Bandsaw help

koyote

koyote

Joined
Mar 29, 2007
Messages
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I'm sitting here limping along with a 1/4 HP belt drive 1960s sears 56 inch 3 wheel saw. I've got shims in places holding everything steady and.... well, I can cut scales sometimes.

It's either time to totally rebuild it or time to replace it. First, what I do and what I WANT to do-

Cutting wood. scales (needs a good fence), blocks, burls I've found. Probably need no more than 5 inches clearance, max.

Scroll cuts on handles for full tang knives.

I'd LIKE to be able to do annealed steel and soft metals (bronze, brass, aluminum) but it's not REALLY improtant. the bronze would be nice since I have stock that I really don't need to forge out to use (and forging stock)

Budget is *the* issue. Quick trip to Home Despot results in a ryobi $100 machine that I am not sure I trust for production work. And a Rigid that runs $350 that looks like it might do, but that's a lot of money right now. If I got metal cutting out of it it would knock hours off my week, but......

One cool thing is I'll be able to relegate the old BSO to cutting leather, which it should hanlde well.

Whatcha got, whatcha think?
 
A cheapo metal bandsaw from harbor freight, while not ideal, will cut wood and steel. Either wood saw you mentioned will only cut wood. I think you will find alot of makers with the cheapo HF metal saw. Wood bandsaws run too fast to cut steel and will end up with a burn blade fairly quickly.
 
Well, that's good for metal, the HF cheapo would work. I'm worried about detail cutting on the wood.
 
I have one of the $180 robyi band saws and it works fine for wood. There are far better machines out there but for a limited budget the robyi works for cutting scales.
 
I use the metal cutting saw to cut scales. Cut every material with it, G10, micarta, wood, carbon fiber (use an old blade), steel, brass, aluminum, ti. The blade is wide, so you won't get the real close inside cuts that you can on a super narrow, thin blade, but it's all I ever need.
 
I got one of the small ones from Home Depot. Works great, but not the best for slabbing in a straight line. A better blade may solve the wobble on it though. Works great for detail and Kydex! I think it was $99 on sale.
 
Rebuild the Saw you have And buy the Harbor freight metal cutting saw. Chances are that your saw you have just needs a real good tune up. I had the same dilemma a short time ago. My Craftsman saw is 30+ years old. It was tired. I bought a Harbor freight metal cutter, and I completely took the old craftsman apart and rebuilt her. Now she runs like a new saw.
 
that's a good idea. I'd have to add a fence and all that, but might be doable. Still, that wellsaw...is actually overkill for a knife shop, but damn, it's nice.
 
now I need to figure out what is involved in a tune up. the tracking seems all off, but the rubber on the wheels is also old and on one wheel pretty grooved. it also goes out of alignment when I close the cover.....
 
I'd buy a book(I like mark duginski's) and just go through everything, it will take a while but you should be able to get your saw running well enough for making knife handles and whatnot, you're only limit will be feed speed.
 
Aren't there bimetal blades that you can get to make a saw like the Rigid or the Delta work good on cutting metal. 350 is allot of money but by the time you buy the one metal saw, the parts for the rebuild, then the time you have to spend rebuilding it might not be such a bad deal. Just something to think about.
 
It's not just the blade but the speed of the blade.
 
Honestly, this one is a belt drive and there's no reason I can't make it as slow as I want. The only issue right now on that is the old 1/4HP dunlap 1450 rpm motor. Which actually works fine for wood. the old blade I pulled off was 56.75 and all I've found in stores thus far is 56.25 and that does make a difference, it seem, in getting tracking right, but there's a lot of adjustment room.
 
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