Building a Bandsaw From scratch.

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Hello, everyone.  Its been a long long time since I've been up on the forums, here, and I decided to drop in with a question:  Does anyone have a good source for bandsaw wheels?  I want to build a 16 or 18 inch wood cutting saw, for heavy resawing work primarily.  I'm basically going to copy the Laguna Resaw Master saw- I have the tools to do it, so why not use them?  The materials will cost a bit, but I figure I'll be able to put one together for about $1000- 1500 if I can find the wheels.  I just can't afford a saw like this otherwise.  Any ideas?Whats a day without flippin' like a trout?
Reply:You could cast them. Or get someone (huhuhem) to cast them for you. JoeH has some examples of his casting.MmmmmmmmmmmmBeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrGooooooooooo  oodddd!!!!
Reply:What tools do you have.What size do they need to be?I would cut some from plate with a plasma and then true them up with a lathe or vertical belt sander and a jig.Me!
Reply:I'll post the obvious answer first. Can you just buy a replacement set of wheels from someone? Jet maybe? If you can get the schematics for a saw you like, then just order the wheels. My only other thought would be a set of pulleys for flat belts. Mcmaster carr or grainger should have something that may work. My pulleys have rubber coatings on the drive surfaces but perhaps you can find a belt that will fit over the dia pulley you want.Good luck.
Reply:Here is a 24" throat model that I built.  Uses 4 6" caster wheels with urethane tires.  The 6" wheels kill a lot of speed and makes it easy to get it slowed down for cutting metal.  I used  3 step cone pulleys for the first stage of the speed reduction.  The fastest speed works well for cutting aluminum and wood. The wheel on the lower left is the power wheel, the wheel on the upper right controls the blade tension, and the other two are for blade tracking.  The construction is pretty easy and cost can be pretty low if you are a good scrounger.
Reply:Thats a nice looking saw.  What kind of blade life are you getting?  I have heard complaints about the three wheel saws using up blades faster, but I've no personal experience with the problem, myself.Most of the larger bandsaws I've seen use heavy wheels, made from welded plate components, attached to a hub.  I have a large plasma cutter, as well as my welding equipment, so I could easily cut a set of wheels if I wished.  It would be good to see that someone else had met with success on this sort of thing, but I suppose there really is nothing like just going ahead and trying it myself.  The nice thing about having a big plasma is i can use pretty much any thickness material I could want for the frame and wheels.Whats a day without flippin' like a trout?
Reply:I'd think the larger the wheel radius and the longer the blade the longer the blade life, at least from the stress crack end of the deal anyway.
Reply:Yes- typically the blade width you can run is limited by the wheel diameter, so that saw may have a 24" throat, but the minimum bending radiius the blade sees is very small. Typical on a saw with 14" wheels a 3/4" wide blade is a max. To run 1" wide blades you really need a saw with 16"-18" wheels. Unfortunately it is at 1" wide that the more "interesting" blades become available (ie carbide).
Reply:Capnbondo, I think that the critical factor for fatigue life of any particular blade type as a function of wheel diameter (and tension) would be blade thickness, rather than blade width.  Alternating stress at the surface of a blade would be closely related to fatigue life, and stress in the blade as it passes over a wheel would be directly related to blade thickness for a given tension and inversely related to wheel diameter, but would not vary with blade width [assuming that you adjust for the same tensile STRESS (that is, pounds per square inch of blade cross-section) in the blades of different widths, as you are supposed to].I think that blades used for resawing should be both wide, to provide the coarse tooth spacing used for resawing, and thick, for stiffness and to withstand high tension for straight tracking.  Therefore, I don't think a three or a four wheel saw like the superb saw that George Barnes built would be suited to resawing work.An advantage of buying replacement wheels from a known manufacturer (who will hopefully still be around when you need replacement tires) is that you will also be able to obtain rubber tires matched to the wheels and the wheels will already be recessed to retain the tires and will be properly crowned for blade tracking.Sounds like a neat project, Corvus corax.  I dreamed of doing exactly the same thing years ago but before I got a round tuit, I lucked out and won a 26" DoAll from Lockheed M&S surplus outlet.  Man, was that a chore to move.  High and off-center center of gravity and a low door height.   I've been using it for a couple of decades still sitting on the 4" high screw jacks that I used to wrestle it into the garage from the street.awrightLast edited by awright; 05-21-2008 at 05:44 PM.
