American B36 Bandsaw-could use some help

[Mal Paso]

I just acquired an American B36 Bandsaw. I haven't checked the runout in the wheels, going to try to do that today. I could use whatever pointers to getting it running and sources for bands, tires, and parts. It might be "Garden Art" but I'm going to take a shot at getting it running. I think it was made between 1900 and 1925.

[Duckiller]

Mal. Rockler Woodworking has tires that are adjustable. This is from memory, replaced my made in China saw before the tires went. Had a local craftsman the sharpened saw blades and would make band saw blades any length. He got old and retired. May be a local sharpening service that would do band saw blades. No idea on parts but the internet is wonderful. Lots of luck with your new toy. Jeff

[jcren]

I am not familiar with that rig, but I built industrial bandsaws for a living and ours didn't have tires, the track pull-back was set by the jacking bolts on the idler and blade guide position.

[W.R.Buchanan]

Mal: check the wheels with a strait edge to see if they have a crown on them if they do it will probably run without tires.

The thing about old machinery like this is that it is infinitely rebuildable. As long as most all the parts are there it is just a matter of Sand Blasting and painting everything. I usually use a palm sander with fine wet or dry sandpaper to refinish machined surfaces like the top of the table.

All bearings and belts will be available at any Bearing House.

Good Luck and you'll have a piece of machinery that will last another 100 years.

Randy

[ndnchf]

Check out www.owwm.org

[Mal Paso]

Thanks Guys!

No crown. There were remnants of rubber on the rims. This one has ball bearings with zirk fittings. I understand the early ones were babbitt bearings and very early wood wheels. One of the lower guide bearings and the tension scale are missing but everything else seems there. I decided to disassemble it on the trailer rather than risk more damage. The tension gauge and foot got cracked before I found it. We'll see how good their cast iron is. I welded a big table saw arbor that came out great and a '52 exhaust manifold where the iron structure collapsed under the arc like styrofoam. I'm betting good quality as the 1 piece frame casting is 8 feet tall and lasted 100 years before mishandling.

Thanks again.

[Frank46]

If you can see the balls in the ball bearings try getting a set of sealed ball bearings so as to keep whatever your cutting from getting inside the bearings. I had what my mother in law called a wicked table saw. My father in law gave it to me. No motor,no table guide or anything fancy. Stuck a motor that came off an office style filing cabinet and made up a guide. Cleaned years of sawdust from the leveling gear and tilt mechanism before I could start to use it. When I moved to louisiana I gave it to one of the tech guys at work. He loved it as it really didn't take up that much room and he was always doing small projects.Frank

[DougGuy]

I am pretty much an old school journeyman welder with 45yrs in shipyards, pressure vessel shops, offshore, fab shops, refineries, paper mills, chem plants, on and on and on. Used to use nickel rod to do cast iron, but that's old school now too, move over rover let EZ Weld take over!

TiG welding cast with EZ Weld filler wire is unbelievably easy and really good quality weld. It has no nickel or chrome in it, has near perfect color match, very strong tensile strength, some amazing chit I will give it that! Welding cast has never been this easy. This stuff welds copper to carbon steel, copper to stainless, carbon steel to cast, they have a coupon showing all 4 metals welded into one piece with EZ Weld. Not cheap at $30/lb but for what it does? Well worth the investment! Hasn't been on the market long, I have only recently heard of it and ordered some to use on a 100yr old Griswold waffle platter and it turned out better than any expectations I might have had..

Ordered the EZ Weld filler wire from Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Ez-Weld-Tig-Wire/dp/B00COWWI0C
(http://www.amazon.com/Ez-Weld-Tig-Wire/dp/B00COWWI0C)
(http://www.amazon.com/Ez-Weld-Tig-Wire/dp/B00COWWI0C)
Some neat pics and info on their FB page (along with pics of the Griswold piece I welded):

https://www.facebook.com/DavbroInc?fref=ts



(https://www.facebook.com/DavbroInc?fref=ts)

[Ballistics in Scotland]

They made some good machine tools in that era (just look at some of the things they did with them), and a bandsaw doesn't have the parts and accessory problem you get with old lathes etc.

