I sent out some parts for the band saw, so there was some delay in progress, but I am excited to say this saw has made its first cut in my shop! I sent the wheels out to have new tires glued on, crowned, and balanced. I also sent the guides along with it to get new blocks as needed, and replacement thrust bearings.
I sent my wheels out to a company in WI called Woodworkers Tool Works. They’ve got a good reputation, and I’ve worked with them before to track down some chisels for my foot powered mortiser. They did a great job of taking care of me then, and I was confident they would take care of me again with these. Once I got them back, I got them installed back in my machine. The lower wheel was the easier of the two, as it just slides on to the lower drive shaft with a key, and gets bolted on with a washer to hold it in place.
The upper wheel was a lot more obnoxious, in that it has a pair of bearings that I had to get seated in the wheel and on the upper shaft, which was tricky, but I eventually got it done.
What Woodworkers Tool Works did for me was ground down my old tires to the metal bands and then epoxied on new tires, crowned them, and then balanced the wheels. Crowning is important because it keeps the blade tracking where it should be on the wheel; it’s basically just a peak in the middle of the wheel. Woodworkers Tool Works did a fantastic job.
The other thing on the list was the blade guides. This is the lower blade guide that I disassembled. They’re relatively simple in nature, the guides sit in two rods with some flat spots. The flat spots have a bar that act as a clamp and keep the guides oriented correctly, and can be adjusted in and out. My thrust bearings (that keep the blade from being pushed backwards), were both sized up pretty well, though.
I cleaned up the blade guide and reassembled before sending it along with my wheels to Woodworkers Tool Works. I sent both upper and lower (the picture here is the lower), so they could give them a look and use them for a reference. They had replacement guide blocks, though the lower guide here didn’t need them. They also sourced and modified a new thrust bearings for me as well.
This is the upper guide, which has the new brass guide blocks on it. They were happy I sent in my whole guide assembly. Bobby at Woodworkers said they were working off measurements from others to make the blocks, and were glad I sent mine in because they found out those measurements were off by enough that the blocks wouldn’t actually fit, and needed to be milled down a little.
You can also see the new thrust bearing here as well. They found that the replacements they sell for old Walker Turner band saws fit in this Yates American guide. They ground a flat spot on the round shaft so the set screw would hold it better, and that was an excellent replacement. The advantage to this as well, is there’s a hardened steel cap over the bearing that the blade comes in contact with, so it should last significantly longer than just the bearing like my old guides.
Reinstalling the upper guides was straight forward, there were just two screws that go through the guide post and hold the guide assembly in place. Once I got everything together I’d do more adjustments once I got a blade installed.
Installing the lower guides was also simple, just two bolts for those as well. This one was just slightly more annoying, due to space constraints. It probably would have been easier before putting the table on, but that’s not how the timeline worked out 🙂
To get things more usable for my workflow with a band saw, I wanted to add a fence. My saw didn’t come with an original fence so I was exploring a lot of options. I looked at quite a few universal fences, from no-name manufacturers, to Laguna DriftMaster III, Kreg, upgrade options from Rikon, replacement parts from Jet or Powermatic, etc.
What I eventually settled on was from Grizzly. Looking at dimensions and mounting configurations I discovered the Industrial 21″ and 24″ band saws from Grizzly had a good sized fence, with an easy to modify mounting strategy. Grizzly is also really good about offering replacement parts, so I was able to order the fence assembly, and the mounting rail by themselves, which was perfect for what I wanted to do.
I will say, however, that I’ve never been impressed by Grizzly’s shipping of parts. For anything large or heavy, I’m pretty sure they take it out of the container, take it off the pallet, and ship it as is. Things that are packaged fine for being on a pallet don’t always survive the hands of UPS very well. Nothing invokes confidence like a box with “Fragile” stickers on it having giant gashes and holes in the cardboard box, and exploded Styrofoam packing all over the inside.
Once I got the fence out I took some measurements and came up with a plan for mounting the fence rail. I didn’t want to make any modifications to my table, and it already had 3 bolt hole locations on the front bottom edge from the factory fence set up. I utilized those holes for mounting a custom bracket, which I could then bolt the fence rail to. I also made 3 custom rectangle washers to keep the rail off the bracket, since the original fence used tabs in recesses on the fence rail. I designed it all up, and then sent it off to SendCutSend for fabrication out of 1/4″ thick steel.
The bracket worked perfectly for what I wanted to do. I bolted it on to the table and it all lined up. The wings that go under the table rest on flat spots in the table casting. I added them in just to help counter act any torque from the weight of the fence rail, though I’m not sure it’s necessary. I bolted the fence rail to the bracket using the rectangle washers as spacers and everything went without issue.
I’ve now got a fence! I was quite pleased with this set up. The fence is all cast, feels great, and glides smoothly once I got it all adjusted. I couldn’t be happier with how that worked out.
With all that, it was FINALLY time to make some test cuts, and boy was I excited. I made some boring rip cuts just to make sure things were working, and then set up for making about a 1/16″ resaw cut. I’m using a 1″ blade from Supercut and it works great. I was able to peel off multiple thin slices with ease. I’m so happy to finally be making sawdust with this thing!
After using it for a little bit, I had to do something about the lack of blade guard on it. So I cut and bent up some aluminum I had in the shop to make a blade guide for it. this may be temporary as I might want to make one out of steel at some point, but for now it works (nothing is more permanent than a temporary solution that works…)
I can’t think of a time that I’ve ever hit the blade guard on any of my band saws by accident, but maybe that’s because it was uneventful. Regardless, not having 10″ of band saw blade staring me in the face while I’m using it is nice.
I haven’t tried changing blades since adding the guard, so it may have to come off for blade changes, but that’s not a big deal. I’m happy with how it turned out.
That finally gets this saw back to a usable band saw again, and I’m excited! I was starting to get concerned that I bought too large of a band saw, and that I might start to regret that. I was wrong, I love this saw. It’s smooth, it works great, the fence worked out well, and I’m excited to have it in my shop. I also sold off two of my 14″ band saws, so the square footage situation is now net equal 🙂
I’m not quite done with this saw yet, though. I’ve got some plans to make a new cover plate for the base, a table extension, and do try to do some dust collection modifications to make it nicer to live with.
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