Reply:I have a 14" throat Delta-Rockwell, made in USA. In 35 years, it's only needed a replacement set of rubber treads and one ball bearing for its Baldor motor. When I bought it, I added a 6" height extender block kit so I could resaw rosewood and spruce for my then guitar repair business. It's been a great unit. I wouldn't want to build one for the $300 I paid. It will take a 3/4" skip-tooth blade and blade life is very good. It appears from the color that the wheels were cast from magnesium.
Reply:Following up on the question of minimum wheel diameter for various blades:  After my last post I sent queries to Starrett and to Lenox asking if they had any recommendations.  Starrett did, Lenox did not.  Unfortunately, the info from Starrett was not on-line, so I can't provide a link here.  It was a fax of a page out of a third-party document.  Moreover, I had to request re-transmission due to unreadible fax, and even the re-transmission was defective to the extent that I can't just post it here (and don't have permission, anyway).  But the essence of the table is that wheel diameter recommendations are directly related to blade thickness and have no relationship with blade width.  Recommendations are:Blade Thickness            Minimum Wheel Diameter: 0.025"                                       11.5"0.032"                                        15"0.035"                                        16"0.042"                                        20"0.050"                                        24"0.063"                                        30"0.075"                                        30"Not sure what happened to that last one.  Maybe they thought 30" is about the biggest wheel diameter thay could realistically recommend.  This was in a report to The Hack and Band Institute, as I recall.  I could follow that up if anybody is interested.  (Hope the formatting of this table is retained in posting - I've had trouble with that before.)They also address recommended tension, but I can't decipher it since it is in units of inches.  Perhaps it refers to the tension spring in a specific machine.awright
Reply:Originally Posted by George BarnesHere is a 24" throat model that I built.  Uses 4 6" caster wheels with urethane tires.  The 6" wheels kill a lot of speed and makes it easy to get it slowed down for cutting metal.  I used  3 step cone pulleys for the first stage of the speed reduction.  The fastest speed works well for cutting aluminum and wood. The wheel on the lower left is the power wheel, the wheel on the upper right controls the blade tension, and the other two are for blade tracking.  The construction is pretty easy and cost can be pretty low if you are a good scrounger.
Reply:Without the sheet metal on it, you can see how simple the basic unit is to build.  The base and the backbone are 1-1/2" x 3 rectangular tubing and the rest is 1-1/2" square tube.  Except for the table crossbars and the motor mount, the main frame is built in a flat plane and then mounted to the base.  Machine work is minimal and simple.  It might not meet the requirements that the blade manufacturers specify, but this one has served me well for about 25 years or so and I am not unhappy with blade service.  Guess that I didn't get the memo on that.
Reply:Metal cutting saws have a bit of an advantage when using smaller wheels as well, in that the rotational speed of the wheel is acceptable running the lower SFPM that metal saws are generally using.  At 3000 SFPM, which is a typical resaw speed, a 6 inch wheel would be running about 2000 RPM.  An 18 inch wheel running the same speed would only be running about 625 RPM.  Quite a bit less tendency to vibrate.I don't know when I might be able to get into this project…  Maybe when I find something to build it around.  Either that, or its find an older welded frame saw, like an Agazzani, and fix it up.Whats a day without flippin' like a trout?
Reply:If you know how to cast and have the facilities, you could make your own wheels.
Reply:I am building a bandsaw from scratch. I have a local foundry that can make wheels but i am just going to have some burned out from steel plate to save some time...BobBob WrightSalem, Ohio  Birthplace of the Silver & Deming Drillhttp://groups.yahoo.com/group/southbend10k/http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sawking/1999 Miller MM185 w/ Miller 185 Spoolmate spoolgun