Homemade bandsaw (version 2)

This project started when people started asking me about plans for my original bandsaw (version 1). I didn't want to give people plans for that one, because
I already had ideas for how to build an even better one.

This second bandsaw is a 16" bandsaw. I

chose that size because that's the largest
I could go while still using a 105" blade.
105" blades are used by 14" bandsaws
with riser blocks, so that length is very
commonly available and in stock at most
woodworking stores.

A few ideas made this bandsaw possible:

 Wood beam frame, laminated from

boards
 Integrated pulley on the lower wheel
 The use of innertubes as bandsaw
tires
 Truing the wheels while spinning on
their own bearings
Homemade bandsaw (version 2) build
This project started when people started asking me about plans for my original bandsaw (version 1). I didn't want to give people plans for that one, because I already
had ideas for how to build an even better one.

This second bandsaw is a 16" bandsaw. I chose that size because that's the largest I could go while still using a 105"
blade. 105" blades are used by 14" bandsaws with riser blocks, so that length is very commonly available and in stock
at most woodworking stores.

I had been thinking about making a C-shaped wooden beam for the frame of my second bandsaw. My first thought
was to join some pieces of beam together with my screw advance box joint jig, but that would make it necessary for
people to build that jig before building the bandsaw. My next idea was to form the beam by laminating individual
boards together. That way, I could overlap them at the corners and joints, making for a very rigid frame.

You can click on this image, or any other image in this article to get a larger view.

I glued the frame up one layer at a time,

letting the glue dry before adding the next
one. That way, I only had to worry about
lining up one layer at a time.

I ended up using all of my small clamps

every time I glued up a layer. Building
up the frame extended over the course of
a day and a half, as I'd always go and do
something else between layers.
 I made a 1:1 scale printout of the frame from my plan by printing it as multiple
sheets of paper and then gluing them together. I added a diagonal grid to help line
up my sheets of paper. I discovered that the diagonal grid really helped line up
multiple sheets with my gear template generator. I segmented this drawing into
sheets manually, but later wrote a program, BigPrint to make it easier to make large
printouts like that.

The 1:1 printout came in very handy for checking the dimensions of the
pieces I cut - it was just a matter of laying them on the sheet.

The completed frame is quite light, under 30 pounds (15 kg) in weight, which makes the bandsaw
easy to move. When I measured how much the fame flexed from tensioning the
blade, I found that it was stiffer than the frame on my cast iron bandsaw.

This may seem a little surprising, but consider the following figures I
gathered from the internet:

Material

Steel 2

Cast iron 8

Pine 9
Young's modulus is a measure of stiffness for a material. The figures for cast iron can vary, and for wood they can vary a lot. Overall though, steel is 22
times stiffer than wood. But cast iron is only nine times stiffer than wood. So a member with nine times the cross-sectional area of cast iron will be as stiff.
Spreading the cross sectional area over a wider area also helps, and my wooden beam is a fair bit wider.

Wheel and wheel mounts

I was pretty sure the nice birch plywood would do for wheels, but I wanted to see
how cheaply it was possible to build a bandsaw. I had some scavenged plywood
that was 12 mm thick. I used two layers of 12 mm, and another layer of 5 mm in
between. This plywood was ordinary plywood, although a slightly better grade than
the packing
crate plywood I
tried for my
initial bandsaw
wheel
experiments on
my first
bandsaw.

I used lots of
clamps to glue
it up. I wanted
to be sure I had
a good solid glue joint, especially around the edges of the wheels.

I shaped the rims of the wheels by using the wheels like a lathe.

With the wheel turning on its own bearings, any eccentricity I had with how I mounted them
got cut away as I turned the wheel down to it's final size.
I did encounter a few voids in the plywood that I had to fill, but I didn't bother filling small voids near the edges. But the middle of the wheel, where the
blade normally runs, has to be solid.

I spun up the wheels using a temporary pulley that I screwed to the side of the wheels. This allowed me to turn both the top and bottom wheels, as well as
the main drive pulley for the bottom wheel. I made the temporary pulley on the table saw, similar to how I made the one for my other bandsaw

It was at about this stage of progress that I shot my messy workshop video, so you can see pieces of the bandsaw around my shop in the video.

The bottom wheel in my new design spins on a fixed shaft, much like the top wheel
does. A drive pulley is screwed directly to the back of the bottom wheel.

The advantage to this approach is that there is no need to couple wheels and
pulleys to the shaft. The other advantage is that the force from the blade
tension is divided between two bearings.
 This is the top wheel mount, as seen from the front. The "tension spring" consists of
three thin strips of wood across the top of the frame. These are meant to bend and
act as a spring as tension is increased.

I opted for a simple crank for the tensioning mechanism on this saw. The
shape of the frame would have made the lever and ratcheting mechanism that
I used on my other bandsaw awkward. I also wanted to keep this bandsaw
simple and easy to build. The crank makes it really easy to tension up the
bandsaw - I can turn it from no tension to full tension in about three seconds.

Blade guides

I was originally going to use Lignum Vitae, the hardest of the hardwoods, for
the guide blocks. But then I went through my box of exotic off cuts that I
bought for this article and tried rubbing each one on my cast iron table saw
table to see how slippery they were. The bocote slid the easiest, so I used that.
But you don't need to get bocote. Any hardwood will do, the heavier the better. I'm still using the original oil soaked maple guide blocks on my other
bandsaw.

This drawing shows how the blade guides go together. The top and bottom blade
guides are nearly identical in design.

You can click on this drawing, or any of the other pictures in this article for a
larger view.

The guide bar is pressed against a notch in the frame. I put a bevel on it where it
clamps on so that it gets pressed into the corner, which rigidly holds it in place.

Because of space constraints, the blade guard above the top blade guide is made
out of sheet metal.

The guard needs to be able to fit around the top wheel, yet also slide into the
top wheel enclosure.
 The best source of sheet metal I could think of was to cut it out of an old PC
case with an angle grinder. I cut the piece off the corner, so I already had one
bend in the piece. I then used my vise as a sort of "metal brake" to make the
second right angle bend.

On to part 2: Trunions, table, and enclosure

Homemade bandsaw (continued)

Tilting table and trunnions
I wanted this bandsaw to have a tilting table. Basically, this bandsaw was designed to replace my 14" cast iron bandsaw. I still wanted to have at least one bandsaw with
a tilting table.
 It would have been easier to make the table tilt by mounting it to hinges on the
bottom of the table, but then the top of the table, and the blade slot, would move
side to side as the table is tilted.

The trunnions allow the table to rotate about an axis that is actually on top of
the table, so that the point where the blade goes through the table doesn't
move as the table is tilted.

Cutting out the trunnions does require a bandsaw. If you don't already have a
bandsaw, you can just clamp a non-tilting table to the saw temporarily and
use that to cut out the trunnions.

The front trunnion support is a little bit complicated. It needs to reach through below the table, above the wheel, and to the left of the blade. It would be nice to
support the front trunnion from the right or from directly below, but that would
make it difficult or impossible to change bandsaw blades.

Commercial bandsaws have the same constraint, and on a lot of them, the
front trunnion support is quite flimsy on account of this. On this bandsaw
design, I used a large piece of hardwood to reach forward from the frame.
 The trunnion supports are attached to the end of the support beam with five 3/8"
dowels.

Update: Since I built this bandsaw, I have come up with a better method of
making the trunions out of plywood.

Making bandsaw trunions

Most bandsaws have a circular insert to go around the blade. I chose to make a rectangular cutout on my bandsaw. The nice thing about that is that it's much easier to
make an insert for it. And to make a zero clearance insert, all I have to do is slip a
piece of plywood into the slot with the saw running. The simplicity of this makes me
wonder why commercial bandsaws use round inserts.
Enclosure
The top cover for the bandsaw slides on from above. That way, I didn't have to
worry about latches for holding the cover closed or rattling from a lid that wasn't
securely held in place. The cover has dowel pins on the back that slide into holes on
the frame. It is a bit tricky to get the pins lined up when putting the cover on, but
having done it a few times, I always hit the spot on the first try now.

I made an extra cover to go around the lower blade guides. This helps to contain the dust to inside the saw so that the sawdust all falls out the bottom. On my 14"
bandsaw, the wind from the lower wheel tends blow most of the dust out the side
of the saw, and it always makes a bit of a mess next to the saw.

The cover is slid on from below, and then the piece of hardwood below is
turned 90 degrees to hold it in place.

This cover does need to be removed when tilting the table.

 With the drive pulley directly attached to the bottom wheel, this does put the drive
belt in the "dust zone" inside the enclosure. The dust doesn't cause any problems
for the V-belt, but I wanted to keep it away from the motor, especially because I'm
using an open framed motor. So I made an enclosure around the drive belt.

Also note that the motor is bolted directly to part of the frame. I found that
most vibration in woodworking machines comes from the motor shaking back
and forth from vibrations in the V-belt. By rigidly attaching the motor to the
frame, I prevent its heavy weight from moving around and shaking the saw.
V-belt vibrations are thus limited to the V-belt itself.

A coat of paint is essential to make the saw look nice! I took all the parts of the
enclosure outside and sprayed them. I used ordinary indoor wall paint. Surprisingly,
this thick paint can be sprayed.

