Thread: Bandsaw repair success story

Hey guys,
Just wanted to share this story in the hope that it might help someone else some day. When I was searching for info on bandsaw repair, there was precious little to find, so here's my contribution:
I took the old rubber tires off my 16" bandsaw with a view to replacing them with urethane. When I did get the urethane tires on, 2 issues became apparent:
1. The blade wouldn't stay on the wheel as there was no crown (some saws have them machined into the wheel, mine didn't)
2. The blade was wobbling/vibrating pretty badly, which led me to realise that the wheels were no longer perfectly circular
I contacted dozens of woodwork machinery places about various options - new vulcanized rubber tires machined and crowned, wheel balancing, grinding/turning the wheels back into concentricity etc. This didn't yield much (except Woodfast in Adelaide), so I started calling and emailing any place that came up when I googled "engineering shop". Many places weren't equipped to do the job - more suited to CNC production run stuff. Many places said they could do it, but it'd cost around $400 per wheel (rather buy a new saw!) Then finally, I came across a place in Altona called Refine Engineering who said they could turn the wheels back into true, machine a crown into the wheel and fit some new bearings for $200 total!
So I've fitted some new urethane tires, and the blade now tracks on the centre of the wheel with no wobble, and the saw is working well again!
Big shout out to Refine Engineering