HF Bandsaw Blade Guide

Author: Dave
Date: 12.31.12 - 7:59am

I have a cheap harbor freight bandsaw i bought new back in 98. For the price you honestly cant beat them at least for a home shop. The trick is they need some love to get them reliable and in good tune.

Now adjusting a bandsaw always seems to require a bit of voodoo, there is a lot to adjust. The blade guides in particular on this one were challenging. It looks like they drilled the holes by hand because they knew the eccentrics would make up for it. They are all over the place and take every ounce of throw from the eccentric to make it run straight. I have though been able to get it to cut a solid 3" steel round pretty much perfect though. But were not talking about those blade guides today.

Today were addressing the problem of the blade being thrown off the wheel if the blade catches. In sticky materials like Aluminum, especially if it has a variable cross section, this happens more than I could tolerate anymore. The little solid cast iron wheels on the bandsaw just dont have much grip on the blade and you can only apply so much tension.

The pict below is a quick and dirty experiment to try to address this. I will follow up in a couple months with results. Basically I just screwed a plate onto the lower wheel thats just a bit wider to try to keep the blade from popping off. I believe its the lower wheel causing the problem because there are blade marks in the sheet metal cover from rubs. Normally the blade tracks fine.

I know this is horribly ugly. I had the metal disk already cut out in my scrap box for the last 12 yrs, i wanted to use it. Originally i thought i could make it just the 1/4in wider i needed by welding a piece of 1/8in strip around it. Actually first i started with trying to wrap 1/8 tig rod around it. The tacking welt fine, but the welding itself was horrible. Just the tiny bit of tension left in the rod from wrapping made it spring apart as soon as it got hot, plus the rod melts easier than the base metal. Basically, I made a HUGE mess. Then i tried 1/8 strip..still to hard because when it got hot enough to weld it was so small, there was no part of it not molten, than and the internal spring left over from the wrapping. Just not happening.

Finally i took the hint and, well... it got some ugly ass tabs welded on because i wasnt scrapping the part after i had already welded the hub on and bored it to dimension. I drilled and tapped the center shaft 8/32 so it can be held in place by a screw and a giant washer.

The single edge welds on the tabs were actually strong enough to withstand turning it to final dimension on the lathe, I was impressed I kind of expected at least one to pop off.

Comments: (2)

On 01.06.13 - 8:56am dave wrote:
Had the blade stick a couple times, not able to jump off the lower wheel anymore, now it just keeps slipping instead of immediately heading for the hills. so far so good!

On 05.01.22 - 8:46pm dave wrote:
so I bought this saw in 1998. (24 yrs ago!). It has been an amazing investment and a reliable tool all of these years. I wish i could remember what I paid. I am guessing around $180. (They are currently $345)

The new ones have some design updates and are now produced to a notably higher standard so I finally bit the bullet and bought a new saw this weekend.

The old ones had a horrendous stand. The new ones are much much better. usable, but I had already built a nice heavy duty wood saw horse style bench on casters for it. Its amazing how much of the design has not changed in all of these years.

Anyway, I needed a way to securly attach the saw to the bench. Below is what I came up. The stand mounting holes are already the right size for a 3/8-24 bolt so I just tapped them as is and bolted it down with 3 of these.

I should be able to take this one to my grave lol.

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