Thread: Help with Taiwan 14" band saw

Originally Posted by safari

I am having trouble getting my blade to run in the centre of both wheels. I assumed that if i got the wheels co-planar the blade should run pretty well in the centre but the blade immediately moves to the front of the tyre on both wheels. I can adjust the plane of the top wheel(it takes quite a bit) which moves the blade to the centre of the top wheel but the blade still runs runs to the front on the lower wheel and the wheels are way out of co-planar.

I wouldn't worry about it. , as long as the top one is near the middle andit doesn't look like the band is going to come off and it cuts true.

Thanks BobL. The saw works quite well as it is so I will take your advice. Unfortunately, I am one of those basket cases where I like everything to be as right as possible which interferes with actually getting on with a project.

Originally Posted by safari

Thanks BobL. The saw works quite well as it is so I will take your advice. Unfortunately, I am one of those basket cases where I like everything to be as right as possible which interferes with actually getting on with a project.

I can commiserate.
With my bands, which I change often, sometimes they sit in the middle on both wheels and sometimes they don't. I just get the top one to centre and let the bottom go where it wants to..

I believe that the wheels are not supposed to be coplanar. If the wheels are slightly offset it enables you to adjust the blade on the wheels.

John

I agree - the wheels on my bandsaw have been miles off coplanar from new, and in fact would need spacers making up to get them anywhere close to coplanar. I too quickly discovered that it doesn't affect the cut; the blade runs somewhere near the middle of the top wheel, and my saw has that adjustment for the top wheel to position the blade anywhere on the (crowned) tyre. By this method the saw is adjusted to cut straight (i.e. parallel with the fence). This means I don't need to adjust the fence for drift as so many people seem to do.

Same here. I fiddled with my 14" generic bandsaw for ages, and eventually put a washer behind the bottom wheel to bring it out to somewhere near co planar, and then learned that it doesn't matter.

I found there is so much stuff out there about tuning, fixing, tweaking and fiddling with bandsaws that there is a real danger of going insane before you actually cut anything.

There are a few gurus out there, but my go to person now is Michael Fortune. He sometimes does articles and videos for Fine Woodwoking magazine and I feel like he cuts through a lot of the "mystery" and gets down to brass tacks.

Michael Fortune does indeed know his way around a bandsaw very well - it was one of his articles in FWW that put me onto the idea of adjusting tracking on the top wheel to get cuts parallel to the fence. No need to constantly fiddle around with dialing drift into the fence setup. Once set for a straight cut in thin stock, bring up the rear thrust bearing to just off the back of the blade and you're done. Of course, this only really works with crowned tyres (which most saws have).