Woodworking Bandsaw

I bought an old 12" bandsaw. It's an old Craftsman from the 50's that looks like it has hardly ever been used. I was looking at the blade tires and saw that someone (a long time ago) wrapped masking tape on top of the rubber. I'm guessing the rubber suface is dried out the mashing tape is what us holding it together.

I did a search and found that people have been wrapping masking and electrical tape onto bandsaw tires and actually claim it will last fo a long time (for a low use saw). I have no idea if the tires are available, probably made out of urethane these days.

We did that at the family-owned sign shop back in the 60-70's. I thought it was one of My Gram pa's crazy ways of saving money (he started the company during the Depression I was told) -- but we used the bands saw every day cutting wood metal but swapped blade for plexi-glass. Being an impatient teenager I broke a lot of blades - pissed him off- but we never changed a "tire"!

My god - I read this and think; "Is my post sounding like one of Gene's?!!":bounce: No disrespect - Just a "in the day" post is all...and I love the lessons.​

Cheers - Jim

Hay wate a minit, I 2 kan speek fyme tipe englush like u......


I have built two complete sets of kitchen cabinets, one for my house here, including a large cabinet in the hall bath I remodeled, did them right here in the garage, only thing was, we ordered the doors off the .net, from Arkansas....the maple alone would have run me 600 bux, plus I didn't have the tooling for the necessary cutting, even renting was outta the question, so just bought them made for 940 some bux.....

the kitchen in my old house up north was Oak, and it took 3 months to do, used Carl's cabinet shop gear set up in my main work bay, made two sets of cabinets, his wife was wanting new kitchen, he had no work space as he shut down his cabinet shop and joined the fire department......

Which brings up something funny, you know how fire guys are, walk around like elephants in their large brogan foot wear, so Carl was my height at about 6'5" but had an easy 100 lbs of muscle I never had....he was in charge of spraying the finish lacquer on the boxes/doors so we set up one nice day out in the driveway.....and when he started spraying, he started waltzing like Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers on the dance floor, he was swaying back and forth with the gun like it was a sex object or something.....

SO here he was in his fire boots, long pants, heavy shirt, Goggles, hat, like he ready for combat or something, I cracked up laughing SO hard, he stops and asks 'what is so funny' so I explained the visualization like above here....even he had to crack up......:rofl::rofl::rofl:

""I remember..."" back in wood shop in junior high school Mr. Olsen told us the masking tape on the wheels kept the rubber from making marks on the blade & thus the wood. A problem with genuine rubber, probably not with modern plastics.

JPhil said:

""I remember..."" back in wood shop in junior high school Mr. Olsen told us the masking tape on the wheels kept the rubber from making marks on the blade & thus the wood. A problem with genuine rubber, probably not with modern plastics.

Click to expand...

:smash::surrender: I"d a never thought of that, sounds correct to ME....interesting antique details.....