Carter Band Saw Bearings...

[John Grace]

Curious if anyone has converted their band saw's guides to the Carter brand, and if so, do you consider them worth the money? thanks...

[Chris Fournier]

Laguna 18"er, I did and yes.

[Myk Rian]

Curious if anyone has converted their band saw's guides to the Carter brand, and if so, do you consider them worth the money? thanks...
100s or 1,000s have converted. I suppose they think it was worth it, but I don't see a need for them.

[Bill McNiel]

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?219971-Carters-Bandsaw-Guides

John - I asked the same question awhile ago and got pretty positive responces (see the above link).

[CPeter James]

I went the other way. Took the Carter guides off my PM 14" bandsaw and replaced them with the guides and ceramic blocks from a Jet 14". Much quieter, blades run cleaner and truer. I actually did a mix and match. I used the rear bearing of the Carter guide and the blocks from the Jet. It really works good.

CPeter

296186

296187

[Steve Rozmiarek]

Depends on the saw of course. I removed a carter lower guide on my big Oliver saw for example and replaced it with a stock Tannewitz assembly, with superb results. Carter guides won't make a bad saw good, and other guide styles are quite good. What is your saw?

[John Grace]

Steve...My band saw is a 14" Grizzly G0457. All in all, a nice garage woodworkers' unit I purchased after a nice review from Fine Woodworking. My only complaint of the unit is that adjusting the guide bearings has always left me thinking 'there has to be a better design'. Now that it appears that my lower bearing is going it may be an opportunity to upgrade but in no way did it occur to me to review the guide mechanism when purchasing the saw and now my upgrade options may be limited.

[John Grace]

CPeter...I really like your set-up but how did you know the Jet guides would fit your PM or did you make some modifications?

[CPeter James]

Well, I took a chance. I was in a shop and the band saw Jet saw had a nice new set of Carter guides on it and I asked the person, what happened to the old guides. He said he still had them and we negotiated a price and I brought them home. They looked identical as far as mounting goes to my PM. In fact the mounts are identical. I initially just replaced one with the other, but then though about the mix and match. The shank on the Jet is about .005" bigger in one dimension than the PM, so I put them in the milling machine (about 2 minutes with a file would have done it) and took a little off and they fit perfectly. I just thought it would be better to get the bearing running in the correct position and not sideways.

Jet and PM were both owned by WMH Tool Group and the PM is just an upgrade form the Jet, sot of like the Lexus is an upgrade from the Toyota. Most parts are interchangeable.

CPeter

[John Grace]

Interesting backstory, thanks for sharing.