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
www.rude-tone.com/work.htm