# New Old Continental Band Saw.............



## brino (Sep 9, 2019)

A few months ago I found this old Continental bandsaw at a local store.





It had been used for cutting wood, I wanted it for metal.
With the original blade it cut that piece of pine when powered by one finger in the wheel spokes.

My current vertical, metal-cutting bandsaw was homemade (not by me) and I always noticed a flex in the frame.



You can tell by all the cut-offs on the table that it certainly has been useful.

The upper wheel would actually move closer to the lower wheel in pulses as the wheel turned. I suspect one wheel is eccentric, and I always meant to fix that.......but.....when I saw the heavy frame on this Continental saw I decided it was simply time to upgrade.

This frame won't flex!




However, the "new" saw is so heavy that I think it would crush the plywood box that the other saw sat on.
I needed to find something stronger.

I took the Continental saw off of it's old base:




and dug out this old heavy frame that I picked up when my in-laws moved.....






It originally had a wood table top in that angle frame, but it was rotten from being stored outside...
I also had to replace the ball-bearings in the swivel castors they were seized tight.
I added the two (unpainted and with chalk marks) internal horizontal pieces of 2" x 1/4" angle for the saw to sit on.
That gets the band saw table to about 46" from the floor comfortable for me.

There's more to come....stay tuned.

-brino


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## brino (Sep 9, 2019)

Here are a few details of the "new" band saw.

The wheels are 19" diameter, and the table is about 16 x 16".
It takes 125" blades.

It turns so smoothly that when I fit a newly silver-soldered blade I cut thru some scrap while turning the wheel with one finger.
That was 1/4" x 1" flat bar and some 3/8" round bar.

There is some info on VintageMachinery here:
http://vintagemachinery.org/photoindex/detail.aspx?id=33955

Here's the upper blade tilt and blade tension adjustments:




Here's the 16 x 16 inch table:



The blade insert is actually a piece of lead that's been peened below the table:



Here's the original pulley:



and another shot of the top wheel:



still more to come!
-brino


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## brino (Sep 9, 2019)

Like I said, I actually bought the Continental saw a few months ago, but other projects were holding it up.

I finally decided that I couldn't wait any longer because I was out of floor space. I had
1) the old homemade vertical metal-cutting bandsaw on its plywood box,
2) this "new" Continental saw just sitting UN-moveable on the floor,
3) that old frame empty and in the way, and
4) the engine hoist brought into the shop from the shed to help with the transfer.

I could barely move in the shop.....I had to walk sideways to get anywhere!

I got some paint on the new frame/base and bolted the saw in:






Then I took the engine hoist back to the shed.
Finally I could move around the shop better.

I still need to get a motor hooked up, and get rid of that home-made saw.
I offered it to a friend that will give it a good home......

-brino


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## brino (Sep 9, 2019)

For a motor, I'm thinking of this one saved from one of those free treadmills that I junked a while ago.








I still have to mount it in the frame and I'm hoping to leave space in the bottom for some much-needed storage.
Also, I need to rig something to replace the approx. 2' x 1' control panel that currently runs it.

Those probably won't be soon, too many projects......but at least I can walk thru the shop.....

-brino


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## francist (Sep 9, 2019)

Sweet! That table surface looks like it's been turned instead of the usual ground finish. I've never seen that before.

Cool machine, and from Montreal too boot!

-f


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## Latinrascalrg1 (Sep 9, 2019)

Nice find, That Saw is Gorgeous!  Cant wait to see the modifications you plan to do.


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## C-Bag (Sep 9, 2019)

Congrats on the new saw Brino! Yup, vertical bandsaws are the bomb. So you're going to set it up for metal? Or wood or both? I'm interested to see how a treadmill motor would do over time with the dust, swarf at low speed if used for wood and metal. I'm going to keeping an eye on this.


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## mikey (Sep 9, 2019)

Beautiful saw, Brino! It looks more solid and aesthetically pleasing than any modern bandsaw I've seen, that's for sure. Congrats!!


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## Ken from ontario (Sep 9, 2019)

deleted


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## brino (Sep 9, 2019)

Thanks everyone for all the comments and support!



mikey said:


> It looks more solid and aesthetically pleasing than any modern bandsaw I've seen, that's for sure. Congrats!!



I want to cover the bottom wheel for safety, but almost hate to because of the beautiful spokes.

-brino


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## mattthemuppet2 (Sep 9, 2019)

very neat, that's a beautiful old saw. Great idea to use a treadmill motor and I don't think you'll have any problem with swarf - none of the ones on my lathe did and there were whole drifts of swarf back there occasionally. One thing to consider though is a jack shaft to lower the speed of the saw drive wheel. Treadmill motors are way fast, so do some calculations to see what speeds you'll get with a single belt off the motor and what size pulley you'll need on the drive wheel. If that won't get you low enough, you'll need a jack shaft. Eg. on my lathe I have a 3:1 reduction from motor to countershaft, then 1:2, 1:1 and 3:1 ratios to the spindle pulley. That gets me a low low speed of 100rpm and a high speed higher than I'd want to run (3000rpm plus).


