blade welder question

I picked up a little bandsaw blade welder recently. It works fine and seems to make excellent welds. I'm having trouble aligning the blades, though. It seems that the backs of the blade holders aren't lined up correctly. I figure I don't have much to lose, and I'm considering just trying to line them up by running a hacksaw back there, figuring it will ride on the high spots. I considered removing and shimming the holders, but this isn't trivial and there isn't any information about it in the manual.

Ideas? Comments?

GWE

Reply to
Grant Erwin
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What's wrong with setting up the welder on a mill and remachining the blade guides? That way you can guarantee alignment in two planes. It's not even necessary to dismantle the welder if you use a little imagination. I followed my own advice when I rebuilt an old DoAll, and the blades come out in dead alignment. I'd lose the hack saw idea, and fast.

Harold

Reply to
Harold and Susan Vordos

Which welder? And the teeth should be against the backstops, not the spine

Gunner

Rule #35 "That which does not kill you, has made a huge tactical error"

Reply to
Gunner

It's the little Dayton one, model 4TJ96. The manual disagrees with your method, it says "Firmly seat back of blade against back alignment surface of welder jaw and clamp blade tight with the jaw clamping handle."

To answer Harold's question, maybe a slitting saw would work OK. The jaws only open about .030"-.035" or so, and the reference surface is at the back of what amounts to a slot. I'll think about that some more.

Grant

Reply to
Grant Erwin

The instructions for both of my blade welders say to put the teeth at the back. Including the Stryco. Shrug.

btw..I found this link the other day..it may be of interest to band saw users

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Gunner

Rule #35 "That which does not kill you, has made a huge tactical error"

Reply to
Gunner

In the end, Harold, I just decided to try the hacksaw idea. I blued up the edge of a 6" shop rule and rubbed the back - only hitting on 2 points, as I knew already. I took a piece of bandsaw blade stock and in about 60 seconds I had the rule picking up all 4 points. A few more seconds to clean up the corners and then a test weld -- dead straight, or as straight as I can tell anyway. I'm sure that setting it up on a mill would be better, but this way was much much faster.

Grant

Reply to
Grant Erwin

That's the way the DoAll works as well. That way the teeth don't lose set when the clamps are tightened on the blade. That may not be necessary for a welder that does only one width, but the DoAll I own is capable of welding various widths of blades.

For my setup, a hacksaw wouldn't have solved any of the problems. The alignment surface, which is cast brass, had years of use and abuse. So much that the entire length of the jaws had been chewed away from contact with the teeth when morons dragged the blade against the back stop instead of slipping it without cutting the surface. The damage done was not uniform, so the two jaws formed an arc instead of a straight line. By making a rigid setup on the mill, I was able to resurface both the back and bottom faces with an end mill, restoring the jaws to a like new condition.

Harold

Reply to
Harold and Susan Vordos

Your setup is obviously different from mine. Using the DoAll properly, having a simple 4 point contact wouldn't be enough, especially with coarse blades, where you may have very limited contact. Blade welders typically use the teeth for alignment, not the back, so the blade can be firmly clamped without distorting the teeth. By stopping on the teeth, the clamping mechanism clears the teeth, which would be a problem when welding on various widths. Hey, as long as you're happy, I'm happy for you.

Harold

Reply to
Harold and Susan Vordos

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