Hi,
New user and occasional lurker. This site seems to have the most recent traffic on the "better-built" portable bandsaw mill, so I thought I would ask my question here.
I bought one of these machines from the original manufacturer 25 years ago. I can't say "I love it" but it has become extremely useful, once I got though the learning curve of how to use it effectively and ruined a lot of boards in the process. I primarily like it because I can bring the mill to the trees instead of dragging the trees out of the woods to the mill by hand.
I used up the last of a batch of blades that I got from the company that bought the manufacturing rights to the machine and which has since gone out of business. I bought a new batch of blades from "timber wolf", who claims they've been making the blades for this machine since it was invented.
NONE of the latest batch of blades (5) will track on my Ripsaw. I have taken the driven wheel off and on a million times, trued it up, shimmed it this way and that, replaced bearings, checked co-planarity, etc. Nothing works. The blade gets to a certain point in its rotation and starts to shift off the driven wheel. That certain point is the same for every rotation of the blade, I verified that by tensioning the driven wheel until it just catches the blade, turning the driven wheel by hand to the point where the blade starts to shift and marking that point on the blade, untensioning the driven wheel and sliding the blade past the shifting point, re-tensioning and turning the driven wheel by hand again. The only conclusion I can make is that it's the fault of the blades, not the saw.
Any recommendations for a different blade manufacturer? There aren't a whole lot of vendors for 90" band saw blades?
thanks in advance!
