Hello All,
Got an old Walker Turner 12" bandsaw. I found an old catalog online that seemed to list my saw as using a 85" blade. Bought one, but it was just a tad to big. Have an 80" laying around, but it is a tad too small. Came with an old blade and I tried to measure it's diameter and came up with about 82.5. Breaking out the old high school math I did various calculations in Excel (it has a Pi() function).
The top wheel has about 2 inches of vertical adjustment for blade tension, meaning the distance between the axis of the lower to upper wheel can range from 21.5" to 23.25." So, just about where do I want that with the right size blade? Near the top, in the middle?
The wheel diameters with tires are 12.25, so r = 6.125" The mean distance between the wheel hubs is about 22.5 - lets call it d. So 2PiR + 2d should get my blade size right? If so, that's 83.5. However, do I want the top wheel higher? It can go up to 23.25 max? If I make d 23" then my blade size is 84.5"
I don't want to keep ordering and returning blades, but maybe trial and error and lots of trips to the UPS store are the way to go?