Rikon bandsaw ?

[John Fricke]

I'm looking at a Rikon 14" deluxe bandsaw. Does anyone have experience with this saw or rikon saws in general? Would appreciate any input on your experiences.

Thanks

[William Long]

I upgraded my Jet 14CS to a Rikon 18". I love it! Big solid saw. The 14" has had some good write-ups in the woodworking mags

[Jay Stellers]

I have this saw. It's a good saw for the money. You get a great resaw capacity and 1-1/2HP motor.

The drawbacks for this machine are small items, but nonetheless annoying sometimes.

All of the bearings are adjustable by turning knurled knobs except the lower guide bearings. Even the lower thrust bearing is adjustable with turning a knob but not the bearings on the side of the blade. You have to loosen the screw and then slide it manually and it's a pain to get it just right sometimes. It would be much easier if it was like the upper guide bearings.

I have a tendency to over tighten screws, nuts, and bolts. Don't do that on this machine! There's a fair amount of aluminum in the bearing mounts and I've stripped some set screw holes and had to drill them larger and retap and insert an larger set screw. There are also some areas where a channel is cut in the aluminum mounts so you can slide it along a bolt. Tightening a nut secures the position. Over tightening this nut will cause the washer to compress the aluminum and deform the channel. I had to reshape the channel with some minor file work. Also when I was getting the depth of cut mechanism so it raised straight up and down, I over tightened the adjustment bolts and they started to dent the metal on back of the upper wheel housing where the raising/lowering mechanism attaches. I was only using the allen wrenches and cresent wrenches delivered with the tool and I think if they ship a tool with the BS, you shouldn't be able to deform the metal and strip the threads just using your arm muscles. It's not like I was jumping on the wrenches or putting my weight into them. Just turn a tad past snug and don't push it too far.

The gauge for belt tension is approximate. I've been using the flutter technique and when using a 3/4" blade, the flutter technique has me properly tensioned at what the scale shows as 1/2" blade tension. Also be careful about turning the tension knob too tight, even with the blade removed. The tension scale needle is attached to the tensioning mechanism by a slot in the needle and a pin in the tension plate. If you twist it too far, you'll break the pin off....Like I did. I fixed it by tapping a small brad in to the pin hole and cutting off the head of the nail.

Most of my gripes with the machine are a result of me pushing the machine, nuts, screws, bolts etc. past what they can handle. I'm really conscious of this now.

Performance wise while cutting, I have no complaints. If you cut green wood, make sure you lubricate the blade and use dust collection. (Well use dust collection anyway!) Green woods, like cherry, really gunk up the blade with pitch very quickly and that makes the thickness of the blade too much for properly set bearings. I've gotten around this by squirting a 50/50 mixture of kerosine and bar/chain oil on the blade while it's running. Also adjusting the belt to the slower speed is a must for reduction of buildup. Actually I never use the higher speed setting, but I'm not really picky about the quality of finish off the saw just yet. Most of my sawing is for turning blanks.

Oh, one more thing! When I got this BS I didn't have 220 in my shop. After adding a bunch of breakers and wiring up some outlets, I rewired this saw for 220. (It comes prewired for 110) What a Huge! difference. If you have the outlets, run on 220! After that lesson, I rewired all my tools that I could for 220. Similar results on the lathe. Not so much on the jointer.

If I had it to do over again, I'd just get the 18" rikon because you can use 1" blades on it. (Although you'd be giving up 1" in resaw capacity as the Rikon 18" is only 12" resaw versus the 13" of the 14" deluxe.)

Jay

[Bill Davis 0302]

I also own this saw, I did my homework, read all the reviews, and finally pulled the trigger when my local Woodcraft had them on sale for $100 off the regular price.

They had sold so many of them, it took a month for mine to finally arrive. Boy was I excited when it got here! Brought it home, set it up , had some trouble with the fence assembly, when I tightened the lock knob, the fence would raise up about 1/4 on the far side of the table, I finally had to drill the holes that attach the fence 3/16 oversize before it would set flat.

Took the blade that was supplied with the machine and replaced it with a Timberwolf 1/2 in. 6 tooth. Did some practice cutting with this blade and it seemed OK.

Here's where it got ugly, I decided to try a 1/4 in. TimberWolf blade and proceeded to switch blades, about an hour later I was sorta able to use it? The guide mechanism for the top and the bottom would not move back far enough so the bearings would clear the teeth.

I finally had to take the table back off and do some filing and grinding on the guides to make them work. Bottom line, the machine work on the guide mechisim was completely cheesy!! I've been a Toolmaker for over 30 years, so I know fit & function. This was not!!

Also the blade guard was canted out about 5-10 degrees from vertical, still worked, but annoying to look at.

I stewed over this for a couple of weeks, and finally decided to call Rikon and at least let them know how I felt about ther machine. Much to my surprise, after giving them the serial # from the saw and describing the problems I was having,(they said that there were problems with this production run) they asked if I would agree to let them send me a completely new saw,which they guaranteed I would be satisfied with, at no charge to me.

The local shipping company called today, to set up a time to deliver my new one. They are even bringing it on a truck with a lift gate, so no lifting!! So I should get the new one on Friday. Maybe it will be better than the first. I was very impressed with how helpfull and concerned they were with making me a happy camper.

I hope this doesn't scare you away from this saw, but I wanted to give you my experience with Rikon. I still think that for the money, and saws in this range, it is still a good buy.

[Paul Johnstone]

I have the Rikon 18".. but I have an older model, maybe 3-4 years old.

At the time, the Rikon was one of the few budget 18" saws that had cast iron wheels. A lot of the other saws had aluminum wheels. I think that has changed now, but it is something to check before your purchase decision.

The quick tension release lever was another nice feature at the time, although again, I think most saws have this now.

The blade slot being in the front makes it a lot easier to take blades on and off. I really don't understand why one magazine writer dinged Rikon for this.. it is awesome.

On the down side, it is a little time consuming to readjust all those roller guides after the blade is reinstalled. All mine adjust with allen wrenches, but I think that has changed.

The included fence that came with mine was poor and replaced with a Kreg fence that I modified. Maybe they have addressed the fence problem since then (Mine flexed a lot).

All in all, I am very happy with this saw. If money is no object, you can probably do better, but I think it is a very good value, especially if you get it on sale.

Thanks to Jay for all the tips.. I did not know some of those.

Also, when I bought the saw, it came prewired to 220. I have never tried to run it on 110 (don't even know if it is possible on my model).