V-belt Jack

[Joseph Quattro]

I’m new, admittedly, but this might help others. I’ve been renovating a Jet 14” bandsaw. One thing I changed was the belt from traditional to link. The space available in the closed base to fit the belt, hold tension on the motor, check the deflection, and tighten the motor mount bolts was too cramped for me. In my search for some sort of tool to tension the belt but free hands to tighten, etc., I ran across a couple of v-belt jacks. Some wouldn’t extend long enough for what I needed, and eventually settled on this. It came in today, and took me 15’ to measure and cut new threaded rod, and then tension the new belt:

eBay item number: 173278182483

I have no relationship to the seller, just happy to have a tool that works. If interested, it uses 1/4-20 rod, I had to buy and then cut a piece so it fit the distance between my two pulleys (13-5/8 or so for the Jet 14” closed base). The tool itself uses the two nuts to apply tension, and for the bandsaw, no marks or dents on the two ends of the tool after I was done. It stayed in place while I adjusted the position of the rear mounting bolts to even everything out, then tightened.

[Frederick Skelly]

Hey Joe? Terms of service dont allow links to ebay. I think you can put in the identifier number though.
Fred

[Joseph Quattro]

Fred, yes, joe. Sorry about that, edited with the number if someone is interested.

[Doug Garson]

Looks like a handy tool to tension a traditional belt, but why did you need it with a link belt? The link belts I have on my bandsaws give instructions to tension the belt. Basically you wrap the belt around the pulleys to determine the untensioned belt length and then remove 1 link for every 24 links. No need to adjust the distance between the pulleys.

[Joseph Quattro]

Doug, good point, I was trying to get close to what Jet recommended as correct tension, rather than relying on the belts instructions. I’ve had better luck that way, but that’s just the way I do it, right or wrong.