I have owned a Jet jbsw-18 from new, must have had it for close to 15 years now. Despite the less than complimentary FWW
review of 2004 I have always found it a decent resawing machine but then I've never used anything else. One thing I've
never enjoyed is changing blades and resetting the guides so when my neighbor moved I bought HIS jbsw-18 too! To be honest
it was buried in the back of his garage, and seeing the sloped backbone frame (versus my straight backbone frame) I thought
it was a jbsw18X which had the shortcomings of my saw fixed. After paying the money I realized that it was not what I expected.
Oh well, I paid too much!

My "A" model - the brace is a simple piece of angle iron upside down.

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My "B" model - the brace looks much better, but really isn't. It needs to go the whole way.

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Of the shortcomings, there's not much I can do about the 10" vs 12" resaw capacity, or the 1.5 vs 1.75HP motor, but I thought I
would fix the main complaint of the FWW review - the "flexible frame". I've seen this "flexible frame" comment repeated
many times on this site, and actually even my jbsw18-A model 6x4 straight backbone is way more than adequate for a saw of this size, the "B" models frame is massive and way more than needed and it is carried over to today's "jbsw-18Q" saw. No, it isn't the frame, it's the upper wheel housing to which the upper guide bar of course is mounted. Other saws use heavier gauge steel or internal bracing to reduce the flex in the guide bar assembly.

On the jwbs18X, Jet finally got the bracing right, taking the heavy sheet steel brace all the way to the guide bar mount.
Interestingly, they also increased the guide bar from 3/4" square bar to 1" square bar - totally unnecessary but it doesn't
hurt. Jet TRIED on the "B" model, they really did. The frame is super strong but an unhelpful improvement, the guide bar is
massive but equally unhelpful, the top wheelhouse box brace looks way more useful, but they didn't extend it the whole way.

I decided to replace the sheet metal brace with one of 3x2x1/8" tubing extended all the way to the guide bar mount.

First up was to take some before and after flex measurements. I extended the guides to within 1/8" of the table
and used a spring to apply force to the guidebar while measuring the deflection with my digital depth guage. I got
0.114". Bear in mind this was a LOT of force and the guide bar extended to maximum leverage so it bears no resemblance
to real world use - just a relative score.

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Removing the JET brace was way more difficult than I expected. It's fixed with eight oval plug welds and one seam weld.
I thought I could cleanly remove their brace but after a while gave up and used every cutting tool I had to hack the thing out
to pieces like some Asian bandsaw pirate.

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I added many more plug welds to the wheel housing (not done in this picture) and added a 1/8" plate under the housing which is welded to the bar.

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I shaped the end of the bar to fit around the guide bar mount and boxed in the end. There are two plug welds right underneath the guide bar mounting plate
as well as the skip welds to the bar.
My welding is not too good, finally remembered I should have been wearing some reading glasses - being able to see would have made a difference! I used skip welds and plug welds to reduce the heat distortion over a seam weld. For strength though, I did seam weld the end of the tube to the frame.

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Hopefully, I can find the time tomorrow to clean it up, get some "Jet" type paint and re - measure the guide flex.


If there's any interest, I'll post again when I'm done.

ken