Hi John,
I mounted a riser block on my BS14002 and with the new, longer guide block post I see it is not parallel (front to back) with blade. Side to side is fine. Fixes I’ve read talk about shimming wheels. For my eye, it appears that the hole in the upper casting for the guide post is not perpendicular to the table (front-back). The blade is perpendicular to the table however. The usual result is to reset the guide blocks and thrust bearing each time I raise and lower the post. Not such a big deal it seems. The big deal to me is that when the post is down for cutting 1″ thick stock, the guide block holder is positioned all the way forward and just captures 3/16″ of a 3/8″ blade. The blocks should be just back of the gullets, right?
So, short of getting a new upper casting, could I re-bore the hole? Maybe take a half-round file and “straighten” the hole so the rod is perpendicular? If the latter I think I’ll have problems with the spring loaded rod that keeps the rod from a gravity fall.
Any insight/advice appreciated. Thanks for all your other bandsaw tips.
Roy
Replies
There are two possible causes for your problem:
1. There are paint or debris on the faces of the cast iron in the seam between the riser block and the the upper and lower halves of the frame castings. The faces in the joint should be clean of all paint and lightly filed to eliminate any burrs or high spots. It is also possible that the faces of the block or the frame pieces weren't machined quite square throwing off the position of the upper casting.
2. The hole for the guide post wasn't machined parallel to the vertical axis of the saw.
In my experience one or both conditions are common. I would start by cleaning off the faces of the riser block and the upper and lower castings, if you didn't do that when you installed the riser. If the top and bottom faces of the block aren't parallel, you may find that the alignment is better if you rotate the block 180 degrees.
The best fix for the problem is to shim the joint between the riser block and the frame castings, thereby tipping the entire upper assembly in a direction that would bring the rod closer to parallel to the blade path. I wouldn't file out the hole for the rod because this would cause other problems with aligning the guides.
John White.
Wow! I thought I had checked the paint/debris scenario between mating faces of the riser and upper/lower castings. Will certainly check this again and try the 180 rotation, then the shimming. Thoughts of re-reaming the hole gave my the willies.
Again, thanks for your advice!
Roy
Hi John,
Just a couple of thoughts: rotating the riser 180 degrees will put the on/off switch in the back (not a good idea I would think). Shimming will increase the distance between the screw holes where the rear blade guard mounts, thus not allowing a re-mount of the blade guard.
Any further advice is appreciated.
Thanks,
Roy
Not all machines have the switch mounted on the riser block, so I hadn't taken that into consideration. The shims, unless your machine is way off, should only add around 1/16" or so to the height of the upper casting so you should be able to mount the guard by just enlarging the screw holes slightly.
John W.
Thanks, John, for the tidbits. I finally dismantled the upper arm/riser assembly and checked the mating surfaces. There were some minor roughenings on all surfaces, particularly the base casting, so I smoothed all these down with a file, put it back together (mostly) but was still out of square. So, I inserted a 1/16" x 4 3/8" x 1/2" shim in front of the connecting bolt, and put it back together. Result: it moved the bottom end of the guidepost forward about 1/4" (in it's lower position). I reset all the guides and bearings and the guide blocks on the post now capture the 3/8" blade the way they should. I didn't notice any difference in re-mounting the rear blade guard; there was enough play/tolerance.
Again, your wisdom is much appreciated. Thanks!
Roy
I'm glad I could help.
John W.
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