Thread: Fettling a 2004 era bandsaw

I bought my bandsaw, sold as a Draper BS350A in the UK, a long time ago when I first became interested in woodworking. At that time I was a keen viewer of Norm Abram in the New Yankee workshop and thought that power tools were the only way to work.


Over time I came to realise that I couldn’t possibly afford the standard of kit I saw on TV


I fiddled for a long time with a cheap table-saw trying without success to align the blade to the mitre slots. I made cross-cut sleds and tenon jigs as seen on TV but was never happy with the cuts. I read about aligning tables, all the adjustments which could be done on a professional table saw - then looked at my table saw with an aluminium body, motor support rods press fitted into non-adjustable slots cast into the top and concluded correctly that it was a piece of cheap rubbish.
The noise was a problem as well. I was working 9-5 - trying to fit a hobby into evening hours with close neighbours meant I often was forced to wait till the weekend to do any work.
Donning a dust mask and eye and ear protection to use a router wasn’t something I looked forward to, even with two workshop vacs in operation a thick layer of fine dust over everything including me was more of an ordeal than an enjoyable hobby.
I bought the BS350A bandsaw cheap at a local supplier and at that time it seemed not much better than the rest of my power tools. The manual wasn’t great about blade tracking other than keeping the blade on the wheels and the drift I saw with the stock blade meant any cut with a fence or mitre guide was a lottery. The top blade guide post wasn’t parallel to the blade, when winding it up and down it wobbled from side to side so I was adjusting the guides with every change of workpiece thickness.


I probably would have given up woodworking except that I began to use hand tools. Once I’d mastered sharpening I found that I enjoyed working with planes and chisels with no need for a corded router. Minimal noise and the shavings and chips could be quickly swept up. The table saw was junked, the router relegated to a cupboard and the bandsaw sat forgotten for 14 years in a corner of the garage.


Then I retired in 2019 and had more time for my woodworking.
One aspect of hand tool work I’ve never enjoyed is re-saw. I made kerfing planes and frame saws but re-sawing even six inches of beech or oak is hard work.
My gaze turned to the bandsaw in the corner. I’d un-tensioned the blade and waxed the table when I left it. My garage is dry with a frost heater in winter for the paint and glues so there was surprisingly little rust.


The bandsaw was dragged out again. I looked for info online and discovered that while Draper still sell a 14” bandsaw it’s nothing like my BS350A model, the current one is a BS350D. I found manuals online for the B, C and D versions so it was interesting to see how the model evolved over the years, more powerful motors - 1100W now rather than 750W, slightly increased re-saw capacity and reduced weight.
It’s obvious that most low-cost bandsaws come from one source in China. In the era of my BS350A I’d noticed at the time that other UK Axminster and Charnwood models looked very similar. In 2020 the same applies, and found on this site

Originally Posted by barri

Just posting an observation.

Having just bought my first bandsaw (hafco BP-310) I decided to watch some, I mean lots of videos on all the adjustments necessary to get good quality cuts including the Guru Mr. Snodgrass and I was absolutely amazed how many times I saw exactly the same bandsaw rebadged


In Australia the Hafco and Sherwood ( YouTube)
In USA Wens ( YouTube )
In UK Charnwood (YouTube ), Lumberjack ( YouTube ) and Draper ( YouTube )

I also found a lot more information online, the Snodgrass videos were particularly informative. I put the top post at its highest point and set about fettling the tracking and guides as per his instructions. It was a revelation. When I’d first tried to use the bandsaw many years earlier I’d read about compensating for drift, marking a board and cutting into it along the line and then aligning the fence to the board edge. Of course any drift made the mitre slot and gauge useless.
Setting the blade square to the slot with the tracking gave me acceptable re-saw cuts with the old stock blade even though I had used it a few times for curved cuts. The Snodgrass videos made me appreciate for the first time how tracking changed blade alignment and how proper tracking with an undamaged blade with equal set eliminated drift. I also now understood that I needed two blades, a blade for straight rip cuts and re-saw is not for curved cuts because the curved cutting abrades the set unevenly.