After the paint, I put another clear coat of varnish over the paint to protect it
from scratches and give it a shine.

Although I made a CAD design for this bandsaw ahead of construction, I always end
up making minor design improvements during construction. So I had to check and
update all the dimensions in my CAD drawings. My workshop is normally a
computer free zone. But not wanting to haul the bandsaw upstairs to my computer, I set up a laptop computer and big monitor in my workshop for a few days as I
checked and updated my CAD model.

But that was not the end of it. Producing the nicely dimensioned drawings for the
plans took more time still. All in all, I spent a month working on this set of plans, on
and off. The drawing at left is a rendering I generated when I needed to count up all
the parts and hardware. Every screw and wahser that's on the bandsaw is also in
the CAD model. When it was time to count up all the parts for the hardware list, I
changed the wood to semi transparent so it was easier to count all the metal bits.

The plans are very comprehensive. On account of all the time that went into
them, these cost a little bit more than some of my other plans, but at $21, it's
still less than the cost of a good bandsaw blade.
 And here's the saw all put together and on a dedicated bandsaw stand. I actually
held off writing about the bandsaw until I had the plans all ready. I used this
bandsaw in a number of projects on this site so far: carving canoe paddles on the
bandsaw, building a kid's table, dovetails joints on the bandsaw, carving a 3D
reindeer on the bandsaw and how to make gears. I don't use my 14" cast iron frame
bandsaw anymore - I like this wooden one much more.

Buy the plans

for this bandsaw

See the specs

Bandsaw plans for sale

I have produced detailed plans for the 16" wooden bandsaw. I love showing off these plans, and have included a preview of the plans so you can get a
better sense of what's in the plans before buying.

The plans include:

 Detailed drawings of every part of the bandsaw

 A full-scale template of the frame (spread over many pages, with alignment grid)
 A total of 35 pages of drawings and illustrations
 Detailed instruction on building the saw, including over 120 photos of the construction
 More photos of the finished bandsaw
 The plans also include the SketchUp CAD model of the bandsaw, which allows you to view the bandsaw and parts from any angle. SketchUp is a
free, easy to use CAD program.

A peek inside the plans...

See the specs

Frequenly asked questions about

building a bandsaw

Reader built bandsaws

The plans are in metric units, except for drill and dowel sizes, which are in imperial units. You can generate plans in imperial units simply by changing the
units to "imperial" in SketchUp under "model info", but the units will not work out to even numbers like they do in metric.
Please also consider these important safety notes
A French language version of the plans is also available. After buying the plans, you can chose to download the
plans in English, French, or both.

Cost: $21
Or you could buy the 16" bandsaw and the 14" bandsaw/sawmill plans together for $25

On payment, you will be able to download your plans immediately.

The plans are a 15 megabyte zip file (your computer, Mac or PC, already knows how to open zip files) A
download link will also be emailed to you automatically. Some email programs may treat this email as spam, so
The plans and model are very detailed
please check your spam folder if you did not receive the email.

You can checkout with your credit card or PayPal account.

If you encounter any problems with the download link or email, feel free to contact me at:

Lee Zimmer's bandsaw

Lee Zimmer writes:

Hi Matthias,

I am one of your many fans and your website is my favorite. I decided last year to attempt to build some of your creations. The first thing I built was your
16" bandsaw. It didn't wind up looking like yours exactly. I built the frame from old barn rafters and the rest from glued up oak pallet wood pieces. When it
was finished I liked the look of the exposed wood so much, especially the wheels, I couldn't cover it up so I just built modified blade guards.

Then I built your pantorouter which I have used extensively for making box joints for drawers that are going into my new shop desk.

And today, I finished your tilting router lift.

Thanks Matthias, I have wanted a woodworking shop for a long time. Now that I have one I can enjoy the remainder of my retirement populating it with
your creations.
Matthias comments:
Those wheels sure look nice. Examining the pictures closely, I realized they are made of solid wood (not plywood).
That's something I generally recommend against because of the seasonal expansion and contraction with humidity changes which could make them non-
round.
I asked Lee how his wheels did. His response:

The reason I used solid oak wheels is because that is the material I had on hand and it was free. One of the things that impresses me about you and your
approach to woodworking is your attitude towards simplicity and economy of resources. Being retired, I am all for those things. It is fun to build a useful
tool or jig from scavenged materials.

Your point about seasonal expansion and contraction of my solid wheels is well taken. However, I had the foresight when we built our home and shop to
heat it with radiant floor heat. My shop temperature stays between 60°F and 75°F year round so I think that may mitigate the potential shrinkage and
expansion problem a little.

Matthias comments:
Sorry to be the pedantic wise guy, but heating up cold outside air is actually what causes a drop in relative humidity. Air's ability to hold water roughly
doubles for every 10°C or 20°F increase in temperature. So if air is at 100% relative humidity at freezing, once heated up to room temperature, only has
about 25% humidity relative to its increased ability to hold water. That's why we heat air up when we want to dry stuff. Much more about this on the
Wikipedia page
The frame is made from resawn pine barn rafters. The remainder of the parts including the wheels are made of oak pallet wood. I used 5/8" diameter flange
bearings for the wheels.
Where you used sheet metal from an old computer case as a blade guard, I made
mine out of oak. My reasoning was that if the blade did come off, there should be
less of a chance of being ruined if it hit wood. I'm not saying my reasoning is solid,
but the blade has come off a couple of times while adjusting it and me and the guard
The tooth brush saw dust remover is low tech but
it works. The belt guard, and guard around the
bottom wheel is made from 3/16" plywood. The
stand is made from more of the barn wood and the 3/16" plywood. The saw just free stands on it's base. I still need to build a drawer to catch the sawdust
and another one or two drawers for storage in the base.

Lee Zimmer has uploaded a lot of photos of the construction on to Photobucket.com:

http://s1263.photobucket.com/albums/ii625/luv2learn3/Bandsaw%20Build/

Lee also posted about the project on lumberjocks.com:

http://lumberjocks.com/projects/62822

See also:

Lee Zimmer's Lee Zimmer's Lee Zimmer's

tilting router liftPantorouter pantograph

Reader built Bandsaw plans

bandsaws

More reader projects on woodgears.ca

14" bandsaw / sawmill plans
The 14" bandsaw/sawmill is a small light bandsw that can be used in your workshop, or on a special stand as a
sawmill for cutting up logs. As a sawmill, it is light duty, comparable in speed and portability to chainsaw sawmills.

I have produced detailed set of plans for the 14" wooden bandsaw / sawmill

The plans include:

 Detailed drawings of every part of the bandsaw

 A full-scale template of the frame (spread over many pages, with alignment grid)
 1:1 printable templates to paste on the wood and cut out for many of the parts
 Over 50 pages of drawings and illustrations
 Detailed instruction on building the bandsaw and sawmill conversion, including over 150 photos
 Wood cut list and hardware list
 A SketchUp model of the bandsaw, which allows you to view the bandsaw from any angle, disassemble it,
or regenerate each of the views in the plans by clicking on the 'scene' tabs in SketchUp.

SketchUp is a free, easy to use CAD program.

See the specs   See what's in the plans

The plans are in metric units, except for drill and dowel sizes, which are in imperial units. Y
units to "imperial" in SketchUp under "model info", but the units will not work out to even n
Please also consider these important safety notes

Assembling a bandsaw frame

I started by designing the bandsaw in Google SketchUp. Then I used my
BigPrint program to print a 1:1 layout of the frame over eight pieces of paper. I
cropped off at the top wheel mounts to keep the printout on eight sheets. The
laminated frame construction of my second bandsaw worked out really well, so
this one has the same basic frame design.
 Next came the job of cutting up the wood. I cut up three panels from some used
Ikea shelving for most of the boards, plus all the softwood scraps I had lying
around my workshop.

The

diagonal braces, or gussets, are one of the things that gives the frame a lot of
strength. They help to brace the corners, and also brace the top and bottom
horizontal members against twisting. The wheels are mounted in front of the
frame, and the offset load of the blade tension exerts a twisting force on parts
of the frame.

The gussets alternately protrude into the horizontal or vertical members of the
frame to really tie into those pieces, sort of acting like a triple mortise and tenon
joint on each end.
 I tried to get the fit just right so that the gussets form a solid glue joint on all
sides. I cut the triangles a bit too large, then cut them off on the shortest side to
make them fit.

Here's

showing how the top wheel mount fits into the frame. The outside layers of the
wheel mounts protrude into the frame to form a sort of double mortise and tenon
joint.

Most
of the
pieces

stacked up, minus the back layer, which isn't a full layer.

It's a fair bit of lumber. But on the plus side, with most of it comprised of short
pieces, it's a good way to use up scrap lumber.
 I started by gluing the front two horizontals and the front-most vertical pieces
together.

I wanted to make sure I got the geometry of these just right so I could line the
subsequent layers up with those ones. So I temporarily used two of the short
vertical post pieces as spacers between the two horizontals to get that distance
just right.

Next I
added
the
piece
in

between the horizontals, the gussets to go with that piece, and the next layer
of the post. This brought my post up to three layers.

