Horizontal Band Saw Rebuild

[RegionalChaos]

Hey folks,

I stopped by the local scrap yard today and checked out a horizontal band saw they had. It is basically a low end Chicago model. Likely purchased at Harbor Freight. It was missing the motor and the band saw blade guides. The switch was busted on it to. Now replacing the switch and scrounging up and mounting a motor seems simple enough. However, I'm not sure about the band saw blade guides. I don't think I have the shop space, tools and time to fabricate them. So I would need to replace them some how. Does anyone know if you can order replacement blade guides anywhere? Do you guys have any ideas? Other then the things I mentioned, the saw looked OK. At scrap prices it would probably only run me 15 or 20 dollars...

Any input is greatly appreciated

[irnsrgn]

http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.a...=1,41036,56060

[RegionalChaos]

Thanks for the link Irnsrgn. For 150$ though it seems like I would be better off just buying the thing new for 200$. I found a few different stores that sell the guides at around 150-200$.

I did find that Grizzly seems to sell them at more reasonable prices. But I am not sure if they are the exact match I need. I wish there was a Grizzly warehouse around me I could go walk into and check them out...

G1010 BLADE GUIDES DIAGRAM

[RegionalChaos]

I think through Grizzly it still comes down to 95$ when S/H is factored in... Hmm..

[johnny99]

The first thing I would check are the worm gears. It sounds like someone stripped off the useful bits and chucked the frame for a reason.
If yyour not willing to pay what the replacement rollers cost, then your probably going to have to fabricate your own. It's not really very hard.
I have made them before from roller blade bearings that I bought for a couple of bucks at the second hand store.

[RegionalChaos]

Johnny, yea they look close to roller blade bearing size..

The worm gears looked OK. They were left in the frame. Spinning the vbelt wheels spins the wheels holding the blade. The wheels holding the blade tensioned fine, and in general stuff looked OK.

My thought about why it got tossed was that someone might have burned out the motor, then pulled it to replace it, then never got around to replacing it. No clue if thats the real reason though...

I think I might go back tomorrow and look at the guide attachments.

Right now I'm thinking that I probably won't get it, because I don't have too much time or space to deal with it right now, and I don't have a huge pressing need for it yet. My main focus (and priority for cash) is on finding a DC stick welder. However I'm sure that as soon as I find one of those, I probably will have a need for the saw!

[irnsrgn]

Sorry, for some reason my brain registered vertical band saw.

[RegionalChaos]

Well one thing I was thinking about was that it could be used as-is (with a new motor of course) in the vertical position. Really I only need the guides for horizontal cutting. Well, I guess with no guides it would probably still wobble in the vertical position.

At HF I saw a portaband for 100$. That seemed like an OK solution too

[Mills]

I just picked up a Milwaukee portaband for $210 which included shipping. It is a reconditioned one from CPO Milwaukee and was on its clearance rack. Milwaukee Reconditioned Tools There is the link. I chose the 2 spd, deep cut version w/o a case for 199 and 8+ fro shipping. Over at forgemagic there has been some discussion on removing the auxillary handle and using that point to build mounting brackets for vises and creating larger tables for vertical operations.
This morning I am going to build an adaptor to mount on one of my Irnsrgn inspired vise tables and use it as a horizontal cutoff saw on tubing.

And yes once you have a welder the need to cutoff material increases exponetially.

[Bear]

Hi chaos,
just watch your local craigslist and ebay. I am picking up a wellsaw 58b ( with wet cutting ) for about $300. This is normally a $2400 saw new. Just keep looking and you'll find a great deal. That hf saw is considered not too bad on most of the forums i have read(although you have a lot of people who hate harbor freight just for being harbor freight).


Sean