Cheese Instead of Band Saw Tires

[Steve H Graham]

I was using my band saw the other day, and I noticed that there was black crud on the wheel side of the blade. I opened the cabinet and found that the tires were covered in black stuff, and one of them had a big gap in it.

I do not know what I did to cause this, but I am wondering if the goo came from some green mahogany I resawed several years back. The wood was very wet. The saw has worked fine since then. It wasn't until I put the resaw blade back on that I noticed the issue.

I bought new tires, and today I decided to take the old ones off. I discovered that I did not actually have tires. I had a thick layer of something resembling hard cheese. It stuck to the wheels tenaciously and came off in crumbs.

Now I am trying to clean the wheels. Goo Gone doesn't seem to work too well. DNA seemed to like the paint more than the glop. Any ideas?

06 26 15 cheese instead of tires on band saw wheels.jpg

[Steve H Graham]

Looks like lacquer thinner is the way to go.

[Matt Day]

How old were the tires? Looks Like they disintegrated.

I'd go for mechanical methods first like a razor blade scraper or beater chisel.

[Bill Ryall]

I just did this on my smaller bandsaw. Small beater chisel and a light touch, followed by medium then fine emery cloth and finally a wipe down with an alcohol soaked cloth.

[Steve H Graham]

Thanks for the replies, which, sadly, I read after I finished.

This is a Shop Fox W1729 19" band saw, and the replacement tire is a Grizzly T23072 made from black urethane. I scraped the old "tires" out with a screwdriver and cleaned the crud off with lacquer thinner.

I had never installed tires before, so I was somewhat befuddled to find that they are much smaller than the wheels. I took a quick look at a Wood Whisperer video and saw that he used clamps to hold his tires on the rims while he installed them, so I did something similar with Irwin polyurethane clamps, and I didn't even have to use a tool to finish the job. I put one foot down in a hole in the wheel, pulled up on the tire to stretch it, and stuck it between the flanges.

The new tires did not really want to settle in the space between the flanges. At first I bopped them with a deadblow hammer, but that didn't work on both rims. I figured out that you have to lift the tire off the rim with your fingers, bend it so the sides go into the rim, move back, and repeat until the whole circumference is mounted.

The black polyurethane has one big drawback. It makes it very hard to see the blade through the saw's window, so in order to check the tracking you have to go get a flashlight. The blade is dark, and so is the tire.

I really wonder what that gunk on the old tires was.

[Steve H Graham]

I am now wondering if, in the future, I can clean my blades with lacquer thinner. Does anyone know if it will hurt polyurethane?

I think the most exciting part of today's adventure was accidentally sitting on the pedal for my flex shaft rotary tool and grinding a big gouge in my garage computer's case.

[Phil Thien]

I am now wondering if, in the future, I can clean my blades with lacquer thinner. Does anyone know if it will hurt polyurethane?

I think the most exciting part of today's adventure was accidentally sitting on the pedal for my flex shaft rotary tool and grinding a big gouge in my garage computer's case.

Lacquer thinner is a combination of different solvents. The reason it works so well is that there is typically one solvent included that will attack whatever you're throwing it on.

So be careful with the lacquer thinner, it is tough stuff. Especially older stuff (most newer lacquer thinners have been reformulated to be compliant with use in...you guessed it...California).

[Steve H Graham]

I got everything cleaned up and put together. I managed to cut myself on a saw that wasn't turned on. I was rotating the upper wheel by hand while wiping the blade with steel wool, and I decided it would be intelligent to put my finger on the OUTSIDE of the wheel, where it got pinched between the rim and the cabinet.

Very small cut which hurts like hell. Dang it.

I just realized that safety rules only exist for things people EXPECT you to do. When you make stuff up, you are on your own. No one is out there writing manuals that say, "When turning the upper wheel of a band saw by hand with the cabinet open..."

[Pat Barry]

Moderator - lets have a wounded woodworker forum so we can gather all the war stories about injuries in one useful place. Just this week there have been numerous posts about injuries of one type or another in both this forum and the Neanderthal forum. I would suggest that each new thread contain the offending tool for easy searching. For example, "Bitten by bandsaw blade"..

[Steve H Graham]

I am really mad at the saw. Not only did I mash my finger; I poked myself on the end of one of the screws that hold the Shop Fox badge on the upper door.

Not sure why Shop Fox used POINTED SCREWS WITH EXPOSED ENDS there. I'm sure they had their reasons.

[Allan Speers]

The black polyurethane has one big drawback. It makes it very hard to see the blade through the saw's window, so in order to check the tracking you have to go get a flashlight. The blade is dark, and so is the tire.

I really wonder what that gunk on the old tires was.

The black polyurethane has another big drawback: It's junk. I've seen three Grizzly bandsaws now that all had the original black tires turn to soft, cheese-like goop, and since it also happened to me I did some research and found that this is somewhat common. It's horrid stuff, and attracts sawdiust better than a 5 HP cyclone. There's a reason why Grizzly sells these so cheap, and why they also offer a much more expensive "aftermarket" orange tire on their own website.

I strongly urge you to pull them now, while you still can, and install higher quality urethane tires, from Grizzly or elsewhere. Personally, I like the "blueMax" tires, made in NJ and available on Ebay, but even the typical orange ones are a big step up.

Grizzly makes a GREAT machine for the money, but for some reason they cheap out on pulleys & bandsaw tires. It's rather odd.

[Larry Frank]

I replaced the tires on my Jet with blue urethane ones from Carter. The directions from them had you soak the tires in warm water. I got help to put the tires on as I wanted to stretch them as little as possible.

I would clean the tires with the least aggressive stuff possible to avoid any degradation of the tires.

[Steve H Graham]

If there is one thing I love, it's spending money trying to do the right thing and then finding out it was a waste of time. Thanks for the tip.

Grizzly has a warranty, so I am going to keep an eye on these things and raise Cain as soon as I see a problem.

The black polyurethane has another big drawback: It's junk. I've seen three Grizzly bandsaws now that all had the original black tires turn to soft, cheese-like goop, nad since it happened to me I did some research and found that this is somewhat common. It's horrid stuff, and attracts sawdiust better than a 5 HP cyclone. There's a reason why Grizzly sells these so cheap, and why they also offer a much more expensive "aftermarket" orange tire on their own website.es, made in NJ and available on Ebay, but even the typical orange ones are a big step up.