Opinions on HF Portaband?

Yeah skip the harbor freight blades, Lennox are great. I went with 18tpi on my last order.
 
Are there any HF stores around you. They can use the coupon code straight from your phone.

As for the bands I use the 18 tpi on wood also. But I only use it to cut out my knife. I like the fine tooth cut it gives. Easy to sand smooth.

As for the drill press I have a HF 8". It does the job but has had a good bit of chuck wobble since day one. Reworked every thing from the bearings to the chuck with no improvement. If I had it to do again I'd go a different way on the drill press.

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bldmkr1075 said:
Are there any HF stores around you. They can use the coupon code straight from your phone.

As for the bands I use the 18 tpi on wood also. But I only use it to cut out my knife. I like the fine tooth cut it gives. Easy to sand smooth.

As for the drill press I have a HF 8". It does the job but has had a good bit of chuck wobble since day one. Reworked every thing from the bearings to the chuck with no improvement. If I had it to do again I'd go a different way on the drill press.

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I completely agree! I have that drill press from hf and it does the job (Barely!) but with a lot of chuck wiggle. I really wish I had spent the $100 - $150 extra to get something a little better!

Daniel.


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I ordered a new shop fox 8" ocilating drill press last week. It had a lot of good reviews. It hasn't arived yet but I'll post some comments when it does.

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A friend of mine has the HF portaband, and I hate it. It's extremely loud, and the blade keeps coming off. If it didn't belong to someone else, I'd throw it away. Like in a deep lake, where it can't hurt anyone.

Many years ago I bought the Dewalt portaband, and I love it. The blade never comes off, and the variable speed is very nice to have.
 
Thanks very much for following up about the blades guys!!! I do think there is a HF store not too far from me, Maybe I will do an in store pick up order :)
 
I've had them come off a couple of them. Often it was steel shards getting stuck in between table and blade. They're definitely not all made the same. This latest one is good to go so far though.
 
The first one I had lasted 6 mo. Over time the back of the blade ate into the housing until the blade would barely turn. I bought a warrany so HF replaced it no problem. This one is fine so far. Never had a blade come off while using the machine except from breakage. The machine gets used alot for everything.


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I have the hf portaband and love it. I just clamp it in my vise. Before that, I had the hf 4 x 6 and hated it!!! The engineering/design was horrible. When profiling blades, smaller pieces would drop down and lodge between the blade and the lower wheel. It was a real chore to get them out. It happened 1 time too many and I just took it to the dump and pitched it in. I couldn't see even trying to sell that POS to someone else. Also, you can get the 3 pack of Lennox blades for the portaband at Lowe's and they are really good. I always had to order blades for the 4 x 6.
 
I would look at the wen Or shop fox for drill press. I got the wen 4212 14" and it's a vast improvement to my d harbor freight 10"
 
A lot of the issues I had with the portoband were when I was new and pushing way too hard into the blade. Break your blades in and use good quality blades and it will be a good tool. Let the blade do the cutting.
 
Quick question to those of you with a portaband. I know the deep throat ones have around a 5" depth for cut, but what is the thickest round stock you'd be comfortable cutting on it. Say if I had a 3" diameter chunk of barstock, could I cut a 1" thickness section off that? Or would it bind-up/over heat?
 
I've never used the Harbor Freight portaband but I've used Milwaukee, Porter Cable and DeWalt and the Milwaukee is hard to beat. I worked for a general contractor for 10 years and we did steel fabrication and erection along with industrial plumbing and I've seen Porter Cable and DeWalts fail but I've never had a Milwaukee die on me. When I quit that job 7 years ago I took our first Milwaukee portaband with me and after 17 years it's still running strong and the only thing I've done to it was install new rubber on the wheel and new roller bearings. They just keep running so they're worth the extra cost.
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