Fixing bandsaw blade drift?

[Steve Maskery]

The very early Basatos (Basati?) didn't have brakes, as that model came out just before braking was mandatory. So it could well have a CE mark which was accurate at the time.

Do you still get the squealing if you lubricate the face of the thrust bearing and the sides of the blade? You could wax the blade with a candle, for instance to see if it made any difference. I'm not sure what it wold tell you, mind, but it might at least identify exactly from where, if not why, the noise originates.

S

 

[dickm]

I can't answer Roger's point about bearing direction ****, but a guess is that as fitted the wear is spread over the entire face of the thrust wheel/bearing. This as a result of its rotation.

A bearing lined up as a more typical cylindrical roller might develop a grove in the surface that would disturb tracking - as the blade would normally always contact the same circumferential line...

Certainly that's a thought. But would the bearing actually wear that fast? Presumably the outer ring of the race is pretty hard, and there shouldn't be that much relative movement between blade and bearing, as the bearing should get up to blade speed pretty fast. In theory, most of the time the blade just misses the surface of the back guide, and this only comes into play when the blade is relatively heavily loaded?
I've seen Startrites where there are grooves worn in the back support, but there the support can't move with the blade and so some grooving is more likely.
So still a bit puzzled. :?:

 

[ondablade]

Hi ****. Pardon the delay, I've been off cavorting on other forums for a while in search of bandsaw information. I don't know if that sort of wear is a real issue, and there are some saws that use a bearing as a thrust guide. The trouble is that even a very minor groove could probably mess tracking badly if the groove got out of line with the blade back.

ian

 

[ondablade]

Just an update on this topic guys. Following the above I concluded i needed to change my bandsaw to enable deep resawing as well as general purpose use, and got very interested in one of the heavy duty 5300HD (21in) or 6300HD (24in) bandsaws made by OAV in Taiwan. (might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb) As sold by Axminster, and by a local distributor over here - also by Grizzly Tools in the US.

This was as a more reasonably priced option to one of the heavy duty and rather expensive Italians - by Centuaro, Agazzani, SCM, Minimax etc. But it proved very hard to get to clear info on their capability - despite a month's digging on various forums, and through our importer (who was hampered by his contacts taking holidays).

Some of the guys both here and on the Woodworking forum went to a lot of trouble to communicate the benefits of the big Wadkins and the like too. They got me going, and i did quite a lot of digging on them too - but was hampered by my unfamiliarity with them, and fact that there are not too many over here.

Anyway. This is just to say that events have conspired to move things along. I talked to a guy closing his kitchen making shop and selling a late 2008 NRA600 (24in) Agazzani 3kW (the latest model with the yellow blade guard, and the more accurate guides) with very little done a couple of months ago, but it was out of my price range.

He called me back this week (the market for saws is dead flat with so many shops having gone out of business as a result of the collapse of our construction boom), with the result that we were able to reach a very attractive deal subject to inspection. I bought the saw today - which is spotless.

So whoopee, and thank you all for helping me along this far. All i have to do now is to get some good blades from Tuff, and figure out how to power it from my single phase supply. It's looking like a rotary converter, or maybe a motor change is on the cards....