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## Logan 400 (Sep 9, 2019)

You could box the wheel with expanded metal.


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## NCjeeper (Sep 9, 2019)

That is a sexy bandsaw.


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## C-Bag (Sep 9, 2019)

brino said:


> I want to cover the bottom wheel for safety, but almost hate to because of the beautiful spokes.
> 
> -brino


Oh I so picture something Art Deco along the lines of the pattern of the guards on my old Atlas 7b......


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## Dabbler (Sep 11, 2019)

What a find!  Old Iron at it's best!


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## jcp (Sep 11, 2019)

I've got a thing for old saws. I envy your new acquisition. Just got a Millers Falls power hacksaw built sometime around the turn of the last century. It's apart now getting some new pieces (all manufactured in house of course).


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## DiscoDan (Sep 11, 2019)

Logan 400 said:


> You could box the wheel with expanded metal.



NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!


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## brino (Sep 11, 2019)

jcp said:


> Just got a Millers Falls power hacksaw built sometime around the turn of the last century. It's apart now getting some new pieces (all manufactured in house of course).



Would love to see some pictures of that!
I'm sure it deserves it's own rebuild thread.
-brino


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## brino (Sep 11, 2019)

DiscoDan said:


> NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!



I get that...it would be a shame to make that beautiful saw look too industrial.
However, the expanded metal is cheap and available......I likely have enough on site to do it......


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## Janderso (Sep 11, 2019)

Beautiful saw sir.
Such styling. 
I am green with envy.


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## brino (Feb 22, 2021)

Okay this saw has been waiting far too long!

I will show a little bit of the motor controller in another post......I got lucky that this one just needed an analog voltage to vary the motor speed.

I knew I wanted to add a speed reduction between the motor and the saw input shaft. I went looking around for options and thought about pulleys and counter shafts. In the end, I decided to use a worm-gear speed reducer that I had picked up many years ago for another project that never happened. (I was thinking about building a dividing head loosely based on the Gingery design; but that project took so long to start that I ended up buying one in the mean-time).








I forgot to put a scale in the picture (again!), but the body that thing is about 5" wide, 6" tall and 3" thick.
The input shaft is 5/8" and the output shaft is 1". Both shafts have key ways.
That worm gear has likely been sitting in a box on the shelf for 15 years....time to put it to use.

Next I needed a coupler between the motor output shaft and the worm-gear input shaft.
The motor output shaft is threaded M14-2.0 on the end, but with a long 16mm shoulder.

I thought a Lovejoy coupling was what I wanted, they will put up with some misalignment.
However, I knew the local hardware store wouldn't have anything....and I also could not walk into the nearest most likely place to carry one (a fastener supply place in Ottawa) due to the pandemic lock-downs.....so I started to think about building one......

Once I got the idea of using a hockey puck, I just had to make one.
I cut two pieces of 1/4" steel plate, and turned some bushings to weld on.....and got this:

the motor (input) end:



the output end:



Those photos above were taken before the pins/tines were welded in......





A hockey-puck based homemade Lovejoy-type coupler!

Here's a test fit in the saw:




That is the band-saw input pulley at the top of the photo.

I welded a base onto those odd-shaped motor mounts and bolted both to a rusty piece of channel.

Here's a motor test:
View attachment motor_and_worm.mp4


Sorry about all the loose bits on the bench rattling around.

Getting closer........

-brino


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## brino (Feb 22, 2021)

Next I needed a pulley for the worm-gear output shaft to drive a v-belt to the band-saw input pulley.
I've never cut a v-belt pulley before, but here we go......

I found a lump of ugly steel that I thought had a pulley hiding inside.....


it's about 3" diameter. I really just needed something that would have enough meat left after I cut the v-belt groove and the 1" centre hole.

I did find a pulley in there:





the entire V was cut with a parting tool, first as a deep groove, then with the compound set over to each side to nibble away the corners.
I did get some chatter in the bottom.

Cutting the key-way went better than expected. I was worried about cutting such a long keyway but after I made some new longer shims for the broach it went great. The broach bushing was about the same length as the pulley...

Don't you love it when the broaching goes properly:



That's from the 1/4" broach for the pulley.....last week I broke my 3/16" broach for the hockey puck coupler....the press jammed at one side and went at an angle.

-brino


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## Janderso (Feb 22, 2021)

Nice save. That pulley is awesome.


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## C-Bag (Feb 22, 2021)

Sux about your 3/16” broach. You know there’s so much I don’t know until it comes up to be done and until you mentioned cutting that pulley I hadn’t really thought it through. I wouldn‘t have thought a parting tool would work at an angle to do the side of the V. Mine don’t want to work that great cutting straight in.


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## brino (Feb 23, 2021)

Hi Tony,



C-Bag said:


> Sux about your 3/16” broach.



