Building a bandsaw on the cheap from mostly scrap wood

[glatt]

4/7/16

Last night I reconfigured the way I had the steel shaft clamped down. I removed the sloppiness that was there before, so the bar isn't swaying 1/8th of an inch back and forth with each turn of the wheel. It's rock solid now. I turned the wheels a little bit more, but was very tentative because I didn't know how much material to take off. I knew the wheels were a little oversized, but during glue up, the plywood panels had shifted around slightly, and it was possible some spots on the edge didn't have much material left for me to remove.

So I looked up what the finished diameter was supposed to be, and I measured the circumference with my wife's cloth tape measure, and see I have about 2 inches of circumference or so to remove, and around a quarter inch of radius to remove. So I can be less tentative about this and really make some sawdust. The size of the wheel doesn't have to be exact, but the two wheels do need to match one another pretty much exactly or the band saw blade will not be plumb.

Working for 20 minutes or so during random evenings after work, you don't make much progress. Hopefully I'll get some real work done this weekend.