Getting a cheap bandsaw to cut straight...

[TonyWilk]

Yes, I know I bought a cheap piece of tat ( see this thread ) - only £84.99+vat, so I did expect to have to fettle it a bit.

Biggest problem so far has been on trying to get it to cut straight.

Admittedly, I've never had a bandsaw before so it took me ages to fiddle about with the blade guides and cutting inch chunks off the end of a bit of old scaf. tube before I eventually realised... the main hinge wasn't square

The RH end of the cast bed has a couple of lugs with a pin thru that holds the bandsaw arm - the pin wasn't parallel to the bed so the blade didn't fall at 90degrees. It was out by about 4mm at 100mm up from the bed.

In the end I've made one end adjustable by sawing off the hinge (after drilling it) then bolting it back on. I've got one central bolt threaded into the hinge plus two smaller bolts through threaded holes in the bed.

This gives plenty of vertical adjustment (plus a tiny lateral adjust) - first try at setting it up with a setsquare checking the blade rise and fall and it cut very nearly square - a bit more tweaking on the blade guides and it should be spot on.

Yours,
Tony Wilk

 

[shenion]

Very nice. If my base wasn't so heavy, I'd try it. Mine is a US version so the base is heavier, I would not want to try and drill it.

On mine, I added washers where the left side pivot bolts to the head (opposite where the counterbalance spring connects). That has the same effect.

 

[gavuk]

hi ,when i was looking for a bandsawi found loads of pages on modifications like this one ,http://www.mini-lathe.com/Bandsaw/Bandsaw.htm
bought second hand clarke which had been set up well ,so didn't have to bother modifying hinge points ,will get around to replacing the stand ,glad i bought it rather than mechanical hacksaw tho .......nice mod tho

 

[JimM]

My bandsaw wasn't square either, although I took the easy way out and stuck a couple of shims under one side of the vice to make that square to the blade, rather than the blade square to the vice