Thread: Unknown age Tanner Saw

I got some new 10 inch saw blades in a few teeth pitch ranges. But they have 30mm bore on them. One did come with a washer that reduced it to a 1 inch bore(25.4mm). So my solution was to make new washers with a 30mm spigot and recess to allow for the radius to clear the sharp edge of the blade. I made the spigot about 1 mm longer than the blade thickness. The spindle flange has a 1.8mm recess in it, so some of the 1mm will enter into that recess. It also maximized the area against the 5/8 inch register. I made the washers 30.0 mm on the spigot , that is a nice snug fit into the blade bore, and made the inner bore 15.88mm diameter. It is a nice sliding fit. I put a very small amount of taper on the wall of the washer. So when it tightens up, any bell mouth effect will change the contact point from the tip only to more down the face. The distance is only small 0.03mm over the length of the face. Just a very small amount of dishing.
Here is the finished pictures. Forgot to take some when making them. I made them from a pre hardened stainless steel, we call Ramax. Tough to work with, but with sharp tools comes up nice and shiny.
Neil

You're doing nice work on the old Tanner - just a couple of thoughts:
Mitre 10 does a 12 piece saw blade bush set that will take your 30 mm blade holes down to the nominal 16 mm in a couple of steps - the set is only about $3. Worth having a couple in the shed for matching up various blades to the standard arbour.
Roger at Downtown tools (the Power Tool centre in Whangarei) is the man to talk to about Tanner saws and bandsaws and he does have some secondhand bits and pieces out the back (things like mitre slides etc) if you're after that sort of thing.
The motor needs to move freely on the rod at the back and it needs to slide along as you adjust the tilt to 45 - quite often better to have the saw running as you tilt the blade - otherwise a standing start at full tilt will often throw the belt.
For bits and knowledge locally drop down to your local Menz Shed - the guys there are likely to be still using an old Tanner as their main saw - unkillable machinery
Kevin

Thank you for the very useful tips. I made the new washers because there is some small amounts of wear on the shaft, and because those washers tend to be fiddly and have come out of the blade. I gave one to a long time friend who really likes the adapter washers.
I have not thought of the Menz shed programs, so will look into that.
My saw top has the 1 inch wide slots, and they do not have any parts available for my model saw. I did get some bras flat stock that is a very good fit into slots, and will see if I can get a second hand mitre set, and just make another base rail for it.
From the looks of things, many have several mitre guides, some set for 45 deg permanently and other angles. So will look into that as an option as well.
I did find a blade guard.
Thanks for again for the ideas.
I have been getting the corners welded on the frame, and repainting it back to the original copper colour. I have a new fence from a commercial saw, and have a second shorter rail , with the option of a long rail to cut up to 1200 mm wide. Will need extensions for the table that needs to be sorted at a later stage also.
Neil

Looks awesome - I need a metal lathe!

SO finally got around to making a dust cover for the Thrust bearing repair. Shaft was worn alot and fixed by using a thrust bearing. Made a cover from some plastic water pipe. The fixed side of the thrust bearing is side that is a neat fit to the shaft. So that end is a light press fit into the cover. The other end has a little over 1 thou or 0.03mm is diameter clearance. It allows the bearing end to rotate with not much drag, so not much dust can get in there. I pre oiled the thrust bearing with a bit of the Wynns oil product for old worn out engines. It is rather gooey stuff and are hoping that the small amount in there stays and does not leak out the gap on the end cover.
A lot more still to do. Next is to find or make a splitter blade and a spacer to have it at the correct alignment with the blade.
Neil

So I have started putting it all back together and sorting out the the missing pieces of the puzzle. I did have some great help from Roger at Down town tools.
I made a reference plate to mimic a blade and used the slot and some adjustable parallels to set the run of the saw to that of the table slots. I assembled the
panels to the base with new bolts and washers. Made a new bottom support bar from some inch diameter Ali bar stock that I had already. Also brought a frame to make it easier to move around with. I slotted the holes of the frame to match those of the cabinet, and did it so that the cabinet could be rotated 90 deg if I was not happy with the stick ability of the frame to the shop floor. I would have preferred the swivel wheels on the side of the motor, but was not stable enough on the floor. So at 90 deg like it is, it will stick to the shop floor very well. Next is installing the degree plate. I have been looking for another one, but not come across any so far.
With the spring between the motor and the saw box, as the blade is rotated, the motor moves along the rod that the mount pivots on quite nicely.
Next will be the new switch and plug ect, and then getting the insert to fit flush with the table top. Will also look into making other plates at a latter stage as well.

Well it is all back into pieces again. When I put the fence on, I noticed that the dummy blade was moving around a bit when raised or lowered. Also noticed that when it was tilted and brought back up to square again there was some miss alignment of this dummy blade. The slop in the trunnions was the problem. It was not sitting correctly into the trunnion shells, and the pressed plates were bent by quite a bit as well. I never repaired those as they looked to be working and seemed fine. The front end with the threaded rod to adjust everything was still working ok. It was the back end that had the most slop. So I just gently straightened up the pressed end trunnion plates, and refitted them to the trunnion shell on the box of the saw. Did both ends. To get it back I just gently hit it with a small hammer and punch, raised the inner section of the trunnion pressed plate. To the point where it slid on but was too tight to turn easily. Then just carefully scraped off the high spots until it could rotate nicely, but without clearance to feel in the assembly. I did both ends. Then put them onto the Mill Drill and milled the outer part of the pressed trunnion plate shell pieces to the same height. I noticed that the previous owner has a screw hole in the front and a 1/4 inch bolt going through. So on the front section, I will replace the 1/4 bolt with a 8mm one and drill it to suit and at the same time make it into a sprung drag assembly. This will keep the box in the forward position. The rear trunnion will also get a lightly sprung assembly, but will have the added feature of a tightening sleeve as well. The spring tension will come from some Bellville washers spaced as back to back pairs of shells. This will be more compact than trying to use a compression spring .
This will lock the assembly solid when it is set. I am hoping that the constant drag on the better fitted radius of the trunnions with the lock, are going to make it more stable. Just lifting the motor up and down or with a light pull sideways, was making over 1mm of movement at the back of the blade. That may have been the real reason for it going to being the fire wood saw.
Will take pictures of the parts over the weekend and the small mod to hopefully overcome the issues that must have been plaguing this style of saw construction. Like a lot of things, you learn more from mistakes or overlooking things because you thought it was working just fine before, just had noisy bearings. I am thinking that it had been dropped looking at the way the plates had moved in the same direction.
Neil

