since I built the first 14” bandsaw in 2014 the 25mm steel tube I got from Masters only required minimal effort with emery paper to get the wheels to slide onto the tubing – RIP Masters.

Can’t remember the exact numbers from the digital calipers, the tubing 25.3mm and the 6205 bearing slightly under 25mm – something like that. So the tubing needs to be reduced 0.4mm, may not seem much but took a LOT OF EFFORT to get the lower wheel to slide onto it’s tubing or shaft.

Now we have to repeat the painful procedure for the upper wheel where I’ve been using some 25mm dowel up until now.

ALDI–20V mitre saw

After hooking up the mitre saw to two car batteries on the back corner workbench I moved everything to the front butchers table where I put aside the old Bunnings XU1 saw for a family member and setup the new saw. Now I can use it while waiting for the 20V/4.0Ah battery to arrive.

14” Bandsaw - tyres for the wheels

Time to fit tyres to the wheels!

Searching through the tub of parts for this build we have two 12” bicycle inner tubes from Kmart – $5 each.

14” Bandsaw – coplanar alignment procedure

From the afternoon session with the upper wheel mount blade adjustment component completed we can now mount the upper wheel and start adjusting them for coplanar alignment.

Google the word ‘coplanar‘.

With the upper wheel set to it’s lowest position, wheel block sitting on the bottom of the inner frame, we are making a final check to make sure the real blade (hard to see in the photo) will slip onto the wheels plus…an allowance for the tyre thickness – more on this later.

14” Bandsaw - Upper wheel mount assembly

For this session doing some more work on the upper wheel mount assembly.

Gluing on two blocks…

Chooks sun baking

On the left that’s the old girl Misty with her leg sticking out, in front of her is Speckles and to the right is Bella. The fourth one is missing, Peaches is clucky and sitting in a kitty litter box in the annex.

ALDI – 20V Mitre Saw

Follow-up to the WorkZone Xfinity 20V sliding mitre saw that I purchased marked down to $49 from $149. This is part of the Xfinity range of ‘skin tools’ where the battery and charger are not included – additional purchases. The saw was marked down because this stuff was on sale in October and I know at that time there was a shortage of the new 4.0Ah batteries (not 2.0Ah) required to power the saw.

Managed to find the $19 charger at another store but no 4.0Ah batteries around which sell for $39. That’s a very good price for 4Ah capacity. I could wait for them to come around again but by then the return period may have run out and who knows, the saw itself could be faulty. Decided to order a 4.0Ah battery from the supplier – Action Spares. Same price as in store with $15 delivery charge – OK with that.

  

With the battery ordered and still wanting to check out the saw decided to hook it up to a couple of used car batteries so we can have a play. Terminals on the saw same as the auto spade type so lets make up a cable to connect the saw.