When I built my second bandsaw, I ended up with a slight twist in my final

frame that I had to plane out, so this time, I was careful to ensure it was flat
while I glued it up. My workbench is sufficiently flat, so I clamped one part to
the edge of the bench and used a weight to hold the other piece flat on the bench
as I glued up the layers of the post.
 Next adding the horizontal pieces of the second layer. I have a strip of wood
clamped to the ends of it (near the workbench edge) to ensure that I don't end up
with any twist in those parts.

Once I had this much added, the frame was quite stiff to twisting, so any
subsequent layers just conformed to the existing shape.

On
my

previous bandsaw, I planed all the lumber to make sure I had a consistent
thickness. But for this one, I just used the lumber as it was. As it turned out, it
was not all consistently 18 mm, so I had to use a plane to flatten it after every
layer.

Gluing up the second last layer. It helps to have lots of clamps. If you don't have
quite as many clamps, you could glue up part of one layer at a time, or use
screws to hold the pieces together while the glue dries. Or maybe try making
some clamps
 I prefer to cut some members a bit long and trim them to final length after gluing
up. A bandsaw is very handy for this job, but any hand saw could be used, or you
could cut it with a circular saw from both sides.

I
plane
the
edges

smooth to hide any misalignment. For the back edge I could use my

homemade jointer, but I had to do the other edges with a spokeshave.

I added the horizontal on the bottom, and some of the layers of the motor mount
last.

I left out those parts so I could still get in there with a drill to drill the pilot holes
for the mounting holes of the bottom wheel mount.
"But wouldn't plywood be stronger?"
I thought it was obvious that solid lumber is stronger than plywood for this type of application, but people still keep asking that question. The problem is
that wood is only strong along the direction of the grain, and plywood always has half the grain at a right angle. This is good if you need wood to be strong
in two directions, but not good for making beams. If you don't believe me, cut a board out of plywood, and another the same dimensions out of the same
species of solid wood. Now support it on either end and try standing on it in the middle. You will see.

Making bandsaw wheels

Many people prefer to use self-aligning bearing flanges for the wheels like the
one pictured here. If you bolt two of these to the wheel, that makes for a quick
and easy way to mount the bearings. If you go that route, you should glue and
bolt the bearings to the wheels very firmly. 150 pounds of tension on the blade is
like 300 pounds of force yanking the bearings rapidly back and forth as the
wheel spins. If there is any wiggle room at all, the bearings will come loose in
short order. That said, people have had success with these bearings, such as Beri
Bracun's bandsaw

I used
these

bearing flanges for the top wheel of my first bandsaw, and it started to creak
just slightly. I switched to glued-on wooden flanges, and these have
worked flawlessly ever since.

Most of the cheap ball bearings I can find have a 52 mm outer diameter.
Unfortunately, I don't have a drill close to that size, especially because my drills
are sized in inches.
So I used a circle cutter to cut the right size hole in the flanges. It took a few test holes to get it adjusted just right. The circle cutter didn't go deep enough to
go through the 3/4" (19 mm) plywood. I drilled out the remaining wood with a slightly smaller drill from the other side. The bearing itself is only about
16mm thick, so that worked out.

I made the holes almost half a millimeter smaller than the bearings to ensure a
very tight fit. Here I'm starting to insert the bearing in the hole. I made a block of
wood shaped to only apply force to the outer ring of the bearing, to avoid
damaging it as I pounded it in.

The bearing I'm using has a spherical outside (for use in self-aligning pillow
blocks and flanges). I would have preferred a cylindrical outside, but these
bearings were cheap and very close to what I needed.

I used
a vise
to
push
it all
the
way flush with the flange. I should have thought of that trick earlier - I
initially tried to get the bearing all flush using a wooden block and a
hammer.

Checking how flush the baring sits. It wasn't hard to get it consistent within
.002" (.05 mm) all around. I figured that was close enough.
 Next I rounded the corners of the flanges and then glued them onto the wheels.
The wheels are cut from some 20 mm (25/32") thick MDF.

I don't like using MDF, but people often ask if MDF can be used for the wheels.
I had some MDF lying around, so I figured I should see if MDF will work. The
worst thing that can happen is that I'll have to make new wheels.

Four

clamps hold the first flange in place while the glue dries.

Most
cities
have
some

industrial suppliers, such as the metal supermarket or some other bearing store,
where you can buy shafting material. But where to get shafting is something
people still ask me from time to time.

So I figured I'd try to use plain old plumbing pipe, 1/2" inner diameter, for the
shafting.
This pipe is just a tiny bit smaller, 7/8" on the outside. The pipe is 21.8 mm and the 7/8" hole is about 22.2 mm, so it only takes a bit of shimming to get a
tight fit.

I initially used brass shim stock to shim the pipe up. But if you know where to
get brass shim stock, you probably know where to buy shafting material too,
which kind of defeats the idea of using plumbing pipe.

Looking around the house for suitable shim material, I found that pop cans were
too thin. Tuna cans might have worked, but I found some plastic food
containers (one of those transparent disposable containers that fruits and nuts
often come in) that had just the right thickness.

But it's tricky getting the shim in there - easiest to put it inside the bearing and
then push the shaft through.

Here I'm ready to glue on the second flange. I have the wheel on a shaft
already so I can spin it up and check for wobble before the glue dries.
 A bit of banging things around to get rid of most of the wobble.

I found that my clamps would keep pulling the flange to the side a bit because
the wet glue is quite slippery. So the trick is more how the clamps are positioned
than the banging.

Next time I will try to clamp the second flange on without glue, make sure it
doesn't wobble (easier without the glue making it slippery), and then put two
screws in it. Then take it apart again, apply glue, and screw and clamp it on. The
screws should act as alignment pins to counteract the slippery glue clamps
pulling it to the side.

I cut
the
wheels slightly oversized to be on the safe side. But I trimmed them again after
mounting the bearings to cut down on how much I'd have to turn off the edges.
Here I'm using a set of trammel points to mark the radius with respect to where
the bearings ended up.

Now

trimming to that line.

If you don't have a bandsaw that you can use, it's probably easier to just turn the
excess off in the next step. It's too hard to trim small amounts with a jigsaw.
 Next I attached a temporary pulley to the wheel for spinning it up. I came up
with that temporary pulley idea out of necessity when I had to rework the top
wheel of my first bandsaw. I have been using that trick (and the same pulley)
ever since!

The pulley is a piece of 3/4" thick ply with a notch cut around the edge. I cut the
notch on the table saw - a slightly hair raising operation turning that wheel
against the spinning saw blade. You could also cut the notch with a router. The
safest method would probably be to put the wheel flat on the router table and use
a slot cutter bit in the router. Or you could just make it by sandwiching three
layers of plywood.

Now
spinning the wheel with a motor. The V-belt is running fairly slack
because the temporary pulley doesn't run entirely true.
 Checking the wheel size by measuring the circumference with a flexible tape
measure.

The easiest way to get it around the wheel is to hold the tape measure in place,
hold the end of it against the wheel, and wind it onto the wheel.

The circumference should be 3.14159 times the diameter. I want to end up with a
35 cm diameter wheel. With the tire adding about 1 mm to the radius, I want the
diameter to be 34.8 cm, a circumference of 109.3 cm.

Wheel all turned. Here I took the V-belt off the pulley and spun it by hand to
give it one more check. Notice the "crown" on the wheel. That is, the center
of the edge has a slight peak to it. The blade will want to climb to the
highest point on the wheel - a very neat phenomenon with flat belts or blades
on crowned pulleys.

The crown drops off with a 4-degree slope on either side of the peak - much
more pronounced than the crown on most bandsaws, but it really helps to track
the blade. I don't know why the crown on most commercial bandsaws is so
relatively flat.
 I'm using a 12" bicycle inner tube for the bandsaw tire. Here I'm cutting away the
inside part of the tube to leave me with just the outer ring to use as a tire.

Inner tubes usually have a grey powdery stuff on the inside - probably to keep
the rubber from sticking to itself. That needs to be washed away so that the
rubber will stick to the wheel. The natural stickiness of the rubber is enough to
keep it in place - no need to glue the tires on.

And

stretching the inner tube "tire" over the wheels.

The wheels are not done yet. I still need to balance and varnish them, but I'll
leave that for when the rest of the saw is further along.

Building the wheel mounts

Conventional bandsaws all have a top wheel mount that consists of some sort of
frame that slides up and down, and some sort of tilt-able top shaft attached to
that.
One of the experiments with this saw is to try to simplify this wheel mount to one block that moves up and down and tilts. The block slides between two
parts sticking out of the top of the bandsaw frame

I'm exploiting the fact that the wheel, pulling down on the front, always wants to pull the block down and rotate it forward. So if I attach two pieces of
wood to it as shown, that should be enough to keep it aligned.

The top wheel mount consists of a single block of hardwood. The hole for the
shaft, or in my case, plumbing pipe, needs to be drilled all the way through. But
my Forstner bit is too short to drill it through from one side.

My

solution is to drill as far as possible from one side, and then use a long
skinny drill bit to drill all the way through. The Forstner bit has a slight point
to it, so it's easy to hit the center of the larger hole with the skinny bit. After
drilling the pilot hole all the way through, I use it to guide the Forstner bit to line
up the holes. I'm always surprised at how well this works!

