Wooden bandsaw project

[Jeff Wittrock]

Every since watching Matthias Wandel's (woodgears.ca) videos on his shop-made band saws, i have wanted to build one.
I finally bought the plans for his 20" band saw in January and have been slowly making progress.

I have mostly 2x6 and 2x8 construction grade Southern Yellow Pine on hand so adapted the plans quite a bit to the materials I either already had or could get cheaply. I also wanted a free standing saw without a cabinet/stand. Despite all the changes, at the heart of it, it is still pretty similar to Matthias's plans.

I was originally looking around for a used 1HP motor, but found a new Dayton 1.5HP 1725 RPM motor from Grainger at a very good price. Since I have a Grainger close to home, no shipping cost either.

I wish I had started taking photos earlier as I started the build from scratch, but I'm often too lazy to take many photos.
I thought I would just have this as a running thread as I move ahead.

[Frederick Skelly]

That's pretty neat! I was wondering how much flex the frame would have, but then I looked closer and saw that the backbone is pretty stout. Look forward to seeing it done and hearing how well it cuts!
Fred

[Tony Pisano]

Nice job. I expect you'll made a wooden chain and sprocket to drive it.. I have the woodgears on my desktop and like it.

[Lee Schierer]

My Dad made a wood framed bandsaw. His had metal wheels and other parts from a kit. It worked quite well. His was a 16 or 18 " saw.

I think your wood selection will lead to problems with deflection when you tension the blades.

[Mark Gibney]

That looks great. Looking forward to seeing more.

[Jeff Wittrock]

Making slow progress.

Last week I turned the wheels true using a temporary bolt on pulley and shaft attached to my bench, pretty much as Matthias shows. I was nervous about using the 1-1/2HP motor to spin this up, so temporary stole the pulley from my drill press and mounted it on my bench grinder instead. This has much lower torque and gave me variable speed as a bonus. Sorry, didn't take any pictures of this Rube Goldberg setup, but it all went surprisingly smooth.

I was able to add the motor mount this weekend.
Because I have a variable pitch pulley, I needed the belt tension adjustment to have a larger range than just the slotted motor mount provided. I also wanted something less troublesome to adjust, so i decided to add a pivoting motor mount. The mount pivots on a 3/8 through bolt that passes through the rear frame member and can also be slid sideways by ~3/8" to center the pulley after a pitch change. Currently the belt tension is just being set by the motor weight, but I'm going to add a spring loaded adjustment to the front of the mount so I can adjust the tension as needed.

My son and I wired the motor for 120VAC and tried it out spinning the lower wheel. Even though the wheels have been turned true, I have not yet balanced them. Even so, the lower wheel ran very smooth with little vibration.

I also received the die spring I'm going to use for blade tension. You can see it temporarily just slid on the vertical adjustment screw on top. Eventually I'm going to let this into the top frame member and add some kind of visual indication of spring compression for setting the tension.

[Jeff Wittrock]

Some more progress.

I waffled back and forth on whether I would add a tilting table. I'm just not sure I will use it in anything but the 90deg. position, but I figured I have gone this far, so just as well add the trunions for the table.
I cut the trunnion parts from the same sheet of plywood I used for the wheels.
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I also have most of the upper and lower blade guide assemblies done, and added the trunnion/table support beam.
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[Jeff Wittrock]

Not too much this weekend, but still some progress.
Balanced both the upper and lower wheel. I also removed material from the top wheel to reduce its weight.

[Jeff Wittrock]

Added the table. Still need to make the blade slot and cutout for lower blade guide and insert.
Trunions work smoothly and lock well, but I will probably add an additional hard stop and lock for the 90 degree position.

I haven't decided what to use for the table surface. I don't think the bare plywood would hold up very well. I have considered Formica, but am leaning towards stainless steel counter top material if I can find it cheap. If not I may use mild steel to keep the cost down but having to keep the rust off would be a bummer. I have also considered using replaceable hardboard.

[Bruce Page]

Very nice build! Will you paint it or leave it natural? What is the peg in the foot for?
I used melamine for my TS outfeed table. It has proven to be much more durable than I thought. Hard board would also make a nice table surface and easily replaceable when needed.

[Jeff Wittrock]

Thanks Bruce,

I plan on using a clear finish.

The handle on the foot is for a leveling pad. Since I wasn't really concerned about "level" but just about keeping the base from rocking on my uneven garage floor, I added a leveling pad on just one foot. Basically, the wooden pad on that foot is free floating with some corner screws that just keep it from falling off and I have a 1/2" bolt thread down from the top that pushes down on the pad.

-Jeff

[Ted Reischl]

Added the table. Still need to make the blade slot and cutout for lower blade guide and insert.
Trunions work smoothly and lock well, but I will probably add an additional hard stop and lock for the 90 degree position.

I haven't decided what to use for the table surface. I don't think the bare plywood would hold up very well. I have considered Formica, but am leaning towards stainless steel counter top material if I can find it cheap. If not I may use mild steel to keep the cost down but having to keep the rust off would be a bummer. I have also considered using replaceable hardboard.

Don't know if this is possible in your area. . . but if you have a local scrapyard you may be able to pick up either a sheet of aluminum or a piece of stainless to use for the table surface. I regularly stop at our local one for stuff like this and it seems like they always have what I need at really good prices.

[Jeff Wittrock]

Don't know if this is possible in your area. . . but if you have a local scrapyard you may be able to pick up either a sheet of aluminum or a piece of stainless to use for the table surface. I regularly stop at our local one for stuff like this and it seems like they always have what I need at really good prices.

Thanks Ted. Yeah I think that's a good idea. I think Matthias Wandel used a steel dyer door on one of his. If I can find some used stainless that would be great. For now, I'm just sticking with the plywood and a goodly amount of polyurethane.

[Rege Sullivan]

Mostly, I wanted to say what a great project. Please keep us updated on your progress.

Also, I wanted to suggest you stay away from sheet aluminum for the table. I painstaking made a router table with aluminum. It was only OK. The problem was unless you kept it highly polished it would stain most wood. I scrapped it for a melamine top. Some day I might replace it with laminate but for now this works well and is holding up better than expected.

[Bobby Fletcher]

The project is really great. Keep posting as it is interesting to folow the process.