Carolina Bandsaw Set Up

Hi all,

thought I'd check in to share with you that the bandsaw fix up was a success in the end!
I thought about what Jim Dawson here said, that if its crooked in the pivot you can really only adjust for the horizontal and vertical planes. Fixing the pivot is a lot of effort and probably wouldn't work well in the end either. Going back to the saw, I finally noticed that the small little platform at the cutting site on the saw bed was welded on just crooked enough to be completely fouling it all up! I can't believe this wasn't something I noticed and fixed at the beginning of this project! Now it was clear that this crooked platform was giving me two different readings depending on where I put the fence and messing up my attempts at adjusting for crooked pivot. So I carefully cut that thing off, and welded it back on flush with the saw bed. Now I could adjust the horizontal plane, and I spot welded a small cut of 3/16" flatbar (not shown in photo) to the now corrected platform. Now, adjusting the blade to cut straight was a easy, even if it is crooked and weird, it's at least cutting square to itself. In the end, it was such a simple solution. And, it's been awesome actually using this bandsaw for work! Not to mention the rest of the shop is pleased the metal shop is a little bit quieter than usual!

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Congrats on the diagnosis and fix! But please be careful of language.
 
Good job Kaylee-more grrls should do "guy stuff". Is that your cat? Mine has a snipped ear too. Can't tell from the photo but the right one is clipped.
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Mark S.
 
Just wanted to say Thanks to all who responded and offered assistance to Kaylee as I just brought home a used HV12 Carolina and used the info here to help do the setup and perform the checks to get a good "tune-up" on my saw. I got the saw from a friend of a friend who's step dad had passed last year, he was a backyard mechanic and tinkerer.. while searching for info I found much "bad press" on those other sites and I was worried I was getting a pig in a poke if you will.. I just kept thinking that it's a machine and I'll just fix what's wrong and make it better. But using this thread and watching out for the problems mentioned, I was able to easily complete a cleaning and setup with great results and it still has the original blade (I think). I cut a 3" piece of steel and the cut was within a 64th of square so I am thrilled to say the least.

Again, thanks to all for sharing in the discussion and thanks to Kaylee for starting the thread and posting the final solution, it certainly helped me!
 
I also have the HV12,so reading these post has inspired me to do a tune up on my saw and maybe weld piece plate on the bottom side to stiffen it up some.Thanks for posting,very good subject-------kroll
 
I sold an HD10 recently after years of tinkering and trying to improve its performance. I bought a DoAll full size saw, and am happy. The Carolina saws have a number of problems: from bad pulleys, to blade supports that are in the saw axes but not the blade axes, to lack of stiffness in the main C-member. Just before I sold mine, I went through the saw and realized, in my case, that the saw was chucking blade teeth because of stiffness issues in the main member. I put an indicator on the base, and touched the blade supports. And I measured the deflection of the supports as I tensioned the blade. Yes, you should expect this to move the supports. But I was seeing very large deflections (.100") of the non-pivot support relative to the vise as I tightened the blade. I clamped added stiffening straight across the 'C' of the saw, and got to MUCH better cutting. If you can support the ends relative to each other, the C will not 'roll up' as you tension the blade. And once the saw loads up into the cut, the 'C' will not flex/catch in the cut, causing issues. Jim
 
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