Great Lakes Casters? How to raise and lower?

[Peter Quinn]

I just got a set of great lakes casters for a 20" bandsaw and can't figure how they are supposed to raise and lower, Is there a tool that is required which I did not purchase? It has a notched star nut type thing between the swivel housing and the rubber foot but I don't see how I could turn this by hand with several hundred pounds of saw on it?

[Victor Robinson]

Are they supposed to raise and lower? Or what I mean is, these are the leveling casters, right?

[David DeCristoforo]

They don't actually raise and lower. The "notched star nut type thing" is a wheel that raises and lowers the foot inside the housing. You just spin it until the foot contacts the floor. All it does is keep the caster from moving. When you want to move the machine, you raise the foot by spinning the "notched star nut type thing" the other way.

[Ted Calver]

Have you tried to turn the star nut? Mine turns easy enough.

[Peter Quinn]

I just got the leveling casters on and they do spin by hand to a point. Rock solid is NOT the way I wold describe the feeling I get from these casters. My concrete floor is fairly level but hardly a perfect surface, and it takes a bit of leveling. It seems I need an implement to crank the notched star type nut things with a bit more than hand force to get things more stable, but it is a far cry from how the saw feels right on the ground. It seems the rubber feet have quite a bit of spring to them.They deflect considerably under load. I have some rubber isolation feet under the RAS, not caster type, and lets just say they won't budge until you hit them with a fork lift. Not sure if this is an issue with the base line model of leveling casters I bought or this style of caster in general. Perhaps a function of the way a BS holds its weight too?

On the bright side the machine rolls beautifully with these on, so thats a plus, because my shop is too small to have a saw this big stuck in one place. Perhaps I can fashion some stabilizers with a lever to lift the machine, some neoprene feet glued to some wooden blocks? I'd hate to have the saw swaying like a sky scraper in the breeze while I'm pushing wood through. They show this caster being used on a BS on their site. Its the LV-1710-NYP-S-M12 model. Anyone else using this one?