HFT 14" bandsaw mod

[C-Bag]

I'd been needing a good metal cutting bandsaw because I was using my small HFT horizontal bandsaw in vertical mode to do stuff. Most times it was small and odd shaped and it felt way to unsafe on the horizontal. I kept seeing these 14" Delta/Rackwell wood bandsaws on CL. but even when they say they are two speed they are still way to fast for steel. I did some digging around on YouTube and there was some vids that hinted at slowing the blade speed down but they were not specific. On the Practical machinist forum there was a long discussion of blade speeds and everybody concurred you were looking for from 110 to 190 fpm. The bandsaw stock is 3,000 fpm.

I found a HFT 14" knockoff saw for $75. I could tell the guy was feeling weird about selling it to me but when I explained I was going to do an overhaul of it he relaxed. The guy he got it from had never been able to get it to track and he'd never been able to get it to keep a blade on it either.

I looked on one of the websites that you can plug in your pulley sizes and it turned out I needed to do a double reduction. It already had 1 3/4" on the motor and a 14" on the saw bottom pulley so going by the chart I'd be in the ballpark if I got another 1 3/4" and 14" and make a jack shaft/double reduction. This program even told me by my belt sizes. I also had some 3"x3" angle iron, 1" shaft and two 1" pillowblocks. I also had an old motor mount from a grizzly table saw that I got off of CL ended up being junk. The original motor mount is one of those nightmare things that stupid to tighten and get straight. So it was the first to go. Stripped all that out and made new mounts for the hanging old table saw motor mount. The idea was everything would hang off the saw drive pulley tensioning the belts. The jack shaft and motor. And you just lift up on the end of the angle iron jack shaft mount and pull off the upper belt then lower the motor to the floor and pull of the motor to jack shaft belt. Works slick unfortunately it's been all together now for several years but I tried my best to tilt it over to show some details. Here it is together with a belt guard I made out of some perforated aluminum I got from a artist who was moving. Sorry about the paint, I never seem to get to that.

Guard off, looking down at the jack shaft.
Note the red angle irons on the sides of the cutout hole under the feet of the saw body. That got pretty weak when I cut out that hole so I bolted those braces in there and stiffened up.
Here's the opposite side.