Hey, all.  As many of you know, I've been working on new blade guides for my 4x6 bandsaw.  I began this project because the stock blade guides were somewhat cock-eyed, making the use of the saw in its vertical configuration with a table pretty much impossible.  Even if they had been straight, the stock blade guides were a little hard to adjust.  At any rate, I've finally managed to finish the guides.  There's a little tweaking for me to do, but they are pretty much done.  I've started this new thread to report the results.

Here you can see all of the parts.  Everything, with the exception of the cam-bolts for the horizontal bearings and their nuts is new.  I'm a stickler for standards, and since everything else on the saw is metric, all of the new hardware is metric, too.  The only Imperial/ASSM measurements are due to the fact that the bar stock was sized in inches.

Here, I'm starting to assemble the bearing supports by putting the central bearings into their lower halves.  I've replaced knurled, press fit shafts with pins with screw-caps.  This will be a lot easier to maintain in the long run.  Note that the bearings are a little off center.  I might need to add some spacer washers on either side of each bearing, if only to prevent their rims from rubbing on the support blocks.  The tapped holes in the front of the lower block (left) match those in the stock pieces, so I can use the stock table if I would like.

Here are the two lower blocks assembled to their upper pieces.  Note the recessed machine screws.  Thanks go to Jerry for his suggestion to turn down the screws.  I'll replace the Phillips screws with hex-drive screws, though, as getting a Phillips screwdriver down into the recessed holes in some of the other pieces requires me to use a driver one size too small.  I don't want stripped heads in down the road!

Ok, not much new in this picture, except that I've assembled all three bearings into each block.  Because I made the blocks out of two pieces of bar stock each, I had to move the vertical bearing forward (otherwise it's support shaft would have been at the boundary between the two halves.  Fiddling around with CAD and having plans ready before I started made the difference; I knew that it all would fit.

Ok, here are the base blocks mounted on their horizontal adjustment arms.  See the little (1.5mm) notching on the bottom half of the central fin of each base block?  That was one of two mistakes I made in the design phase of this project.  Without those notches, the central bearing in each block would bind on the central fin.  Doing it again, I could either make this notch again, or reduce the depth of the rabbet in the vertical portion of the bearing block.  I'd still notch like I did here, as this keeps the bearing blocks the same overall size as the stock ones.

Here are the blade guides fully assembled. Those little holes on the sides of the blocks are for M3 set screws so that I can fine-tune the angle of the blade guides.  I can't take credit for this idea, I got it from here: http://www.toolsandmods.com/bl…..uides.html . I hope that the guides look familiar to all of you with a 4x6 band saw!!!

And, of course, here they are on my saw!  They look right at home, huh?  I haven't put the blade back on (careful observers will see that the saw's gearbox is open and drained), since I am doing other work on the saw.

Here's the only major problem that I've encountered.  The lower blade guide fouls the saw frame (upper left corner of the guide in this photo). I haven't measured yet to see how much material would have to be removed from the saw frame to remove the interferences, though, so I haven't decided whether I'll modify the frame or the guides.  The stock guides were rounded on top; I guess I now know why ;)

At any rate, I welcome feedback, and I have DXF-format CAD files for all of these parts.

-Chris

That really looks great.  Thank goodness my 4x6 worked out of the box.  I must have got lucky.  One of the first things I did was to wash out the gearbox and fill it with good lower end oil.

Regards, Al