1986 Grizzly 18" bandsaw

[Michael Mayo]

Well I found a Grizzly 18" 1986 vintage bandsaw on CL over the weekend and spoke to the guy today. He had another guy coming to look at the saw so I figured i was too late. But he called me back this evening and said I could have it. He wants $150 for the saw and has all the original manuals and a bnch of bandsaw blades as well. I tried looking up the saw online but could not find it. He said the Model # was G1131 and from what I could find out this was when Grizzly was owned by another company and was hostily taken over and in the takeover all of the model designations as well as the numbering system was changed. I did find something that a guy on another site posted saying it was a G1012 but the material i downloaded for that saw is somewhat different than this saw. This saw is all cast iron and has a 220 V. motor that is rated at 2 HP. Does anyone have any further info on this saw? I figured for $150 it is worth the gamble on it.

223675 223676

[Jerome Hanby]

I've heard less than stellar things about the older Grizzly tools, but a band saw is pretty simple. If the obvious things to check look good, how wrong could you go for $150. You;d probably pay more than that for the motor if you were souping up a vintage Delta 14" saw... From the pictures it's a little hard to tell, but it looks like the column might be bolted onto the base at the back, so you may be able to rig up a riser for it and add another 6" of resaw height. The tension adjustment looks pretty standard so you could probably add a higher tension spring. You'd have to take a first hand look to form an opinion on how well it could handle increased tensioning if you wanted to try boosting the height. Looks like it could make a fun project!

[Michael Mayo]

Yup I was thinking the same thing for the money it is well worth the risk I think. I love rebuilding and tinkering with the mechanicals anyway so fixing and/or souping it up is right down my alley. Will have to see when i get there tomorrow. I will post pics once i get it home.

[Michael Mayo]

So I drove an hour and a half to NJ to pickup the Grizzly 18" bandsaw this afternoon. Got there and met Tom the owner and he was as cirdial as can be. He immediately showed me the saw and we plugged it in and ran it. It ran fine although it is quite noisy due to the blade guide bearings needing to be replaced and the metal blade guides. The saw seems to be in almost new condition and i am very pleased i was able to purcase it. Someone had told me that the only real problem these saws had was that the blade tension spring was suspect. As it turned out Tom had first hand experience with this problem as the saw years ago while sitting in the shop just suddenly went bang and what he found was that the blade tension mount had broken into pieces. This OEm part was very poorly manufactured out of really horrible metal and could not withstand the stress of blade tensioning. So Tom called Grizzly and they said they had no parts for it as the saw had been discontinued and failing to find any suitable retrofit parts he decided to make his own parts. I took some pictures you can see below but he did a fine job of manufacturing his own parts to fix the problem out of very stout steel. He also made a new solid metal piece that sits behind the blade tensioning device that is used to adjust the tilt angle of the upper blade wheel. I took it out when i got home to check it out and it really is a nice job of basement machining that he accomplished. So I need not worry about tensioning the blade as that problem has been resolved. The other thing mentioned was the hardware and that I may need to use some teflon tape to tighten things up. I have not initially found that to be a problem but did notice that most of the little screws that thread into the cast iron are somewhat loose fitting. If it becomes an issue I will drill them out larger and use larger hardware to remedy that issue.


The stock fence is a serious joke why they even included it is a mystery to me as it is so poorly made that I wouldn't even consider using it on a cheap tool. That will not be a problem either as I have a Kreg fence that was on my Shopsmith bandsaw that i will mount onto the Grizzly. The tires seem to be in very good shape and the wheel bearings seem to be very tight and silent. I am pretty excited about the acquisition and after a little bit of tuning and tweaking i think that the saw will perform quite well for me. It looks like I may even be able to make up a riser block for it and increase the resaw capacity which would really be nice. I think a 6" riser would be sufficient but i guess checking on what size blades are available first would be in order. The current blade length is 124" and the saw had some type of Swedish made 1.5" resaw blade on it when I picked it up. Tom also gave me a bunch of other saw blades so i should be all set to at least get started.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7194/6878542589_50127866a5_z.jpg

Here is the owner manufactured blade tensioning assembly

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7201/6878543455_fb8cc659e1_z.jpg

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7057/6878544689_d430606d93_z.jpg

Here is the Swedish made resaw blade never heard of the company but I am sure some of you have

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7051/6878545169_a7ba0fc000_z.jpg

And here is the manuals and a bunch of blades he included for me

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7181/6878545693_e90916154a_z.jpg

[Don Jarvie]

Let me tell you nicely, YOU SUCK. 18 incg band saw beat to crap cost way more than 150 bucks. Its worth investing in new guides.

Why can't any of these deals be in my area :mad:

[Russ Ambrose]

couple years back, i rebuilt/restored my grandfather's old Delta bandsaw....got new guides and a few other necessary things from Carter Products. top notch stuff, all of which i'm pretty sure is made in the USA. not sure if i'm supposed to link to their site, but you can google it. you can order stuff from their website or get it from Woodcraft. good luck.

[jack mcdaniel]

i know it's a long time ago but do you still have the owners manual for the 18" Grizzly band saw? Do you know where or how I can get a copy?

[lowell holmes]

Check this link.

https://www.google.com/search?sxsrf=ALeKk03Bvs7aeNC72MEelRd_kv5fwhYKNA%3A 1612711794374&ei=cgcgYPWvFpertQaHoab4CQ&q=grizzly+14+bandsaw+manual&oq=grizzly+band++saw+manual&gs_lcp=CgZwc3ktYWIQARgBMgUIABDNAjIFCAAQzQIyBQgAEM0 COgcIIxCwAxAnOgcIABBHELADOgQIIxAnOgYIABAHEB46BAgAE A06CAgAEAgQDRAeUKYgWPUvYJVYaAFwAngAgAGAAYgBlQSSAQM 2LjGYAQCgAQGqAQdnd3Mtd2l6yAEJwAEB&sclient=psy-ab