I bought a band saw the other day. It has no brand, but there is no doubt in my mind that it is another rebranded chinese one. It shows signs to be of some age as it seems to have taken quite a bit of abuse, but I aim to make it a nice little reliable cutting machine for my shop.
I seem to have forgotten to take pictures of it when it was bought, so this is the one showing it closest to stock condition. My shop is beginning to get a bit crowded, I know.

Things I figured needed attention:
- Bolts at all ends of the machine were bent
- When sawing, both the motor mount and the saw cover would rattle like crazy.
- The motor pulley was very badly aligned with the gearbox pulley
- The motor mount was very hard to adjust, therefore making speed changes very time consuming
- The blade is worn, having a clearly visible dent
- The hydraulic lowering was more or less the on-off type
- The hydraulic cylinder is leaking
- The vise handle has about 10mm of axial play
- There is no filtration of the coolant
- The gearbox oil has probably never been changed
Fist off, I pulled of the hydraulic cylinder to try to clean it

I found lots of gunk in the oil, and a quite coarse adjusting mechanism. I might redo this adjustment sometime.

When mounting the hydraulic cylinder, I discovered its simplicity. Apparently, only the lower side of the cylinder is made to take pressure, as a plastic ring (which seems to be the seal, and is also leaking) in the top of the cylinder popped out when I mounted the cylinder to the saw again and tried to swing the saw up. I let some of the hydraulic fluid off, to have some air in the upper region instead, and now it is working semi-fine.
Here you can see the alignment problems on the motor pulley

But I still managed to cut a test piece in some steel. (T-slots for my mill, in the making)

I decided something had to be done about the motor bracket, so I removed the old one.
Here I have also added a set of wheels to the rear of the saw, will need wheels at the front too.

And after a bit of fiddeling and some paint, a new one was made

Both lathe, saw and mill were used in the production. For the curious ones out there; no I did not have any thinner steel plates


The motor needed some ways of adjustment, so the mounting holes were elongated. I was quite pleased to be able to use the vertical spindle straight away, instead of having to flip the head over


Here the motor is trial fitted on the new bracket. The strange brown thing on the table my new coolant filter.

The pictures became quite dark, anyways, the motor is mounted on a hinged plate. All I need to do to change speeds is loosening the screw with the flat iron on and move the belt. Now the belt is also running straight, within a millimeter or so.
