Moving a bandsaw

[Eric John]

Morning !

I am moving soon and was just wondering. i have a Laguna suv14.
i was told originally when i bought it to transport it on its spine laying down.
initiaally the motor had to be mounted (its heavy)
should i remove the motor for transport again?
would its weight maybe damage something hanging off the housing?

regards Eric

[Lee Schierer]

The saw should be shipped laying down as it will try to tip over standing up. It should not rest on the table as the trunnions are one of the weakest parts. I would remove the motor or block it so it is supported by the frame.

[Warren Lake]

dont know your model but on mine I took the top section off, took the table off and lay it all down flat on its side on a car trailer. Motor stayed on as it was direct drive and stuff flat was blocked up to rest safest way support wise once on its side.

[Eric Arnsdorff]

This is how I transported a bandsaw I bought a while back. The trip was about a 6 hour drive.

Strapped down in this manner kept it extremely secure and I left the motor installed (note it remained on the wheels and it didn't budge). Granted this thing is built like a tank. I removed the table but everything else was assembled.

This is a 24" bandsaw, so it is quite a bit larger than the Laguna 14". I also saw info about transporting it on the spine but that would've been much more difficult to achieve for this saw.

Edit: FWIW - I indicated it stayed on the wheels, which it did. However, this style wheel has a foot pad that lowers but they were just lowered down and not sitting only on the pads.

486470

[Monte Milanuk]

I did something similar to what Eric showed when I went to pick up my Rikon 14" saw. While the truck (F350) had plenty of 'capacity', the bed is just too far off the ground to get anything like that into it easily. Instead, I rented a trailer from Home Depot for the day. Drover 3 hrs to the seller's place, the two of us pushed it up the ramp into the trailer, I wrapped it with a tarp (cloudy with a forecast for rain along the way) and strapped it down securely. TBH, the tarp was pretty much trashed by the time I got home, but the saw was in great shape.

[Warren Lake]

thats what I was told and I said no I wont do that. On some machines I strap them down to 2" thick 8" wide 12 foot long maple beams. Doing that increases their foot print and makes them way more stable.

The saw weighed 2,500 lbs and was maybe 9 feet tall. Taking it apart made way more sense to me. I dont like driving with something up high behind me. Buying my pickup and putting it on the car trailer all the way home I looked in the rear view mirror and thought someone was tailgating me.

[Monte Milanuk]

If you're not comfortable with it, then yeah, find another way. That said, people drive with 'something high up behind' them all the time, with RV travel trailers, fifth wheels, toy haulers and truck campers. But the first few times... yeah, it's pretty weird.

As an aside... once upon a time, I was driving along, after way too many hours on the road, making my way through traffic and coming around a semi, when all of a sudden my brain locked up and I almost tried to change lanes out of reflex. There was a friggin' semi truck coming right at me! Turns out, it was a semi truck being towed (backwards) with it's back wheels up on the deck of another truck, and it'd just pulled out to pass another truck. But there for a split second... holy crap. Thought I was a gonner ;)

[Tom Trees]

I'd take the table off and lay it on it's spine (column)
After removing table, and possibly the switch...
(might want to protect paint with some cardboard/thin mat under column side of base)

Get a chok if you like easy/have a bad floor, to lift the trunnion side a few inches, before walking around to tip, and lowering column down.
Have another chock on the ground to lay the saw onto, make sure this chok/post is not in front of you!
as you want the machine to rest onto the far end,
You want the saw's wide base to have stability until horizontal, compared to a fulcrum effect happening should something like a post lift the base up off the ground!
(the column on many machines likely has a ridge up the centre which accommodates rolling)
Not so much when on the ground, but if one of those bearers happen to become a fulcrum in above outlined silly behaviour, then that can happen.

Have another post handy if putting in a vehicle with some cardboard, carpet, or what have you.
Easy peasy, and only becomes heavy when near the ground, and a lot more straight forward than a machine with protruding legs or base.