Magna Shopsmith Bandsaw for Metal?

The thing to keep in mind that to cut metal needs a much slower blade speed than to cut, say, wood (like, 10X slower). So, if someone's messing about and adapting things, that's fine, but ask what blade speed they ended up with without telling them what you plan to cut (sort of a trick question).
 
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Wood is usually 3,000fpm, metal most like 120fpm. That’s why I’d did a double belt reduction. A gear box would have been nice but it would have added $$ and I didn’t have the time to do the virtual vulture on CL and eBay.
 
I built an entire car using the HF 4x6 horizontal/vertical bandsaw. I found that while the chopsaw aspect of it was nice, I was using it in the upright position about 97% of the time. For that reason, for the second car I bought a proper upright variable speed bandsaw and don't regret it.
 
I know we seem like toolaholics (and we might be) but every tool does best what it was designed to do. I’d actually never worked anywhere that had an actual metal vertical bandsaw until the last place. They had a huge old DoAll and it was a beauty. But totally impractical for my 2car garage shop. The 14” has a smaller footprint than the 4x6. But all my saws are good for what they are designed for. The only one I got rid of was 12” abrasive. Never did like the dust and noise and the 4x6 makes better miter cuts for big stuff. The 14” is more accurate.
 
Already kicking myself over the two ER-10 speed reductions I got rid of, but how did you rig your jack shaft?
 
I assume your talking to me. I looked in different forums and most seem to agree the FPM for steel is around 120. Stock the HF 14” set up for wood is 3,000fpm. So instead of going with a gear box I went with a double belt reduction, 14” to 2” to 14” to 2” and used an old table saw motor mount. So they all hang off the main pulley auto tensioning.
 
I just recently bought a combo wood/metal bandsaw. It has a 1725 rpm motor and double belt reduction.
700 fpm is the slowest blade speed from the factory. With a new Lenox blade it will cut through 1/4" plate steel no problem. I plan to swap out the pulleys for ones and inch larger and smaller to drop it into the 300 rpm range which according to Lenox is fine for their blade.

Part of the consideration is your primary material. If it's non-ferrous I wouldn't bother with a reduction. I cut aluminum on my wood only bandsaw no problem.
 
The problem I had with trial-and-error with my band saw was testing the new cutting speed after swapping pulleys. My first attempt was still a little too high, maybe 400 IPM. I used a piece of 1/8 steel to test, initially it cut great, but a half inch later, I had a brand new bandsaw blade blank on my hands in seconds (that means no teeth at all). Once is oops, twice is foolish! I'm looking for a DC treadmill motor for the Enco now.
 
I found this site very helpful when determining the pulley speeds.
Once I determined the shaft speed for the wheel I used this from Vintage Machinery to calculate the SFM.
 
I don’t remember where I found a pulley calculator but it was super simple. It enabled me to not only do the double reduction, but even told me the belt lengths! Just the thing for a math impaired dummy like me.

Ive always found I never seem to get in trouble going slow. At 120fpm(which one guy said the DoAll ran at) I’m still using the original Lenox blade I bought when I did the conversion. The addition that also made a big effect was the air powered sled I added. I’ve cut 3”x3“ blocks of aluminum, iron and steel. Just chuck it up and set the air pressure and let it go. Kept me from getting impatient and pushing to hard.
 
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