Ok - I've had a great day regarding the bandsaw.
Apart from the 'doh!' moment with fitting the belt onto the right speed (something even the guys at axminster didn't think of), I've tuned the saw to within an inch of its life.
One of the main issues was the lack of solidity and rigidity. When I was trying to cut anything, the whole thing seemed to rack and roll. Due to poor alignment, I couldn't bolt it down to the case on all four sides, and one of the bolts didn't have an opening for an allen key, so I created a new hole and bolted it down.
I also screwed a piece of chipboard across the bearers on my wood floor to reduce any bounciness, and then bolted the case down to this board. This has created a vastly imrpoved rigid platform.
The other thing I did was to place a bag of soil into the bottom of the case to add some extra weight, and vibration dampening - this has had a marked difference! The whole thing runs a lot smoother now, and a lot quieter.
Finally, I removed both wheels, glued the bottom tyre back, and then trued up the tyres with sand-paper to level out the 'bumps' that was making the blade wobble back and fourth.
After a re-alignment of the guides, squaring up of the table, and modifications to the mitre-guage, I now have an accurate and useful machine.
I also changed the blade from the EPS 1/4 to the Axcalibur 1/2 - this was a dramatic improvement. I think the wider blade improves the stability and cuts better - I won't be buying EPS blades again. I'll stick with Axcalibur, and I'll be ordering some thin material blades from Tuffsaws.
After all that lengthy-ness, here are some photo's of the mods, and a video showing me cutting some 35mm mahogany, and 56mm beech. The video is poor quality because I was cutting and filming with each hand - and the feed-speed of the cutting was slow because I didn't want to stress the blade too much as I hadn't waited too long for the glue on the bottom tyre to set.
Video:
Photos:
So, my conclusion: Spend some time setting it up - make sure the dudes at the factory have set the belt on the right setting, and use a 1/2 blade. Also, make sure that you weigh the case down, or make sure it's on a rigid floor/base and you should get some excellent results.
I'll be keeping this for a while and really testing it out. I can't afford to upgrade or buy another for a while as my washing machine has broke, and my head-gasket blew this morning, so its been an expensive day, but now that I have fixed it up and got it working well, I am really pleased.
So the saga ends.