Urethane tyres are better than the originals, although you might have to find a supplier prepared to find one to measurement, rather than what the writing on the box says it will fit. I bought a Startrite bandsaw, small unless you have to lift it, and one improvement I made was to the plain steel guides, which were deeply grooved by the back of the blade. I found a third party supplier who made ball bearing roller guides, which in my opinion are well worth having. If that hadn't been available, I would have silver soldered a strip of tungsten carbide into the back of the slot. Really slow speeds would be useful if you want to use metal-cutting blades.

If it doesn't already have a good fence for guiding the workpiece, I would recommend a piece of 4in. aluminium square hollow section extrusion, like the one I bought on eBay.

[Mal Paso]

I am pretty much an old school journeyman welder with 45yrs in shipyards, pressure vessel shops, offshore, fab shops, refineries, paper mills, chem plants, on and on and on. Used to use nickel rod to do cast iron, but that's old school now too, move over rover let EZ Weld take over!

Whoa! Spent the last 2 hours looking at video and websites. No preheat, that makes things easier. I have wire feed and stick but no TIG. The Eastwood 200 ac/dc popped up a few times. Do you have a recommendation for a TIG welder?

I had good luck with nickel rod but it didn't wet out like EZ Weld.

The saw has roller guides top and bottom.

Thanks to the pointers I found quite a few American B-36s. It seems to be a favorite in large shop bandsaws. Lots of ideas for wheel guards. I'm thinking expanded mesh so you can see the saw. Won't get to taking it apart until next week but I have a Cat loader to help with the heavy lifting. Meanwhile I'll be trying to fit a TIG welder into the budget

[DougGuy]

You should be able to do scratch start TiG off a DC stick machine, that's what we used on most jobs. I have a little Miller Maxstar 150 that I use for light stick welding and lift arc TiG in my shop.

Don't know how much detail you can see in the photo but this is one of our typical "field rigs" hanging on the argon bottle, a simple rack made from scrap stainless tubing, it usually has a single stage flowmeter, 50' gas hose, gas lug which you can clamp a stinger onto OR if you're fancy, put a pigtail with a cable connector on it, a 25' TiG power cable, and a WP17F torch head. Plug this into a DC welder and you should be able to TiG with it.

http://i1202.photobucket.com/albums/bb374/DougGuy/Welding%20stuff/20150929_165834_zpsywluxbcd.jpg (http://s1202.photobucket.com/user/DougGuy/media/Welding%20stuff/20150929_165834_zpsywluxbcd.jpg.html)

[jcren]

Not sure about this application, but I have successfully welded cast iron and cast aluminum with oxy-acetylene using tig filler rods.

[W.R.Buchanan]

Mal: if you look around your area or go to a Welding Supplier like Airgas they probably know a local guy who Works on or rebuilds machines. We have a guy down here in Santa Paula/Ventura, who does this but I haven't talked to him in years now.

I got my Linde Heliarc Machine from him complete for $1200 and it has paid for itself 50 times. Now heliarc machines are 1/10 the size the older ones were. The outfit that took over Linde (Esab) after Union Carbide killed a bunch of people in India with pollutants of some type and got sued out of existence, has a machine that is about the size of a shoe box! It runs on whatever power you plug it into. Also get a foot pedal as learning to TIG on a scratch start machine is not easy.

I am definitely interested in some of that magic rod for welding Cast Iron!

Randy

[Mal Paso]

I am trying to decide now if I will ever want to weld aluminum, spend the extra on square wave AC. I think not. I think I want a 200A DC Tig welder with foot pedal. This will be a lot of small stitches to avoid heating the work and I want to slightly overfill the end of the weld to avoid cracking. Lots of repetition.

I've got Stick, Mig and Oxy-Acetylene.