After I made the block for the top wheel mount, I had an idea for an
improvement. The block of wood screwed to the front of the wheel mount cuts
away a lot of the block right where it needs to be the strongest. But if I let the wheel mount protrude into the frame a little, it can push back against the
frame and I won't need that block on the front. My finger is pointing at where the wheel mount (the part with the faint diagonal lines) protrudes into the
frame in my revised design.

This design change necessitated cutting out a new wheel mount. Good thing I
didn't have to pay for these chunks of firewood that I use for lumber!

New
wheel
mount
with
the
holes

drilled in it.

A screw from the top pulls it up, and another piece of threaded rod
sticking out of the back will pull it back to adjust and keep the tilt.

I bent a washer in the vise to go around the nut of the screw that pulls up on the block. That washer helps to spread out the load, and keeps the nut from
turning as the screw is turned to adjust the tension.
 I used four strips of wood to act as "leaf springs" for the top tensioner, like on
my previous bandsaw. So far, I just have a wrench stuck on that bolt, but I'll
make a nicer handle for it eventually.

You can also see the strip of wood across the back, held on with the nut. The
wheel tilt is adjusted by turning that nut, which in turn pulls the top of the block
back more or less. It doesn't allow for large amounts of tilt but, in my experience,
once everything is aligned and the tracking is adjusted, the top wheel always
ends up dead on vertical anyway.

And
here's
the

bottom wheel mount. Much simpler.

The wheel mount is bolted to the bottom of the frame with four 4" x 1/4" (100mm x 6 mm) screws.
 Checking that the bottom of the frame where the mount bolts on is square. It
needed some adjustment.

Using
a
hand
plane
to
flatten
the

surface and make it square.

I don't
have a

shoulder plane, so I had to use a chisel at the edges.

 Also aligning the left to right angle of the bottom wheel mount (that would be
"yaw" in airplane terminology).

With

everything lined up, I gave each screw a tap with a hammer to mark where the
pilot holes needed to be drilled.

Now

drilling the pilot holes.

On my previous bandsaw I had a hard time drilling these holes because the
bottom horizontal member of the frame was in the way. So this time around, I
didn't glue those parts in until after drilling these holes!
 Bolting on the wheel mount.

With
the
wheel

mounts more or less done, it's time to put on a blade and spin the wheels
manually to see how well it tracks.
 Looking along the wheels once everything was tweaked and the blade is
tracking, they are in line with each other, as well as the eye can see.

Motorizing the bandsaw

 The next thing my bandsaw needed was a motor. I decided to try to recycle this pool
pump motor that I picked out of the garbage.

It's a
1 HP

motor, and fairly light. I want this bandsaw to be fairly powerful and easy to
move, so in this regard, the motor is ideal.

Less ideal is that it's a 3450 RPM motor (instead of 1750), so I need quite a bit
of reduction. It also turned in the wrong direction and the label indicates that
it's "non reversible". But reversing AC motors is just a matter of reversing the
polarity of the starter winding (which is in series with the centrifugal
switch). I was able to reverse this one by bringing a separate wire out from the windigns to the switch.
 I was aiming for a blade speed around 1500 FPM, or about 7.5 m/s. With a 14"
lower wheel, that means the lower wheel should run at 409 RPM. So I'd need
about an 8.4:1 reduction. Even if I make the lower pulley 12" (30 cm) in
diameter, I'd need a 1.5" V-belt pulley to get about the right speed.

The problem with small V-belt pulleys is that they are inefficient. The belt has to
bend tightly around the pulley, and it also gets wedged into the groove. All that
bending, unbending, wedging, and un-wedging uses up a fair bit of energy. The
wedging and bending is less of a problem for larger V-belt pulleys. If I had a
1750 RPM motor, I'd use a 3" pulley, and wouldn't worry about it.

Because part of my goal with this bandsaw is experimentation, I decided to try

using a flat belt instead of a V-belt.

Most

bearing stores can custom order belts, but for now I'm using an old timing belt
from a Honda Civic. Flipped inside out, it can be used as a flat belt.

Another problem with this motor was that it had no mounting bracket. So I made
two triangular rails to go on either side of the motor. These rails actually have a
concave "cover cut" on the sides facing the motor to match it's curvature. Some
6" hose clamps around the rails and the motor hold it in place.
 For my Initial experiments I used just a small disk of wood rammed onto the
shaft, and trying to track the belt on one of the rims of the temporary V-belt
pulley that I used when turning the wheels.

I couldn't get the belt to track, but I learned a bit. If it mis-tracked against the tire
of the lower wheel, it would start to chew into that and pull it out of place. Not
good!

Also, if a flat belt slips at all, it really likes to come off the pulleys!

So I
glued
several pieces of plywood together and rammed that onto the motor.

I then used a chisel to turn that to a pulley shape.

I left

flanges on either side of the pulley so that the belt wouldn't keep coming off if it
didn't track perfectly. The idea is to rely on crowned pulleys tracking the flat belt
I made a large ring-shaped pulley to attach to the wheel. This is only screwed in
place. I wasn't sure if the whole flat-belt thing was going to work, so if I wasn't
successful, I could just replace it with a V-belt pulley later.

Shaping the larger pulley using my usual lathe technique. I'm using the same
temporary pulley that I used for shaping the crown of the wheels to spin the
wheel.

Here's the shape of my pulley. Maybe a bit much of a crown on it. Also note the
flange on the wheel side of the pulley. If the belt starts to come off in that
direction, it will rub against the flange instead of the tire.
 And here it is attached to the bandsaw. Alignment is very critical for flat belts,
and it took a bit of tweaking to get it to track. I inserted a wedge under the back
of the motor in this photo. I'll worry about bolting it to the frame once the rest of
the bandsaw is further along.

Having done a fair bit of experimenting with the saw since, the flat belt seems to
be working out acceptably well. I deliberately stalled the saw one time, and the
belt started to slip on the motor pulley. The belt and motor started to smoke
pretty much instantly, though I stopped it before either was ruined.

When a flat belt starts slipping, it usually also starts to come off the pulley. On
some applications, having the belt come off when something is stalled could be a
useful safety feature. Unfortunately, with the pulley flanges, and general lack of
room around the pulley, I can't take advantage of this here. I'll just have to make
sure I have enough tension on the belt so that the motor will stall before the belt
slips.

Update: I gave up on the flat belt

Although I was able to make the flat belt work, and did quite a bit of resawing with
it, I damaged it at some point when I stalled the saw. The wooden pulley
conducts heat very poorly, and with 1 HP of power getting turned into friction heat
on the stalled belt, there was smoke within a second of stalling it. Though the belt
remained usable, it no longer ran as smooth. Rather than find the right size of flat
belt to buy, I replaced it with a V-belt.

What convinced me to switch to a V-belt was when I was examinging some

of the belts I had around, and one of the V-belts was more flexible, with teeth
on the inside. It also happened to be just about the right length, so I didn't have
to buy a belt.
I was also getting worried that with the excessive tension I had to put on the flat belt, that I might damage the motor bearings, or, worse yet, cause metal
fatigue in the thin 1/2" shaft that was on the motor.

I had also decided that I should run the bandsaw a bit faster, so I'd be using about
a 2.5" V-belt pulley, which doesn't require the belt to turn a very tight radius.

So I removed the flat belt pulley from the wheel and proceeded to turn a V-belt
pulley.

The
V-velt
I had
was
just
about
the
right length, so I just sized the larger pulley to make it work. I needed about
a 21.5 to 22 cm pulley spacing. Here's checking the spacing with the belt on the
pulley. Basically, I kept turning the groove deeper until I got just the right
distance with the 2.5" pulley.

And here's the motor with the new V-belt pulley.

I haven't entirely given up on the idea of a flat belt, but for this application, a flat belt turned out to be a bad idea.

I also installed a piece of sheet metal between the motor and the pulley. The
motor is an open framed motor that pulls air in from the front, and the sheet
metal ensures that the motor doesn't suck in the dusty air from inside the enclosure. There is a gap between the sheet metal and the motor to allow the motor
to still pull air in from the front.

Building the bandsaw table

Most bandsaws, including my second homemade bandsaw use trunnions to tilt
the table.

The

reason trunnions are normally used is that they allow the table or the blade to tilt
about an axis that is level with the top of the table. That way, a narrow slot in the
insert of the table will still line up with the blade when the table is tilted.
 But for this bandsaw, I decided to use hinges for tilting the table. I figured
trunnions might be a bit intimidating for people to make, I went with hinges to
simplify the design. The whole table mount on this saw is actually somewhat
unconventional, and hinges worked out quite well.

The main disadvantage of hinges is that the top of the table surface will move
side to side with respect to the blade as it's tilted.

As I
often
do, I
used
my BigPrint program to print out a large 1:1 layout of the bottom of the table.
The table consists of two layers of 3/4" (19 mm) Baltic birch plywood. The
bottom layer has much of it cut away to make room for the hinges, blade
guides, and lower wheel. The table is mounted as low as absolutely
possible in order to maximize possible cutting depth while still using a
standard length 93.5" (2375 mm) blade.

I'm
using a small chisel to punch through the template at the corners to transfer the
marks through to the plywood.
 After that, I joined the 'dots' with pencil lines. I haven't destroyed the template so
I can reuse it for the main table later.

