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Old 04-19-2016, 01:02 PM   #46
glatt
 
Join Date: Jul 2003
Location: Arlington, VA
Posts: 27,717
4/15/16 Friday afternoon

I had a solid hour after taking my elderly cousin to a doctor’s appointment and before dinner.

I started off by measuring. These plans are for a “16 inch band saw.” This size refers to the wheel diameter, but the plans are in metric because the guy lives in Canada and comes from Germany, so his plans actually call for wheels that are 40 cm in diameter. That works out to 15.75 inches. So they are a little smaller than a true 16 inch band saw. If you are measuring the circumference of a 40 cm wheel, after the metric to English conversion and doing the πr calculation to get the needed circumference, you find these plans call for a pair 49.478 inch circumference wheels. That was the number I was aiming for. The more I thought about it though, the more I realized the size just didn’t matter as long as it was close. The only thing that really mattered was that the wheels matched one another, otherwise the band saw blade would not be plumb and cuts would not be square. In fact, if I really wanted a true 16 in band saw, I should be shooting for a circumference of 50.265 inches. It was time to stop removing material.
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Time to start shaping the pulley. The tool rest I made works pretty well. It’s not metal and the wood is denting a little as I rest the gouge against it, but I didn’t care. The tool rest only needed to last for a half hour or so. I smoothed the rough uneven surface of the pulley and made it round.
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I got it nice and smooth. I didn’t worry about the diameter of the pulley. I could change the speed of the saw by adjusting the size of the pulley, but probably not by much, so I didn’t bother worrying about it. I didn’t even know what the speed should be and there were other variables that factored in to the speed that I could always change later.
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And then I started cutting a notch for the v-belt. I just guessed at first but then compared it to the actual belt I had to fine tune it.
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