14” Bandsaw - we have a problem (1)

A big problem!

Everything going along nicely until we got to a interesting stage, in fact a milestone for this bandsaw build. With tyres fitted to each wheel and mounted on the saw, motor assembly aligned and V-belt tensioned it’s time to fit the blade and test run the saw!

Fitted the blade and while turning the upper wheel adjusted the tracking so the blade was running on the crown of each wheel, then wound up the blade tension and again checked the tracking – all OK. Time to turn on power and yes…she works!!!

Mitre saw - Xfinity 20V 4.0Ah battery

After hooking up the Xfinity 20V sliding mitre saw to two car batteries so I can use the thing while waiting for the battery to arrive – guess what?

The phone order that I placed with Action Spares on Saturday 6th for a Xfinity 20V / 4.0Ah battery  - has arrived this morning.

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…