One day we were discussing what was the best toolbox and setup. The fellow who owned the local garage said "I have a mechanic who will come right over and fix anything I have". We said "You Win!"

That's not me though. Thanks for the pointers. I've looked new consumer welders. I'll see about used commercial too.

[bedbugbilly]

Years ago, when I had my custom woodworking / millwork shop, I had a 36" bandsaw made by the Jackson Machinery Company (Jackson, MI). It was originally run with a line shaft but had been converted to motor driven - I had a single phase 5 horse motor on it. The hubs and spokes were metal but the rims were wood. I can't remember where I bought replacement tires from - but I do remember they were a @#$@%^ to get on. They were 80% the needed size (the supplier had me take measurements) and they needed to be "stretched" on the rims. They supplied an adhesive to use with them. I remember it took me a while but I finally got them stretched on through the use of three different "stripping chisels" (short crowbars). Once I got them stretched on, I used small flat dull chisels to go between the rim and the tire to raise it enough to squirt in the adhesive. If I remember correctly, it was an entire afternoon getting them on.

Tracking on my saw was done with an adjusting screw on the pillow block for the bottom tire - adjusted to get the blade to run in the center of the rim. The bearings on mine were poured babbit. It had a very nice blade guid that was adjustable and once the blade was on and adjusted, it ran like a clock. The bottom wheel (drive wheel ) was a little out of "concentric" (if that makes sense) but it never gave a problem. I normally used 1/2" blades on mine although I did have several that were 1/4" and 3/8" if I needed to make tight curved cuts. I had mine welded up at a mill supply in Jackson, MI. (I am abut 15 miles away). I also picked up some rolls of blade stock from a saw shop that was going out of business and I would cut blades to length and weld them up at the local high school - I knew the instructor and they had a blade welder for their metal cutting band saws.

My saw stood 8' - 6" high and when I built my new shop in town, I had to go with 9' sidewalls to accommodate it.

Not much helpful information I know but be prepared to have to stretch your new tires on to your rims. If you have someone to help . . a extra pair of hands can be a big help. Good luck with your project - sounds like fun!

[Mal Paso]

The tires I found are Urethane, maybe they won't be too bad. It came with bands 1/4" to 1 1/2". The lower wheel has setup adjustments in 3 axis. The upper wheel has on the fly tilt and tension adjustment as well. As I understand it prior to 1900 the American bandsaw wheels were all wood because that's what wheels were made of then. This saw was probably first driven by line shaft, the motor on it is modern, can't see the boilerplate. I think the thing to do is disassemble it where it is and position the main casting next to the shop. Too big for the current shop and the tractor wouldn't fit through the door anyway. Once the foot is repaired I'll reassemble it in it's own shed up north.
I'm glad to hear the stories. Biggest bandsaw I've run so far is a whopping 14 inch. Never had a saw that you needed equipment to move. ;-)

[Mal Paso]

I found the saw on it's side on the ground. I built up a nest of pallets and blocks on my trailer and a buddy set it on with an excavator. Trying to move it in one piece would likely break something else so I tore it down on the trailer and will reassemble on site like the big mining trucks.

I got the major disassembly finished today. Started last weekend but had to stop for rain. The table is almost 200 lbs. I used the loader to move it and put it on it's own skid for now. The bandwheels and sensitive stuff is inside and I moved the cast iron body up to the shop to work on it. This saw is HEAVY and much of the time was analyzing moves to make sure I didn't loose body parts.

The Motor is 3 HP SP 1740 RPM and 100 lbs all by itself. The drive pulley is one of those 3 bolt compression type and a liberal soaking of ATF/Acetone and prodding with a drift got it off. The lower drive shaft is 1 5/8", the upper idler shaft 1 3/8". I found cracks in the upper wheel mount and the table tilt is missing an Acme screw and adjusting wheel but the bosses and fittings are there. The lower bearing mounting plate is 3/4" steel plate and weighs 65 lbs. The drive pulley weighs 80 lbs. :lol: