Horizontal Bandsaw "mods"

[astroracer]

Thanks Gary, good idea. Post up a pic (in a new thread) and get your own builder page going..
Mark

[GaryR]

I had a really good cutting band-saw blade break on me a couple weeks ago. I had paid $45 for it, and being very Scot by nature, I wanted to get it back together again. I had tried to tig weld it and that didn't work out. I unfortunately burned up about 3/4" of blade trying to tig it so the blade is too short to mount in the Jet Horizontal/Vertical band saw. After finding a great explanation on Tom's Technique on "Silver Soldering Your Band Saw Blade" I built the jig to belt sand a scarf joint on the blade ends, and then hold the blade ends in position to solder them. I had never silver soldered before but it works out great. I cut it apart in a couple of new places for the exercise of getting some more experience soldering it back together. So I am ready should I break another blade.
GaryR
ps. I got the paste flux and 45% silver solder at a local welding supply house.

[Altair]

Hi Gary. Any pics of your soldering jig?

Al

[GaryR]

Hi Al,
I built one very similar to the one Tom uses on his real good site "Tom's Techniques"
He has a good video using its use.
I couldn't find the toggle clamps, so I just mounted a couple 1x1/2 inch straps and bolted them to the jig to hold the band saw down. It works quite well.
Hope that helps out.
GaryR

[jere]

Oh man one more thing I have to buy from harbor freight! Those clamps look extremely useful! Maybe remove the vise jaws completely and bolt some steel plate with holes predrilled for the clamps...

[astroracer]

Harbor Freight or Enco will have the clamp sets. I am building a brake line tubing straightener at the moment and had to do some wierd cutting on an old milling fixture I repurposed. Took the stationary jaw off and used one of those clamps to square up the fixture so I could cut the top 2 1/2" off.
Mark

[kbalch]

This thread has been moved to the Must Read subforum. Congrats (and thanks) to astroracer for making such a valuable contribution!

[crazypj]

It may be 'old news' to many of you but I came across a problem I hadn't seen before in ? years of using bandsaw.
Could not get a straight cut, blade veering off about 1/4" on a 2" dia bar from top to bottom
I told a friend who immediately told me to check side of blade
Turns out, I had been using saw vertical to rough out some circles in 5/8" thick stainless steel and it had flattened one side of teeth (haven't investigated fully, they could be worn away?)
Anyway, it was new to me so I thought I would post about it

[Paul Alciatore]

I have had to cut some pieces that were just too small and odd shaped to allow the standard clamp on my band saw to hold them. I drilled and tapped a couple of 3/8" holes a long time ago and made a strap to fit between them. That and a 3/8" clamp set has allowed me to solve a lot of cutting problems.

Another thing that I did was to drill and tap a hole in the outer end of the standard clamp on the saw. I have a 6" long piece of threaded rod in it with a nut "knob" on it. That saves having to find a suitable scrap block when I am using it to hold a short piece of stock. I just adjust the threaded rod for the same or slightly greater distance than the thickness of my stock and I can clamp the short piece easily and firmly.

[pfredX1]

Yeah welding band saw blades is sketchy. I've had good luck just brazing them though. I read about it on the net. I cut both ends at a shallow 30 degree angle then feather each end on a grinder to get the maximum surface area contact between both ends. Then I clamp them up in this jig and braze them.http://i.imgur.com/7SrdP.jpg

When the blade breaks again it usually doesn't break where I brazed it, but rather somewhere else. As blades age after a lot of flexing they get fatigued and they tend to start breaking all over the place then. Plain old every day brazing rod has a tensile strength of 60,000 PSI per square inch? Something like that. It is pretty strong stuff.