Cutting out the sub-table shape on the bandsaw

If you don't already have another bandsaw, it would make sense to make the
main layer of the table first, and then use that as a table to cut the lower layer.
The lower layer is strictly for stiffening the table, so the saw could be
assembled and used without it.

Next I tackled the main table layer. This layer also has some cutouts in it. I
transferred the layout from the 1:1 template the same way. The rectangle under
my index finger needs to be cut to a depth of about 5 mm to make room for the
hinge pin. The line going off to the right is for the slot for inserting the blade. I
ended up cutting that slot with the table saw to make it straight and wide enough
to accommodate any bandsaw blade.
 Cutting out the hinge slot with a router. I'm using a square clamped to the table
to guide the router.

Here's

cutting the ledge for the table insert with a router. The green square
clamped to the table helps to guide the router for a straight edge along one side. I
repeated this for each side of the table cut out...

... and
then
chiselled the corners square to finish it up.
 Here's the table support attached to the bottom of the table.

The table support for this saw is unconventional, in that it comes around the right
instead of around the left.

On most saws, the front trunnion support reaches through the space bounded by
the lower wheel on the bottom, the blade on the right, and the table on the top.
But the lower blade guide also need to fit into that space.

With this bandsaw being a relatively small 14" bandsaw, and wanting to mount
the table as low as possible, there simply wasn't enough room for everything. So
I decided to move the table mount to the right. This in turn means that it's
impossible to remove the blade on the right side, so I moved the slot for the
blade to the left side.

My
first
idea
for locking the table tilt position was to make a link as shown. This link would
pivot on the bottom of the table, and get locked in place with a screw and
washer against the frame. I got as far as this photo when I decided that a piece
of wood with an arc-shaped slot would be a simpler and better solution.

So this is what I made instead. It does require cutting a curved slot, but other
than that, this is a simpler design. I cut the slot on my scrollsaw, although it
could be cut with a router as well.
 The table support bolts to the frame using three bolts through the frame.

Wood

screws would work just as well, if not better, to screw the table support onto
the frame. But for reasons I'll get into in a future article, I want this table to be
easily

removable without wearing out the screw holes in the wood.

Here you can see how low the table is mounted. There's only a few millimeters
of space between the top of the wheel and the bottom side of the table. With the
table support reaching around the right, there's still enough room for the blade
guide below the table.
 Making a table insert is as simple as sliding a piece of plywood into the insert
space while the blade is running.

I also
made
an
insert
for

beveled cuts.

The hole is wide enough to accommodate the blade up to a 45-degree tilt.

This is the main disadvantage to using hinges. By using trunions to tilt the table,
one can have the axis of tilt level with the top of the table, which eliminates the
need for a whider hole.
 Inserting the blade is done from the left, not the right. Once the blade is slid all
the way to the insert hole, it's rotated to the left to bring it to the wheels.

This is not that different from inserting the blade on a regular bandsaw, except
that the initial sliding in is from the left.

And here's
testing the
bandsaw,
resawing a
piece of
lumber.

I figured the
tracking
should be
good
enough to
allow the bandsaw to be used even without guides, and this confirmed it.

Bandsaw blade guides

Design considerations
This is the upper blade guide design for my new bandsaw. Note that I have the thrust
bearing oriented so that the blade runs along the end face of it like most bandsaws do,
as opposed to running the blade on the outside edge of the bearing like the Carter
blade guides do.

I have been going back and forth over which method is better for the thrust
bearing. Nearly all manufactured bandsaws have the thrust bearing oriented this
way, but Carter products claims that it's better to roll on the outside edge of the
bearing.

It's no harder to mount the bearing one way or the other, so why would the
bandsaw manufacturers do it all "wrong"?

Well,
on my 16" bandsaw I was getting tired of how loud this bearing always ran. I
experimented with replacing it with just a small block of bocote
hardwood, so that I had wooden blocks on three sides of the blade. This
worked out well and, surprisingly, wasn't much of a wear issue. But it
robbed some power. So I eventually made a blade guide like the one
pictured above. Although it wasn't as quiet as the wooden thrust block, it's much
less noisy than my original design.

This is probably why bandsaw manufacturers put the bearing on this way - it
works just as well, but runs much quieter.
Making the guides
The body of the upper guide is quite simple. I used a piece of exotic hardwood for the
cross member that the guide blocks attach to.

If you don't have any exotic hardwood handy, use the hardest hardwood you
have, and soak some oil into it.

I had

previously used T-nuts to get threads into this block. But not everybody
knows where to get T-nuts. So this time around, instead of T-nuts, I just
tapped a machine screw thread straight into the hardwood. Going cross- grain
like this, a machine screw thread holds quite well in hardwood.
 The thrust bearing mount is just a carriage bolt. The square part of the bolt didn't
quite fit in the bearing's hole, so I filed the corners down just a little to make it
fit. A nut is then used to push the bearing against the bolt's head.

I also cut a slot into the head of the bolt with a hacksaw so it can be turned with a
screwdriver (you can't see the slot in this picture).

The bolt fits into a threaded hold in the guide body. That hole has a slot cut
through it so that when the guide body is clamped to the guide post, the bolt gets
squeezed, so it can't turn.

I kept
the
lower
thrust
bearing in the same orientation as on my previous saw. I always adjust the
guides so that the top thrust bearing is just a hair further forward than the one
on the bottom. My rationale for this is that the top guide, at the end of the frame
and the guide post, has a bit more flex to it. So when pushing a large piece of
wood hard against it, it will flex back and both guides become engaged.

So when the saw is idling, the blade doesn't touch the lower thrust bearing, so it
doesn't make noise. During a cut, the blade itself makes so much noise that the
noise from the lower thrust bearing can't be heard anyway.
 I used another carriage bolt to hold the lower bearing against a slot. Loosening
the bolt allows the bearing to be moved forwards and back. I also hacksawed a
slot into this bolt head to make it easier to turn with a screwdriver.

On the other side of the bolt is a T-nut with all but one of the prongs bent flat.
The one remaining prong protrudes into the slot so that the nut won't spin when
the bolt is turned.

This is the only T-nut I used in the entire bandsaw. If you don't know where to
get T-nuts, you could substitute a wing nut for this one, although that means
having to reach around the guide to hold it while tightening the bolt.

Mounting the lower guide

With a blade mounted and tensioned in the saw, I can now use the blade as a
reference to check where the guide needs to be mounted. Here's checking my mark for
where to cut. (a bit hard to see, but you can click the image to enlarge it).

With
my
green

square clamped to the frame as a saw guide, I'm cutting the frame where I
marked it.
Next I put the frame on it's side and cut the bottom side of this cutout.

The saw didn't quite reach deep enough for the bottom side so I had to clean out the rest of it with a chisel.

With the blade guide positioned where it needs to be, I'm punching through one
of the slots to mark where to drill into the frame.

The guide body has two slots so that I can mount it in one of two vertical
positions. For the upper position, I need to put a spacer under the guide. The
upper position will be for regular cuts. The lower position is for some
experiments that I still want to do with this saw. I'll leave that for a future article.

Here's

inserting a threaded insert into the hole I had just drilled.

Because this is going into the wood end grain, this might not hold all that well.
If it ever comes loose, I'll just glue it in. Even wood glue should do for gluing
it in. The glue doesn't need to stick to the metal to hold it - the prongs on the
insert should be more than enough to engage the glue.
 Next a long screw and washer hold the guide body in place.

Mounting the upper guide

The
upper
blade
guide
mount
is
much
more
complicated.

I started by gluing an extra block of hardwood to the frame to give the guide
post a bit more support.

measured the distance from the middle of the guide blocks to the left edge of the
guide post on the upper bearings I had just built.
 Next I marked a line that same distance left of the blade. I had to use a square to
transfer the blade position back to the frame and a ruler to measure how far over.
Three hands would have been handy to have for this step.

Here's
my

measured cut. Getting this cut to be exactly vertical on the saw is

important. Otherwise, the blade guides will not move parallel to the blade and
will need adjustments every time the vertical position is changed.

I
jigged something up with a board and a fence on it for making this cutout.

But as it turned out, the board I used was a bit too thick, so I couldn't reach deep
enough. I also couldn't set the saw to its full depth because the motor would have
hit the rail that I ran the left side of the saw against.

If I had used a thinner board, and a ruler instead of another board for the left
fence, it would have worked out.
 So then I had the idea of just putting the whole frame on the table saw. With a
good size table saw, and only a 14" bandsaw frame, this is still practical.

Next I

needed to put some sort of threaded insert next to the notch I had cut.

On my last saw, I used a table leg bolt that I screwed into the frame. But I
wanted this saw to be easy to move, and I didn't want that bolt sticking out of the
frame when the guide is removed. So this time around, I wanted the bolt to screw
into the frame.

couldn't find a threaded insert that large, so I used a "coupler nut" - essentially, a
nut that is about 4 cm long - as an insert.

I roughened up the outside edges of it with a hacksaw. I also applied glue to the
hole before hammering it into the hole.
 I screwed two drywall screws next to the insert to hold it in there. The glue was
actually more of an afterthought.

