Jet 14” Bandsaw Wheel Alignment?

[glenn bradley]

Hi Archie, did you ever get your Jet bandsaw wheels aligned (co-planer)? I have the same issue. Thanks.

Archie's last post was over a year ago. You may want to PM him.

As someone having a different experience than Robert E, I adjust all my bandsaws for co-planer wheels. There is a school of thought that the blade on a well aligned machine wants to track true. This is just a good example of the value of the forums as you get multiple views and a mix of information which I see as a good thing.

Drift is a myth in my shop. I change blades often (for a specific function) and with impunity and they all track nicely, even with the guides backed off. Despite statements, often taken out of context, from Alex Snodgrass and Michael Fortune, I say that wheels being co-planer on crowned-tire machines is very important to your ongoing happiness with the machine for non-curved cuts.

This is based on my (probably limited) experience across multiple machines over the years. I have taken little 10" or 14" machines that wandered hopelessly and by aligning the wheels and tables I have made them very usable.

I cannot speak to your particular Powermatic or Jet but, unless the shaft is too short or there is a machined shoulder that you cannot overcome, adjusting for co-planer should be available. On an older Delta 14" CI machine, the top wheel was easily shimmed. On a 17" Grizzly the bottom had to be shimmed out but, again, this was a matter of a washer between the fixed axle base and the wheel. I added a link belt while I was at it and the machine runs spooky quiet.

[Charlie Hinton]

I have the entry level Jet 14" saw.
Leading up to the purchase I researched it to death.
Lots of conflicting information then and now about wheel alignments.
The wheels on mine are not perfectly coplanar but I don't remember how far off they are.
I went with the don't worry about it theory and just adjust the table so the back of the blade is square to the table which is more important when cutting curves than when resawing so do this with a skinny blade that's tracking properly.
Mine pretty much cuts perfectly.
13 years later it has polyurethane tires, roller blade guide bearings, and a Kreg fence.
I use the bandsaw on every jewelry box I build to resaw all the pieces for book match tops/bottoms and wrap around grain flow and overall I am very pleased with it.
Like everyone else with 6" capacity tools sometimes I wish I had taller/wider capacity and more horse power but most of the time I am quite satisfied.
I usually have a 1/2" blade on the bandsaw but on occasion I use 3/16" and 1/8" blades too.
I probaly need to check out the Iturra blades if they are the same as the Woodslicer and cheaper.

[Van Huskey]

Bandsaw tuning often takes on the guise of a black art. With tracking, drift and wander there are usually multiple adjustments that impact them and often when one finds a particular adjustment that works it becomes their holy grail to fix all the woes, you see it with everyone including the experts. BTW all the following comments are directed at crowned wheel saws since flat wheeled/tired saws behave differently and require a moderately different approach. In the past 20 or so years I can only think of one saw I checked coplaner on and that was a PM 141 that I bought where the wheel had been rubbing the upper cover and the axle and upper wheel had been abused and literally bashed together in a way that made them impossible to separate without destroying them, I checked coplaner to see how far it was out from the factory settings to see if I thought I had a shot at tuning it without dealing with the axle/wheel interface. Many of these saws come with the wheels no co-planer on purpose. It sets up a level of tension that makes tracking more stable and reacts more slowly to upper wheel adjustment. Sometimes making them co-planer helps a person get a particular saw tracking properly but it (usually) makes it more finicky as well. This isn't to say some used ones (and maybe the rare new one) isn't too far out but with the used one if nothing is worn it is likely due to someone fiddling with the lower wheel when they shouldn't have. Messing with the lower wheel should be a last resort, and even then it is usually best to start over from the beginning instead of going there. Once that factory setting is gone it is likely never coming back.

I see the co-planer issue a lot like bandsaw guides (I will address them in a moment) when one changes the planer alignment of the wheels it forces them to do a comprehensive top to bottom adjustment/tune and I am convinced far more often than not the eureka moment attributed to the planer adjustment was really do to the care taken in retuning the bandsaw. Guides are similar. You often see people who change their guides from stock blocks or bearing guides on a $500 saw to a set of $180-$230 Carter guides and proclaim it is a whole new saw. Part of it is confirmation bias but I think a lot of it is again the careful top to bottom tuneup. There are reasons to change guides (I am not quite bored enough to go into the whole scope of guides) but there is no night and day difference between the functioning of a simple metal block guide and a set of Carter guides, in fact, the block guide is actually a better guide in many ways. However, that is a subject for a different day.

[Van Huskey]

I probaly need to check out the Iturra blades if they are the same as the Woodslicer and cheaper.

Both Iturra and Spectrum Supply sell the same bladestock as the Highland Woodslicer, it is produced by Atlanta Sharptech (sp?) and sold by Iturra as the Blade Runner and Spectrum as the Kerfmaster, Highland is the most expensive and Spectrum the least. They have different names since Highland holds a trademark on Woodslicer, where most tooling is "named" by the manufacturer Highland gave it a wood-centric name when they started selling it since the actual band had been used to that point in the meat cutting industry. Cowchopper, Pigpeeler or whatever the butchery name was probably wouldn't sell so well in the wood market.

Spectrum is the only one to sell the 7/8" .016" version which I think is the very best resaw option for 14" Delta & clone saws.