Portable Bandsaw Base

[Crusty]

There aren't any drawings for it but I can describe how I made it which might help you make something similar.

The base brackets are two pieces of heavy angle which clamp down to my welding table and a 5/8" pivot shaft rotates between them in reamed holes. An upright made from a piece of I-beam with some of the flanges trimmed off is welded to the pivot shaft. The upright has an arm made from 1/4" plate welded to it and there are two brackets of the same plate welded to the arm and bolted to two front and two rear motor bolts.

I made the brackets by cutting out pasteboard patterns which fit the motor at each end, then traced the contour on the plate and cut them out. Once the brackets were bolted to the motor I shimmed the saw sitting on a flat surface until the blade was completely parallel with the flat surface, then used a height gauge to scribe each bracket at the same height and parallel to the blade, then cut them off.

I assembled the base first, then propped up the saw with brackets attached and welded the brackets to the arm last, checking frequently for square as I went.

Try to make the motor brackets as short as practical so that the weight of the saw isn't hanging way out there. The axis of the rear saw wheel is within 1" of the pivot shaft axis and that seems to give about the right amount of downforce on the blade when cutting horizontal. I made my arm taller than it needed to be so that I could clamp a sliding weight onto it positioned to either increase or decrease the downforce but I don't think I'll need one now.

My base positions the blade so that it bottoms out 1/4" below the table's surface when in the horizontal position and a solid auxiliary fence bolts to my welding table in line with the saw's fence and stock is clamped to the table against the fence. I may add a small section of plate to extend the table surface out to the blade but it isn't necessary for reasonably stiff stock. There are hard stops welded in for both horizontal and vertical positions, a stiffener welded to the web of the I-beam upright and a diagonal brace from the top flange of the upright to the outer end of the arm. I did have to whittle away on my welding table some so that the rear wheel would clear it in the upright position but my mounting position puts it at a rear corner of the table that I've never needed to use.

If your table isn't dead flat (mine isn't) then the base brackets may make your pivot shaft seize when clamped down. I cut out portions of each bracket containing the pivot holes, clamped the brackets in position, shimmed the pivot shaft with the cutouts on it so that it was parallel to the table and welded the cutouts back to the brackets and now it pivots easily with no slop.