The
clamp
for

holding the guide post is a bit of a complicated piece of wood. The tricky part is
gluing the beveled piece on one edge. I temporarily clamped another
beveled piece to the block just for clamping.

Unfortunately, I didn't get that beveled piece on quite straight. But with the table
saw tilted to 45 degrees, I was able to trim it straight.
 Test fitting the guide post.

Next I
made
a bar

handle for the bolt. I just chiselled a hole the shape of the head into the wood
to hold it. A square head bolt worked out really well, though I'm sure a hex
head bolt would hold well enough as well.

Building the bandsaw enclosure

Building the enclosure for the bandsaw is kind of anticlimactic compared to other
parts of the construction. With the saw being a known quantity by this point, there
just isn't the same kind of anticipation anymore.

But given the safety aspects, the enclosure may in fact be the most
important part of the bandsaw!
 The top of the saw has 45-degree corners. I joined these with simple 22.5 degree
mitered butt joints. After the glue dried, I cut some slots into the corners for
splines on the table saw. A table saw sled is handy for this operation.

I cut
some
strips
of

hardwood to use as splines and glued those into the slots. After the glue dried,
I cut them flush on the bandsaw, then chiselled and sanded them flush.

The

covers on this bandsaw close with hinges along the left. A piece of wood is
attached to the right of the two wheel mount posts to mount a latch. The easiest
way to align that is to take the top wheel out of the saw, close the cover, and
position the piece so it lines up with the edges of the cover.
 I like to use hooks like the one at the top of this picture. These can be bought at
hardware stores. But if you don't know where to find one of those, you could try
bending one out of metal yourself, or make something similar out of plywood.

Here's
my
latch

mounted.

Gluing on an L-shaped profile to cover up the blade. This part is hinged with the
top cover, so that when the top cover is opened, the left blade guard also opens.

The hinged cover for this saw is more convenient than the cover that slides on
from the top on my previous design, although it was slightly more work to
construct.
 The bottom cover also swings open on a hinge at the left. Unfortunately, the
bottom cover would end up hitting the table tilt lock as it swung open, so I had to
cut away part of the cover to clear that.

My

solution was to make a really big sliding latch for the bottom cover. The piece
is about 15x15 cm. It hooks over the top of the cover and also slides in a track
on the bottom. The section protruding out of this latch fits into a slot cut into
the table supports. When the latch is closed, the cutout in the bottom cover is
completely covered.

I also made a piece that slides in between the table and the table support to cover
the blade guides. This piece only fits in place with the table set at 90 degrees, so
it needs to be removed when tilting the table.
 Here's adding the belt cover.

I also
added
a
piece
of
sheet
metal
to the
motor
mount.

The pump motor that I'm using pulls cooling air in the front and blows it out
the back. I didn't want it pulling in the dusty air from the bottom
enclosure, so I made this piece of sheet metal (cut from an old PC case).
There's enough room behind it to allow the motor to pull in air from the sides.

I had
to
take
the pulley off to put this cover on, but I'd found that the old pulley slipped from
time to time, so I made a new one that fit tighter. I took this photo with the pulley
blank on, before I turned it to a pulley shape.

And another piece of wood to cover the bottom back of the saw.
Making the blade guard
I needed to make a piece of C-channel for the blade guard that attaches to the guide
post. Previously, I had cut this out from a PC case with an angle grinder, but I have
since bought a reciprocating saw. Cutting up PC cases is the best use I have found for
this saw yet!

Unfortunately, the blade of this saw likes to wander a bit, so I clamped some bits
of hardwood to either side of the cut I was making. I used bar clamps and C-
clamps, though if doing it again, I'd only use C-clamps. The vibrations had a
tendency to loosen up the bar clamps.

That PC case is the same one that I cut the blade guide of my last saw out of, and
also one I used as a back stop for shooting my air gun. So I guess that case is
now fully used up!

The piece I cut out included an edge of the case, so I already had one 90-degree
bend to start with. The challenge was to produce another 90-degree bend.

A sheet metal brake would make short work of a job like this, but I'm not really
set up for metal work.

So I cut a piece of hardwood to be the same width as the channel I wanted and
clamped the sheet metal and piece of wood in the vise.

I then used another piece of hardwood to bend a corner into this channel. I put
the end of the piece of wood against the edge I wanted to bend and struck the
other end with a hammer. With the metal much longer than my vise is wide, I
only bent it by about 10-degrees, I then repositioned it to extend the bend along
the length of the metal.
 Working my way back and forth several times, I was able to get a clean 90-
degree bend without kinking or distorting the metal.

The
C-

channel needs to be able to fit around the upper wheel. On commercial

bandsaws, this tends not to be as critical, but with the large resaw depth this
saw is capable of, making the guard fit around the wheel is the only way to allow
it to move up far enough.

With a maximum resaw depth of 30 cm (almost 12"), when the blade guide
is positioned all the way up, the blade guard actually protrudes out of the top of
the enclosure. The guide post ends up being the highest part of the saw.

As with my previous design, the guide post clamp has two holes in it so that it
can be positioned higher for the last 5 cm (2") of vertical range.
Finishing it
With all the woodwork done, it was time to take it all apart again for varnishing.

I have
gotten
to the
habit
of
spray

painting my machines. I spray painted my other bandsaws too, and that

worked out well. I'm using regular indoor paint from The Home Depot - the
relatively thick stuff that is normally applied with a roller.

When I built the jointer, the weather outside wasn't suitable for spraying, so I brushed the paint on. I have to say, spraying produces a much more consistent
finish.

After spraying on two coats of paint, I added two coats of waterborne Varathane diamond floor varnish to give it a nice gloss and protect the paint. This
method has stood up well on my other machines.
 In my previous bandsaws, the table was a panel from a piece of furniture, so I
just left the original finish on it, but added a few more coats. This time, I used
Baltic Birch. I have learned that it helps a lot to have the machine contrast form
the workpiece, so I painted the table a drak-ish gray. I also painted the hand
made knobs black.

After painting the table, I added two coats of Varathane diamond floor varnish to
give it a smooth hard surface that glides easily.

And here's the

bandsaw put back
together, placed on
the sheet metal stand
that came with my
cheap thickness planer.

It weighs about 82 pounds (38 Kg). The resaw capacity is about 30 cm (nearly 12") with a
93.5" blade. The blade guide, in its uppermost position, is nearly flush with the edge of the
enclosure.

Next week, I'll write more about what I learned in the process of building this saw, and show off
what the saw is capable of.

14" bandsaw build: Things learned

 This 14" bandsaw is my third homemade bandsaw. For the most part, the design
is based on my 16" bandsaw, but with a number of changes to experiment with
simplifying the design.

In the picture, from left to right, you can see my first 18" bandsaw, my 16"
bandsaw, and my new 14" bandsaw.

When building your own bandsaw, it makes more sense to build a larger one
because larger bandsaws are much more expensive to buy, but building a bigger
bandsaw only adds marginal material and effort over a smaller one. I wanted this
bandsaw to be relatively light and portable, so this one has only a 14" (35 cm)
wheel size.

One-piece wheel mount

I changed the design of the upper wheel mount to consist of just a block that moves up and down and pivots for tracking adjustments. I found that I would only ever
make very small tracking adjustments, and I was able to let the block both pivot
and slide by mounting the bar that holds it in the back so it moves in and out
with the turn of a knob.

This eliminated the need for a frame around the top wheel mount. That
simplified the construction, makes room for more robust parts, and also Previous design on my 16" saw
allows the shaft to be lowered closer to the beam of the frame.

A minor disadvantage of this design is that it relies on the force of blade

tension to firmly fix the top wheel mount in place, so it's a bit loose
without a blade.
MDF wheels
People have often asked me if the bandsaw wheels can be made out of MDF.

Personally I really don't like MDF, but I had some MDF lying around, and for
the sake of determining the suitability of it, I figured I'd use it to make the
wheels.

The way the chips came out when I drilled the holes reminded me of the fact that
MDF is really just compressed cardboard. The dust from turning the wheels is
also kind of awful. The turned outside edge came out very consistent, though not
smooth. An advantage of MDF is that, unlike some cheap plywood, it has no
voids. Another pleasant surprise was that the MDF wheels needed very little
balancing.

I used Baltic birch plywood for the wheel flanges. The flanges need to have the
bearings press fit very tightly into them, and I didn't think MDF would be up to
the job.

I don't de-tension the saw when I'm not using it, and I have not had any problems
with it so far. So my conclusion is that MDF is suitable for bandsaw wheels.

Though personally I still prefer plywood.

Plumbing pipe as shaft

My next experiment was to use plumbing pipe for the shaft material. Sometimes people
don't know where to get the shafting material for their homemade bandsaws, so I
thought I'd explore using plumbing pipe as an alternative. Regular plumbing pipe
has an outer diameter just smaller than 7/8", so with a bit of shimming, a snug fit in a
7/8" (22.2 mm) bearing can be achieved. With the wheels turning on stationary shafts,
a super exact fit wasn't that critical.
Overall, the plumbing pipe worked out OK, though it adds more work because you always have to insert shims. Searching my house for suitable shim
material, I found some plastic food containers whose plastic was just the right thickness for a snug fit.

Overall though, I think it's worth getting proper shafting material - it makes the build much easier. But if you can't get shafting material and are an
experienced tinkerer, plumbing pipe is a workable substitute.