Now the saw Goes.
The for motor that I brought the saw is configured to only ever run in a clockwise direction. I took it to a shop in town who has a motor rewinder, he looked at the windings and said it was specially configured to only ever run in a clockwise direction. So bought a new motor that can run either way , and is now configured to run counter clockwise the correct way for this saw.
I ended up doing a lot more work than expected .
Got the trunnions panel beated back very close to flat, how they were when new. The trunnion pieces now fit nice and neat into the plates how I think that they should have been when new. There was some deliberate bending of the frame to match the mismatch in the hole centres of the holes drilled and tapped in the top casting. Turns out that I have some polypropylene sheet left over from another project that was the right thickness, that if used on both ends as a spacer shim would have the saw Trunnion assembly in the correct place and the holes would all align properly. I milled flat the pressed part of the outer trunnion assembly on both ends, also added a bolt and thrust washer, with Bellville washers for a constant pressure on each end of the assembly. I uses 2 sets back to back with one extra at the front, so uses 5 Bellville washers in each end.
The open end has a cap over the Bellville washers that applies pressure directly to the thrust washer, that will lock the trunnion in place, without effecting the preloaded aspect of the Bellville washer pack.
Next was to make up the bracket that braces the back of the frame. I had some angle iron and some 5mm thick rectangular section. I was going to try and make it all from the angle iron, but then decided to use the M6 screws and stuff that I had. The bracing has worked out very well.
With that done, was to check the blade alignment, to discover that even the weight of the motor was influencing the alignment etc. So put it all together correctly with the spring, then realigned the assembly to the table slots with the trunnion locked in the vertical position.
Put the shorter guides onto the machine and aligned the fence to the slots in the table.
All the electrical stuff was done and tested fine.
Did some test cuts on some scrap pieces of wood and it all works well. It is very quiet and smooth running. The fence to blade alignment seems to be very good as well.
It does need a splitter, and will be getting that done as soon as I can do a nice drawing for the profile cutters.
The Mitre gauge got an upgrade of a bronze pin that was a press fit to the centre bar and a nice close rotating fit to the mitre gauge casting. I left the top paint and patina of the guide blade on top for memories sake. Painted the knobs and made a bronze washer from the same stock as the ones used on the trunnions. I left the minor dents still on the surface that the locking washer works on. The 90 deg stop is still very good despite the closing up of the slack that was there, and the rh 45 deg stop was also very good. The left hand one is un usual as it is set to around 47.5 deg for a reason that I don't know of. It was last used some time in 1976 or so as a mitre gauge. Roger of Downtown Tools in Whangarei, had new Mitre gauges, so I have a spare or if I need 2 for some reason.
May get 2 splitters made, one that is like the original, and had the flippy top over cap on the top of the splitter, and the other made to follow the blade, but will need to be adjusted manually. It will follow the arc of the blade as it is raised or lowered. As it follows the arc, the blade can be lowered with no issues. Blade just cant be raised without raising the splitter. Then will still be the issue of a dust collector to connect to a vacuum cleaner or cyclone etc, and a cover for the motor and belt. One suggestion was a cover that just does the belt and pully on the left hand side and attach it to either the motor or the motor mount. So that is on the list still to do, apart from doweling and the painting the fences. I am going to see if I can transfer the dowel holes and the drilled holes to the very long extensions I have for the railing that came with the kit.
For the inner Ali plate, was considering making a more substantial plate from 6mm strong Aluminium plate, and then having the wood insert only the shape of the gape and joining onto the new Ali insert. So a I don't have to make whole plates, but just using the saw can cut out the recess for the blocks to fit and make a template to drill the holes to attach it to the new plate through some flush sitting counter sunk brass screws and brass nuts on the under side slightly recessed into the wood insert.
Just more ideas for down the track with this old saw. It does do a very nice cut, but that is expected with new blades. The onepiece washers for the blades work very well and are not fiddley like the small inner washers are.
The raising or lowering of the blade with the thrust washer assembly is better than I thought it would be. The lock works well also. The tiling works well, even though I did not put a thrust bearing on that one, it is nice and smooth. It must be that the trunnions are working properly now, and not racking like they were before. The end lock is great and just gives it an added lock.
Neil

Originally Posted by Lightbulb

...It does need a splitter, and will be getting that done as soon as I can do a nice drawing for the profile cutters...

...May get 2 splitters made, one that is like the original, and had the flippy top over cap on the top of the splitter, and the other made to follow the blade...

Are all your blades the same kerf and same plate thickness?

I have two different blade thicknesses in the blades for my table saw, and so need two riving knives. The riving knife should be thicker than the plate, but thinner than the kerf, in order to work as intended. I guess splitters work the same way (I'm not really sure I understand the difference - except that some splitters have the blade guard attached).

Cheers, Vann.

The riving knife is what the modern saws have. It moves with the blade as it is raised and lowered.
Yes you are correct that the plate needs to be wider than the saw blade, not the kerf of the saw.
All the new blades are the thin kerf type and are all under 2mm in the saw blade thickness, but have a
2.5mm kerf or so.
The older 1/8 kerf blades have a 2.3mm body, so for those I will need a wider splitter or spreader.
Yes the old splitter or Spreader was quite long and did have the blade guard attached. Some new saws
have the blade guard attached to the riving knife , and the whole assembly will rise and fall with the
blade height adjustment.
The idea of the one that follows the radius of the mechanism, but is hand adjusted, is to still have something behind
the blade , even on shallow cuts. There are times when you don't want a spreader, like using a dado set up or if you are
using the blade to create a feature in the wood etc like when the part is being feed at an angle to the run of the blade to
create the shape of an elliptical groove etc.
Thanks for the reply.