Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemmingman
As with everything else, you get what you pay for. I bought the cheapest saw I could find at Lowes and I've pretty much given up using it. I can cut with a hacksaw faster and use my sanding station and deburring wheel to clean it up.
I have a friend that has a floor model band saw that I use on thick stuff and just use a hacksaw on the angle that I have to cut. I dont have the real estate for a nice one, so I just gave up on the idea of a bandsaw.
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I wanted to close the loop on this comment I made. After posting this I got several PM's with lots of good info and observations that people had made on their saws to make them useful. Thanks again for the wonderful advice. I bought different blades, cleaned all the moving parts, re-adjusted everything I could find to adjust and still this saw didn't have the "umpf" to cut through anything but the thinnest sheet. Even 1/4" pine made it labor. At this point I assumed that I had gotten a bad motor with mine or there was some other defect. I resolved to sell it in the next garage sale we had. The saw, BTW, is a Skil 3385.
One day a friend was over at my house checking out the progress on the plane. I lured him over for beer, but little did he know he was going to get a riveting lesson so that I could possibly use him in the future for help <insert evil laugh>.
He's very good with tools, so I mentioned the problems I had with the band saw. So we plugged it in and tested it. He agreed that the saw wasn't working correctly. He tinkered with it for a few minutes, adjusting this and tightening that. He then asked me, "What about this lower pulley?" I said it was static and didn't need any adjusting. I had cleaned it with alcohol and gotten off any oil or metal shavings that I could find. He said there is an adjustment here. You can put the drive belt on a larger diameter hub on the pulley. He showed me where he was talking about and I couldn't believe it. I had never once noticed that there. We took tension off of the motor mount and put the drive belt on the newly discovered pulley. We reassembled everything and powered it up. It sounded more determined, less dainty than it had before. I fed a scrap piece of oak flooring into it and the saw never missed a beat. It cut it perfectly. I tested it on some scrap angle and it mowed through that like it was nothing. I think it would cut marble if I tried it.
So, if you've got an under powered band-saw, I hope this will help you just like it helped me.