A lesson in Consumerism and Engineering

During my luthiering exploits, my favourite machine has definitely been the bandsaw that I bought. It's just such a versatile piece of kit. But the one I bought was pretty second hand and the more I've used it, the more frustrated I've become with some of it's shortcomings.

Four main things have started to pee me off:

Firstly, every time I need to change the blade, I have to take the front cover off. That isn't a terrible thing in it's own right but I have to undo two allen headed bolts; find the allen key etc and it feels like I'm deconstructing it. Petty I know but there you go!

Then the table is really crappy. Very lightweight and it doesn't sit straight across the slot for the blade.

The fence is ludicrously small (less than about 3/4" tall) and, as you clamp it, the adjustment changes so it's really hard to cut to a precise width and to hold timber accurately perpendicular to the blade.

Finally, the dust extraction port is pathetic - tiny and in such a stupid position that there isn't actually room to connect anything to it!

I decided that, if I am to produce instruments of any quality, then I need something that I can use with more precision and accuracy, so decided a new machine was in order! I started looking around and settled on one of the bandsaws  from Axminster or Record Power - the ones similar size to mine and receiving the best reviews were around £600 but I decided that it would be a once in a lifetime purchase so happy to pay it.

Once I tried to actually buy one, I realised that you can't actually get one at present (Nov/Dec 2020) as everything is on about a 3 month waiting list. This is all due to increased demand from Covid - everyone is investing in hobbies instead of going on holiday - and also the current global shipping crisis of ships and containers being in the wrong place in the world due to all the Covid disruption.

So I re-evaluated, and thought that, actually, I don't NEED a new bandsaw. I just need to fix the things I don't like about this one 😀

First thing to fix was those allen bolts. Amazingly, I found some scrap parts off a similar bandsaw for sale about 10 miles away for £5. Included on those parts were two captive knobs that I thought I could probably use to replace the captive allen bolts. This is the original bolt: 

... and this is the scrap part. Great, but it's missing some bolt sticking out of it!

So I found an 8mm coachbolt in the box of bits and cut two 40mm long sections, then screwed them into the knobs, after smearing the threads with some epoxy to lock them in place.

Much better - now I don't need to grub around for an allen key! Total cost so far £5.

Next job was to improve the dust extraction. I've been making vacuum adaptors for all of my workshop stuff out of uPVC rainwater pipe, so I thought that I could maybe use a pipe fitting to improve this. I got this joint, and cut it down in length a bit so that it wouldn't protrude too far into the machine. Then used a hole saw and file to make an appropriately sized hole in the back of the saw, just behind where the blade comes off the table.

I cut off the old outlet and just used some duct tape on either side to seal the opening, as it's not visible.

Then I mixed up some epoxy and smeared it around the joint surface fairly liberally to make sure it would fill the gap properly

Perfect! and you can see here how much more suction I can get. That fix cost £1.50 - total so far £6.50.

Next up is the flimsy table. I decided to plate it either side with an 18mm MDF "sandwich". The underside took some working out to clear all the mountings etc and I needed to chamfer the edges so it didn't interfere with the body. I bolted it all together after drilling though the MDF and aluminium table, using countersunk 6mm bolts. 

At some point, I'll rout a channel into the new top so that I can use my mitre gauge off the bench saw to make accurate angle cuts (actually that was another irritation - the weedy slot in the existing table wasn't big enough for either of the mitres that I have! So I'll be fixing 5 things!) The MDF and bolts cost about £15 - total so far £21.50.

You can see in the picture above that I made the top about 20mm longer at the front and have pre-drilled 4 extra holes - this is for improvement #4 which is a replacement fence. I bought this from Axminster and it is much more substantial and better engineered than the standard one. 

Here you can see the old and new side by side.

The carrier attaches using 4 more countersunk bolts and I used wing nuts so that I can easily remove it to change blades. The carrier also bridges the slot in the table, to keep everything flat there. The slide and cam locking mechanism is a massive improvement.

I attached and calibrated the scales so they can be used with the fence on either side of the blade.

I still need to set the fence up square - it's almost perfect but just needs a tiny bit of adjustment. Straight away though, I can cut this veneer less than 1.5mm thick off a scrap piece of sapele. This is such a huge improvement!

The new fence cost £25 - total altogether £46.50! 

I am so delighted that I did this - I'm sure that it will now be perfectly good for what I need. We are so ingrained to "consume" and my default was to buy something better but not only have I saved myself £550, I've also saved that resource and air miles etc in replacing something that I didn't need to. Plus, I enjoyed the  process of engineering fixes to each problem.