Wednesday, November 29, 2017

A Free Bandsaw Reborn

I spent the last week or so cleaning up and repairing the free bandsaw I got a while back.  It's a 12 inch Craftsman bandsaw made during the 80s.



The saw ended up being in pretty good shape, it just needed tons of cleaning.  I took the entire band saw apart down to the nuts and bolts, cleaned it, and re-assembled it.  The wheel bearings were in decent shape.  I re-packed one of the bearings with grease since the original grease had fossilized.

The original table insert had gone missing and a replacement insert costs more than I think it's worth so I made my own using a fly cutter on my drill press to cut a circular insert out of one-eighth inch hardboard.

The only thing that truly needed to be replaced was the band saw tires, since they were both in some state of disintegration.  The motor belt was a bit worn which I suspect was adding some additional vibration to the machine, so I replaced it as well.  Even the blade wasn't in terrible shape.

The final report is that it cuts pretty well even up to around 4" thick wood.  I haven't tried anything thicker yet, but the motor doesn't seem to strain.  All told I spent about $30 in parts.  Not bad for a decent band saw.

I did eventually invest in a 3tpi blade to try out the re-saw capability.  The new blade cuts through wood like butter; now I just need to make a resawing sled so I can start to saw small logs into boards.  But that is a post for another day...

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