My broach kit is a cheaper import set originally bought at Busy-Bee tools. The job I was doing at the time paid for the kit.
I was going to provide a link, but it looks like they are selling less tooling now. :^(

I have replaced the 3/16" broach with another import one from KBC tools.



C-Bag said:


> You know there’s so much I don’t know until it comes up to be done and until you mentioned cutting that pulley I hadn’t really thought it through. I wouldn‘t have thought a parting tool would work at an angle to do the side of the V. Mine don’t want to work that great cutting straight in.



I am sure there's a proper way to do it......I just followed what seemed right to me and what worked.

I had to look up the angle for the V, I used 38 degree included angle, so 19 degrees per side.
I faced one end, and drilled for and added the live centre.
I then cleaned-up the OD for the length of the part.
I used layout fluid and then marked four lines around the part from the freshly faced end; two for the bottom corners of the V and two for the tops of the V.
I cut a groove between the two centre lines to full depth of the V. This was wide enough to get calipers in to measure when to stop.

I tipped the compound to 19 degrees one side and still using the parting tool carefully tested nibbling off the corner.
That went well, so I just kept at it.
I was pleased to see that by the time the angle cut reached the flat bottom of the V that I was right on top of the layout line for the tops of the V.
I swung to the other side and repeated.

I test fit it with a belt I had on hand and made another shallow depth, slower-feed clean-up pass on the sides of the V.

I included a photo of my white-board sketch below.

I then removed the live centre support, and drilled and bored the 1" hole for the shaft.

I often do start parting on the lathe to define the end of the part and then take it to the band-saw to finish.
Here however, the parting tool was working so nice I parted the pulley off the stock fully in the lathe.
Note that I only needed about 1" of stick-out on the parting tool due to the centre bore.

You are right, I would NOT initially think of (or recommend) a parting blade for angled cuts, but when I tried it work well with no chatter.
There was also NO large feed pressures or any hint of the parting blade trying to bend or pull side-ways.
Be assured, if in looked, felt or sounded nasty I would have gone a different route.
I wish I knew what the steel was. It cut so beautifully I'd like to get more......

-brino


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## C-Bag (Feb 23, 2021)

Thanks for running through your process for me Brino. I have so many shop made HSS lathe bits I bought in a garage sale I probably would have looked through them to see if I could find something that would have done the job. Probably started center cut with my parting tools like you did then gone to the custom bits. They have proven to be super handy and instructive as some of my favorites are not commonly seen in a book. Same with what came on my old shaper.

My broach kit I bought from Shars several years ago on sale and has proven to be able to do the jobs. Broaching the 4” long cast iron press body 3/8” I did was a job. The broach bushing I made in two pieces out of 12L14. Since reading about 12L14 here on H-M I’ve been making everything that doesn’t need to be special out of it because it machines so nice. I wonder if the chunk old steel you made your pulley out of was 12L14?


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## Winegrower (Feb 23, 2021)

Great job, Brino!   And a nice write up too.
I would like to do something like this and I envy an inventory of components like you had.
Your flex coupler is dang cool!


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## FOMOGO (Feb 23, 2021)

Nice job Brino, could have easily been all pucked up by a lesser man. Any idea on your final speed range? Cheers, Mike


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## brino (Feb 23, 2021)

C-Bag said:


> I wonder if the chunk old steel you made your pulley out of was 12L14?


I was wondering the same based on recommendations here.
Thanks !

-brino


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## brino (Mar 1, 2021)

FOMOGO said:


> Any idea on your final speed range?



Sorry for the delay, I needed some time to dig out the laser-tachometer and check both ends of my speed range.
Here's what I currently see:




The low-end 5 sfpm sounds too low to be useful......I may tweak the resistors on either side of the potentiometer to move the low-end up.

The high-end 137 sfpm should be great for me. I know most of the manuals (including Machinery Handbook and Starrett reference guide) show many blade speeds up around 200-300 sfpm and up to 400 sfpm for aluminum, but those are typically with coolant.

Now I just gotta find the shop time to get the motor mounted.

-brino


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## C-Bag (Mar 1, 2021)

Yeah, I don't know where you would use 5sfpm lol. I settled on 118sfpm and it does it all for me because of available stuff. And that was after diving many a forum and looking at speed plates on various bandsaws. Sometimes I wish for a little faster but since I got the air powered sled going and I don't have to stand there and push it has solved all the problems. 

Good luck on the motor mount. I'm glad you are getting back to this as it had been so long I'd completely forgotten about it. Very worthy project and good job.


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## Dabbler (Mar 1, 2021)

I use 80 SFPM a lot on my big band saw.  I find 120 to be too high for 4140 using my blades.


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## brino (Mar 1, 2021)

Dabbler said:


> I use 80 SFPM a lot on my big band saw. I find 120 to be too high for 4140 using my blades.



Thanks for the input. It is appreciated.
My existing saw is fixed speed, so I do NOT have a great idea of what speeds would be preferred.

-brino


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