Grizzly has their 16" bandsaw on sale for 500 bucks, so I figure this is a good time to retire the Craftsman bandsaw, especially in light of the fact that I gave the Craftsman a good beatdown with an oak cudgel last week. In fairness to the poor little thing, I have (ab)used the heck out of it, including a lot of resawing, for many years. Any more it goes BAPBAPBAPBAP when it runs because the motor bearings are shot, and the shiv is worn on it's arbor. I think it was less than a hundred bucks new, so I definately got my moneys worth out of it.
Anyway, the Grizzly is due for delivery tomorrow, I started up the towmotor to make sure she's ready - the bandsaw ships at almost 500 lbs.
220V 2 horse motor, 113" blades up to 1"W, should be nice. As usual with these furrin made machines, I expect it to require some tweaking. Picked up the Grizzly 1495 lathe a few months ago, and it was surprisingly fit; went together well, instructions made sense, was well balanced, 3-jaw chuck was nice, spindle steady worked good. Aside from a needle sharp piece of weld wire hidden inside the cabinet that speared my finger, the only thing wrong with it was kinda odd. Sort of a didn't know any better more than a lack of care in manufacturing problem: the two 12" and the 24" toolrests were not ground parallel to the ways/CL of the workpiece. In fact, one of the 12" rests wasn't even ground past the rough casting. We put them in a surface grinder and made them pretty and now it all works great. Then we made a nifty outboard turning tool rest stand from a material feeding stand from an old threading lathe, filled it's 4" column with sand, and a good time was had by all.
-- Timothy Juvenal
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