That troublesome belt drive

I figured I'd experiment with using a flat belt for the drive belt on this bandsaw.
Because I was using a 3500 RPM motor, I needed quite a bit of reduction, which meant
a small pulley on the motor, which in turn means that a V-belt would be relatively
inefficient.

I have to say, using a flat belt was the least successful design aspect of this saw,
and my advice is: Don't use a flat belt!

It was very difficult to get that belt to track properly. Also, with just a 4 cm
diameter pulley, it takes a lot of tension to transfer the motor's torque to the
wheel. Worse yet, if the saw stalls in a way that the belt slips, it will slip on the
motor pulley. The wooden pulley doesn't conduct heat very well, so a stalled belt
will heat up to the point of smoking within one second of stalling (speaking from
experience!)
 The belt I am using is an old Honda Civic timing belt, turned inside out and with
the teeth shaved off with a chisel. I had a lot of difficulty getting that belt to track
on the crowned pulleys.

Looking at different types of V-belts, there are some belts that will bend with less resistance than others. At left, topmost is a smaller V-belt from my drill
press. Such a belt would bend more easily. The middle belt is one that only has the reinforcing fiber on the outside edge and teeth on the inside. This belt
bends much more easily and would probably work on a small pulley without as much loss in power as a regular V-belt (bottom belt in the picture).
All this only an issue if you use a 3500 RPM motor (or a 2900 RPM motor if you
have a 50 Hz electrical grid). For a 1750 or 1450 RPM motor, you would use a
3" or 4" (7.5 - 10 cm) pulley on the motor, so the belt wouldn't have to bend
around as small a radius.

I eventually switched to a V-belt. I used a 2.5" vbelt pulley, and the middle of the
three belts in the previous picture. With about a 11" pulley on the wheel, and a
3450 RPM motor, that makes for 550 RPM on the wheels, or about 2040 FPM
(about 10.2 meters per second). This is a good speed with a 1 HP motor, though
my 16" bandsaw only runs at about 1500 FPM (7.5m/s) because I only have a
1/2 HP motor on it. The drive on the 16" saw has never given me any troubles.
So a V-belt is really the way to go, and in the plans for this bandsaw, I'm
drawing this as a V-belt.

In terms of blade speed, I really like the slow 1500 FPM of my 16" saw. It runs
smooth and quiet, and is good for those detailed cuts. Higher blade speeds are
better for resawing, but you need more than 1/2 HP for the motor.

Hinges instead of trunnions

On my 16" bandsaw, I made wooden trunnions to tilt the table on. These worked out
quite well, but I figured they might be an intimidating aspect to tackle for some.

So on this bandsaw I experimented with using hinges for the table mount. The
hinges simplified the construction a fair bit.
 A downside of using hinges is that the axis of tilt is now on the bottom of the
table, whereas trunnions allow the table to tilt about an axis that is level with the
top surface. The advantage of using trunnions is that the slot in the table insert
stays aligned with the blade even as the table is tilted.

To make an insert that accommodates all tilt angles requires a relatively large
hole.

The insert is just a rectangular piece of plywood, so it's easy to make an insert for
a specific angle. But then there is the risk of forgetting to remove the insert
before tilting the table and damaging the blade.

Most
bandsaws support the front trunnion with an arm that reaches through
between the wheel, blade, and table. But I wanted this table as low as
possible, and with just 14" wheels, there was not enough room to reach
through there. So the support for the front hinge reaches around the right side,
where there is much more room.

With the support on the right side, this means the blade must be inserted from
the left side. Inserting the blade from the left turns out to be no more
difficult than doing it from the right, so that design change worked out well.
 With the table mounted as low as it can go, and my upper wheel mount giving
more clearance to move the upper beam up a little bit, I was able to get 30 cm, or
almost 12" of resaw height out of this bandsaw. That's almost as much as a 14"
bandsaw with a riser block, but this 14" bandsaw doesn't have the extra height
and only uses a regular 93.5" blade.

Even using my improvised upper blade guide trick I was only able to get 9" of
resaw capacity out of my 14" saw, so this is quite a bit more than is possible with
regular 14" bandsaws.

I have
sliced
up
quite
a bit
of
wood with this saw already. Not so much to make veneer but just to put it
through its paces.

The photo at right unfortunately doesn't give a sense of scale, but the
widest pieces in this photo are 25 cm (10") wide.

Portability
The saw, including the 1 HP motor weighs 82 pounds, or about 37 kg.

That's a bit of a hefty lift, but it's only 10 pounds more than one of
those portable thickness planers (pictured at right) without the stand.
So it's still relatively manageable to carry. I made this saw so it would be
easy to move around, and could even be used as a benchtop bandsaw.
 The table can be removed by removing three bolts.

Also relatively easy to remove are the upper blade guide and the whole upper
wheel and mount. Without those, the saw is under 60 pounds. Taking the motor
off would reduce it by another 18 pounds.

Sawmill
With the table removed and the lower blade guide mounted in its lower
position, the guides are a full 35 cm or 14" apart.
 And this finally brings me to one of my main reasons for building this bandsaw:
To experiment with using it as a sawmill for cutting boards straight from logs.

Although in this photo, I sliced the log across, because a neighbour needed some
disks cut off the end of a log.

I'm still experimenting with the sawmill aspect of this bandsaw. I'll write more
about that next week.

Building the hobby sawmill

The

sawmill is made from pieces of 2x4 glued together in three layers. I planed about
a millimeter off each side of the 2x4s to get smooth flat surfaces for better glue
joints.

The
corner
joints
of the
frame
are
reinforced with pieces of plywood. These are glued to the top horizontal, but screwed to the other parts of the frame. This allows the frame to be taken apart
for moving or putting it away.

Drilling the bolt holes in the corners. I'm using a drill guide and an extra long
drill to drill all the way through the frame. I didn't have an extra long drill of
exactly the right diameter, so after drilling the hole through, I used a drill of the
right size from either end to enlarge the holes.

If storage space is not an issue for you, you could improve and simplify this
design by just gluing the corners together.

The

vertical member on the right side (facing the bottom side of the bandsaw) has a
groove cut into it to guide the bandsaw up and down.

Here I'm gluing some blocks of wood to the end of it to allow it to be bolted
to the horizontal part that will ride on the track.

The right side of the frame is designed to ride on a track as shown here. The
wheels are roller blade wheels, rolling on a 2x4 that has the edges
chamfered at 45-degrees.
This keeps the carriage aligned, and also allows sawdust to slide off the track.

I cut some "V blocks" out of plywood scraps to help hold the part as I drilled the
45-degree holes.

The

wheels are held onto this rail by bolts that are simply threaded into the
slightly undersized holes. Machine screw threads hold surprisingly well in wood,
though it takes a bit of effort to screw them in.

I screwed some plain threaded rod into this rail for attaching the frame.
 Some nuts on the end of the threaded rod bolt the vertical member of the frame
onto this rail.

There
is
only a
single
roller
blade
wheel
on the
left
side
of the
frame. This side is meant to just roll on a flat 2x4 on the ground or directly on a
cement floor.

A series of holes allows the vertical position of the wheel to be adjusted to

compensate whether the left side, right side, or both sides are running on a rail or
on the floor.

The bracket for the left side wheel has a corner joint on it, which I cut out on the
bandsaw. I have had good experience cutting box joints from paper templates on
the bandsaw - it worked well for the marble machine 2.1 base and support arm. I
will include these paper templates in the plans.
 I attached a rail to the bottom of the bandsaw. This rail slides in the slot I cut into
the right side post of the frame.

Another bracket hooks around the post to hold the bottom of the saw against the post.

Conveniently, the 2x4 that I used for this had a knot right where this part hooks
around. That knot acts like a reinforcing dowel, so that end of it will never split
off.

Here you can see how the bracket that hooks around the post is attached to the
bandsaw. Two dowels (not visible in photo) keep it aligned, and a single
machine screw and threaded insert hold it in place.
 I made another bracket to attach to the top part of the frame. This guides the top
of the saw against the left leg of the frame.

I
could
have
just
used
long wood screws to attach this part, but so far, I had attached all the other
removable parts with machine screws. So I used some threaded inserts and

machine screws to attach this bracket as well. That way, I don't wear out the
threads in the wood from switching between sawmill and bandsaw mode.

Next I needed some means of moving the bandsaw up and down on the frame. I
built a sort of hand-cranked winch for this purpose.
 I needed a dowel of a bit less than 1.5" diameter. This dowel didn't need to be
super accurate, and rather than take another trip to the store, I decided to make
my own. I started by cutting an octagonal rail on the table saw, then rounded the
corners with a hand plane. I used a piece of wood with a hole in it to periodically
check the fit.

I had

initially experimented with some synthetic strands from packing crates to winch
the bandsaw up and down, but then switched to steel cable. The advantage of
steel cable is that it will wind up in turns side by side so that the amount of
elevation per tooth on the sprocket is constant. But the steel cable is much more
difficult to handle. It has a mind of its own and always wants to straighten out.
So the packing crate strands may have been a better idea.

