Mr. Tool to His Own Rescue
September 12th, 2009Pulley Project
I went to Northern Tool and picked up a band saw. I just got done with the basic assembly. If you get one of these things, have a friend handy when you assemble it, because it’s not fun. I used a hoist to get it out of the box and onto its base, but if I didn’t have a hoist, I would have had to cover the floor with a blanket or something, assemble the whole saw on its side, and pull it upright. It weighs about 120 pounds, so it’s not a joy to handle.
Here’s a bummer: one of the pulleys on the belt drive is chipped.
I emailed Northern to see if they could send me a new one. Meanwhile…I have a lathe! I have steel! I have a band saw (which will still work in two of three available speeds). I can make a new pulley!
Maybe.
I have a lot of aluminum. I should be able to slice off a piece and turn it on the lathe. Unfortunately, all the aluminum is square stock. I don’t know how much it will like being turned into round stock.
Anyway, it’s a project I can conceivably do. Very exciting. The original pulleys are cast iron, but I don’t think aluminum will be a problem. The big pulleys on my lathe are aluminum.
Guess we’ll find out.
September 12th, 2009 at 4:33 PM
Can you mig weld in the chipped space and turn it back again?
September 12th, 2009 at 5:20 PM
I think the pulley is cast iron.
September 12th, 2009 at 7:00 PM
Missed that. Oops.
September 12th, 2009 at 8:36 PM
Or you could check McMaster Carr – I betcha that if they don’t have the exact size, they have one, very, very close to it.
September 12th, 2009 at 11:02 PM
Depending on the size and location of the chip, it may not affect anything except looks.
Gerry N.
September 12th, 2009 at 11:15 PM
I have the Grizzly version of this saw; once you get it running, you may find that the bed is very slightly out of alignment (~1.6mm low on the side opposite the blade). As a result, your cuts won’t be exactly square.
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I compensate for this by putting a tongue-depressor on the “low-side” under the stock I’m cutting. I use tongue-depressors a lot for epoxy mixing, so they’re easily available around my garage.
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Other than the square-cut problem, it’s worked flawlessly for me for the past 5 years. I think you’ll like the auto-stop feature once the cut is done…
September 13th, 2009 at 8:04 AM
But he wants to use his tools!
September 14th, 2009 at 1:39 PM
Cut the square into an octagon before rounding it, I reckon.
September 14th, 2009 at 2:15 PM
You would have to be familiar with metal-cutting band saws to understand why that isn’t a great approach.