I looked on my bandsaw in a new light, now a useful tool worthy of some attention. I had to make a high re-saw fence and here the aluminium extrusion rip fence from my long ago junked table saw came in useful. The stock low BS350A fence was highly adjustable both left and right and in tilt. I wanted to use the tilt adjustment to perfectly square up a tall re-saw fence but didn’t want to modify the original fence. The old table saw fence T-track fitted the existing holder, giving me the full range of adjustments and being able to draw back the fence to the blade if desired.


However the main reason I’m posting is because I was able to fix the guide post movement which had made the saw seem cheap and nasty and this might be of value to other owners of similar era bandsaws.


I dismantled the guide slider mechanism. There are two controls for it, a side knob to lock it firmly in place and, once loosened, a rear rack and pinion knob to raise and lower the post. It had always locked firmly in place, the problem was that as it went up and down the position seemed highly variable with lots of movement.
guide post gear knob sml.jpg

I took the sliding aluminium post extrusion out along with the adjustment gear, nothing obviously damaged or misaligned. I put the aluminium post in on its support bracket and moved it up and down, supporting it with my hand since without the adjustment gear it crashed down to full extent any time the lock was released. It had a slight bias to one side, about 1mm over the whole travel, and none of the variable wobble I’d seen previously. I shimmed the mounting bracket to the casing with a couple of extra washers at the top. Bit of trial and error, 1.5mm washers too much, 1mm washers better and 0.7mm washers spot on. The post now slid up and down (and tightened) perfectly square.

Then I put in the gear wind-up and down mechanism, the wobble was back and I now realised that the gear mechanism was shifting the loosened post from side to side as it turned and the tightened lock bolt didn’t return the post to square.
I almost just junked the adjustment gear, the saw would have perfectly usable without it. Shifting the post by hand and not letting it drop was an inconvenience but much less so than constant guide adjustment with any change of height.

The gear mechanism has play built into the design, it’s a spring loaded shaft moving in a bushing bolted to the rear panel. The screws holding the bushing had been tight when I removed it so I’d replaced them that way. I slackened off the two mounting screws half a turn each to give the gear mechanism a bit more play – problem solved, the post always tightened in the same plane. I didn’t want to just leave the screws loose in case they came undone with vibration so put a spot of thread lock on each screw.

I now had a saw which complemented my hand-tool woodworking, doing the long rip cuts and re-saws and letting me enjoy the joinery.

Another mod I made was to the guide mounting slots. Draper only sold ½” maximum width blades for their 14” bandsaws and that still seems to be the case for the current version. A wider blade is better for re-saw and the limitation is usually can the bandsaw frame handle the tension. The BS350A is heavier than the slightly larger modern 14” versions and the frame and wheel mechanisms seem very sturdy. I found no problem tensioning a ½” blade and I was able to source a 5/8” 3TPI blade the same thickness as my original stock 1/2”. There was no difficulty in tensioning this but the guide mounting slots had to be slightly lengthened to put the side bearings in the right place. On the bottom mounting plate I filed the slots just over 1mm longer. The inner of the two scribe marks is the old end of the slot.
bearing bottom slot lengthen sml.jpg
The 5/8” blade is my go-to option now for re-saw. As well as the tall fence I also made a tall spring loaded featherboard to hold the work against the fence. I used a couple of low furniture movers for the rollers (one of the benefits of always scavenging hardware over the years).

resaw sml.jpg
The other BS350A mod I’ve made is a circle cutting attachment. There are lots of sled type circle jigs online but the modern Hapco is different. The top guide post on this has a lug on the back for a circle guide. I liked the idea of a top down swivel point, it seemed much easier to quickly and accurately set a point down on the desired centre on the stock than first installing a sled on the table and trying to put a board down on a swivel pin you can’t see.


The Hapco circle cutting guide is a rod sliding in the lug on the top guide post to set the circle radius, with a holder on the end to set the swivel down level with the blade. The BS350A top guide is two pieces held together with a rear bar fixed by two screws. I found I could fix a bracket to that which wouldn’t interfere at all with normal operation.
My final version uses a piece of T-track as the slider. Slightly more awkward to install since I use two bolts to hold it to the bracket instead of one but apart from that the operation is the same.


circle jig sml.jpg