Hose clamps worked out well for holding the cable (or the strand) in place. I
make sure there are at least two turns of the cable around the dowel even when
the saw is in its lowest position. The friction of the cable around the dowel means
that, after two turns, the hose clamp only needs a minimal amount of hold to
keep the cable from slipping.

I also added some "staples" to help hold the cable in place. These staples were made by cutting the head off a finishing nail and bending it into a U-shape.
 Loops on the end of the cable hook onto the saw.

Adjusting the relative lengths of the cables turned out to be a finicky affair. The bandsaw mounts in the frame so that it easily "racks" if one cable is shorter
than the other. I figured this would be a good safety feature if one of the cables
should let loose for some reason. But being off by even half a centimeter on
one side can be problematic.

Here's the saw, on tracks. As it turned out, the rubber wheels gripped well
enough even on my painted basement floor that I could use the saw
without rails. Though with the rails, the saw stays aligned. Also, sawdust can
slide off the rail so that the wheels don't run on a layer of sawdust.

The tracks are also useful when operating on uneven surfaces such as grass.
Cutting a log with my sawmill
After I built my mini sawmill I obtained a piece of a firewood log from a neighbour. I
would really prefer longer pieces, but the nice thing about this chunk was that it was
easier to carry into my basement.

I made some "cradles" to place the log onto so that it would not roll to the side.
 This chunk of log is 38 cm, or about 15" in diameter. I figured my sawmill
should be able to handle logs up to 40 cm or 16", so this was close to the limit.

My saw only opens up to 35 cm (14") wide, but that should be enough to cut
slabs off the log. After slabs are cut off, the rest of the log will fit between the
blade guides.

Starting to cut some slices off the log.

It would have made more sense to flatten this side of the log in one cut, but
my goal was to test the saw. Removing thinner slices means more cuts and
therefore more opportunities for testing.

I had to be careful with the first few cuts. The log was barely heavy
enough to hold in place by gravity. A longer log would have more weight.
 With one side flattened, I rotated the log by 90-degrees to take another slab off.
Here I'm using my green homemade square to check the angle.

As I
was

starting to make wider cuts, I sometimes ran into shaking of the saw.
Putting both hands on the corners of the frames helped steady it, but I still had to
be careful.

Sometimes the blade would bind a bit, yank the log, and then stall the saw. My advice is to practice reaching for the switch to shut it off quickly, so that you
can shut it off as soon as it stalls. Only having a 1 HP motor on the saw is turned
out to be a good "safety" feature. Better to have it stall than to do real
damage!

My initial sawmilling experiments were while still using the flat belt drive, but on
stalling, the motor would keep running and slipping against the belt. That belt
sure smoked quickly when that happened.

Three sides flattened.

I wasn't running into issues with blade drift. I put lots of tension on the blade. With a sharp blade, I really didn't need much feed pressure, so I didn't exceed
the beam strength of the blade. I meant to switch to a 3/4" wide 3-TPI blade, but nobody had one in stock, so I kept using the 1/2" 3-TPI blade.

Refining the sawmill

I found that when taking wide cuts, sometimes the saw would start to shake. Having
looked at lots of people's homemade sawmill videos on YouTube, I knew that this sort
of shaking is a common problem. A stiffer frame would surely help, but that would
mean making it heavier and less portable. I experimented with bracing it. This reduced
the shaking to some degree but didn't eliminate it.

Running the bottom blade guide against the log as it's cut was able to
eliminate the shaking.

The shaking is all about relative motion between the log and the bandsaw. If the
saw and log are in contact as shown, that eliminates that possibility.
 Having the bottom blade guide run against the edge of the log isn't always
practical.

But then I had the idea of clamping the bandsaw frame to the sawmill frame
together with a bar clamp. That pretty much solved the problem, and I didn't
bother running the blade guides against the log after that.

The clamp doesn't need to be on very tight, just moderate pressure. In fact, I was
still able to crank the head up and down with the clamp on.

Although the sawmill worked well enough without a rail, the rail is very
helpful to keep things from drifting. Propping some pieces of wood
between the rail and the stock helped to keep everything well aligned from one
cut to the next.

A few times, I had my stock jump loose and hit the bottom blade guide,
knocking it loose. With repeated tightening, eventually that threaded insert pulled
out of the wood. It was only screwed into the end grain, and I figured it would
need gluing in eventually. So I glued it, and then added a second threaded insert,
also glued in, right behind it.
 I figure with two screws holding the bottom blade guide, I should be ok.

I was
doing
my
tests
with a
1/2"
(12.5
mm)
wide
3 TPI
blade
(8
mm tooth spacing). This type of blade is meant for resawing at most 8" (20
cm) deep, and cutting 12.5" with it was really pushing it. As long as the blade
is really sharp, and the saw is pushed very slowly, it makes for some very clean
cuts.

But once the blade gets just a little bit dull, it's almost like it refuses to go
forward and just wanders sideways. My log was 32 x 38 cm (1.3 square feet),
and after fourteen slices, it would go no further.

A wider blade, and with only two teeth per inch would have been better. As it is, each tooth needs to have a certain amount of "bite" to engage the wood.
But making 32 cm (12.5") wide cuts, I can only apply so much force before the "beam strength" of the blade is exceeded. Once the beam strength is
exceeded, the blade tries to escape sideways.
 A quick resharpen with the Dremel tool, and I was back in business. So I was
certain that it was the blade losing sharpness that made it wander.

Removing the blade from the saw in sawmill configuration is a bit awkward.
Bungee cords help to hold the covers open while taking the blade out.

I was
a bit

disappointed at only being able to cut 14 slices of my log before

resharpening. That's was only 19 square feet, or 1.7 square meters of cut.

So the second time the blade was too dull to go further cutting full width, I
experimented with cutting a block only half that width. At half the width, that
same blade that was too dull for a 12" cut was more than sharp enough to keep
on cutting. I was able to more than double the feed rate, so even my net rate of cut went up. So the blade can cut a lot more than 1.7 square meters, just not
when pushing it outside of what it's meant to do.

The bar clamps in this photo aren't there to hold anything. I attached them to the piece of wood just to weigh it down. I was cutting fairly fast at this point.
 I hooked up a power meter to the motor to see how much power it was using.
The motor's label says 12 amperes. Even with a 1.0 power factor, that would be
about 1400 watts at 117 volts. But motors typically have power factors a bit less
than 1.0. The fact that I was pulling well over 1300 watts from time to time
suggests that I was using that 1 HP motor to it's full capacity.

A bit more power would have been nice to have, though I wouldn't want to have
too much. I prefer stalling the saw to causing damage.

My

experience with the table saw is that the saw has a much easier time
cutting when the teeth are cutting into the grain instead of out of the grain. For
example, doing a regular rip cut, the teeth cut into the grain, but cutting
tenons, the teeth move out of the grain. Cutting tenons is much harder.

Some bandsaws, such as the Wood-Mizer twin vertical saw put the
bandsaw at a skew so that the teeth are cutting slightly into the wood.

So I figured this is something I should try on my sawmill. By putting

multiple mounting holes on the frame, it can be mounted on the part that
rides on the rail at an angle. The wheel on the other side of the saw can
also be set at an angle.
 The benefit from skewing the cutter head is relatively small, so it's hard to say
how much of a difference it makes. But I'm quite certain that it doesn't hurt.

One problem I haven't yet solved is sawdust buildup. After only a few boards,
the sawdust get high enough to interfere with the track. I experimented with
clamping a piece of wood against the rail to deflect dust away from it, but that
didn't make much difference.

What probably would help is to elevate the rail a bit, so that there is more room
for sawdust buildup below before it gets to the wheels.

I'm quite sure this problem is solvable, just that I hadn't focused on that aspect
yet.

With
all my

experimenting, I made quite a lot of sawdust. Enough to fill this bucket twice.
Much of this is the result of cutting thin veneers. Not that I need veneer, but I
wanted to exercise the saw as much as possible.

(I did find a use for that veneer later)

 Because this "sawmill" is more of a
bandsaw than a bandmill, it also has
a narrow kerf like a bandsaw. The
kerf is about 1.2 to 1.3 mm wide. So
this sawmill would actually be a
good saw for cutting up particularly
valuable stock.

I only
had a
few
log

sections to test with for the time being, so I cut it into lots of thin pieces to
maximize the number of cuts.

Here's
the

veneers spread out. These are 2 mm thick. That makes them quite flexible, and
unfortunately prone to warping. I have no need for this veneer, but I figured,
having cut it, I might as well dry it. It would be a good starting point for making
plywood. It's certainly smooth enough to glue straight up. I later used some of
those pieces to make some homemade plywood.
Taking it apart

I don't need the sawmill all the time. That's why the head of this "sawmill" is a bandsaw
that can be used for other things as well.

Here are all the extra parts that are needed to convert the bandsaw into a sawmill.
Not shown are the 2x4's used as rails.

And
here it
is

partially disassembled. The two large brackets shown can be broken down
further, but this is compact enough to get the whole thing into my car.

The bandsaw and sawmill frame in the back seat of my car. All loaded up to
show it off at the Ottawa Woodworkers Association meeting.
Here's starting to slice a 2 mm piece of veneer off a log. People were very
impressed by that. Vic Tesolin told me afterwards that he didn't think this thing
would work until he saw it cut up that log.