Parts 3 and 4 of homebrew bandsaw is now on website

Nice work Roy. Your an inspiration for the use of recycled parts. Tried to look at your lawn vac but was told the page could not be found. BTW, realy like those castings you make. They look realy nice.

Regards, Bernd

Hey Roy,

The 3-wheeler looks just great. I think the paint scheme, or at least the colors, that the signs give looks pretty nice too. Sort of like "The Official NASCAR Bandsaw" or something. Give that some consideration. I'd want anything that great that I made to be a stand-out!!

A comment on the web site. I tried the link for the lawn-vac and got the dreaded HTTP 404 - File not found Internet Explorer error. All the other links worked OK, as far as I could tell.

Really great, and you are definitely prolific and ingenious!

Take care.

Brian Laws>Its been cutting metal and works like a champ, All I have to go on it

Try it now. I think I had yet to put up the lawn vac when this was posted, and during posting the connection died so I had to do it again. It seems to be ok now.

Regards

Visit my website:

Works OK now. I like the new blade that you made for it. I live in upsate New York and was thinking of building a snow blower. Do you think the type of blade you made would work with a snow blower. I'd like to make it about 2 or 3 feet in dia. I've seen the noes they use on the narrow gauge line out west and was thinking of something along those lines but smaller and driven with a gas engine not steam, although that would be unique. Great web site. I look to for insperation from time to time.

Regards, Bernd

I dunno. I don;t see why it wold not work. That type of blade seems to do great on those trains you see pictures of. Probably a lot more dangerous if you pick up some trash when blowing snow. TORO used to make a small snow blower that you could hold in your hands and clean off steps etc with back in the early 70's that used a paddle wheel driven by a small 2 cycle engine, and it worked great. I thinkit was called a Toro Sno Pup! Visit my website:

I inheritted an electric "snoshovel" made by Dynamark, probably 80's vintage. It uses a flat impeller wheel much like the one in discussion (and used in the 2nd stage of

It has the axis of the wheel roughly parallel to the handle, so that the open portion of the wheel sort of faces the ground. There is a scraper portion of the housing, roughly the width of the wheel, which transitions from flat, to scrape the pavement, to round, to feed into the wheel, over maybe 2 or 3 inches. Only about the bottom half of the wheel is exposed. The top of the housing follows the curve of the wheel until it nears the top of the wheel, where is follows a straight line taper, at maybe a 45 deg. angle, to the openning, also 2 or 3 inches straight across the top. Direction of throw is controlled by reversing the direction of the motor, so that the snow hits the openning from the tangent of the wheel.

With that said, it doesn't actually do that good a job of throwing snow. It's heavy for the amount of power it has, and I find I spend just about as much energy using it as a regular shovel. However, I can see where scaling this up would make it more effective. There are a couple of simple reversing mechanisms you could use, but a conventional directional chute and single direction of rotation would probably work better.

My only other piece of advice on such a beast is, take note of a trend in modern snothrower evolution. The area of the chute is always constant or expanding in area from where it leaves the wheel. I have an older model regular snow blower that has the square to round section both of the same size, say 5" square to 5" round. Works fine for dry snow, but it wedges up with wet stuff due to the reduction in area.

Given all that, you may find buying a used unit to be less of a hassle. Do what some of the repair guys do, and buy several you see listed as "broken, cheap" on the tag sale or flea market circuit (especially in the off season), and combine the best of the 2 or 3 machines you end up with, and maybe a new motor...

My $0.02, --Glenn Lyford

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As I said I'm thinking of something in the 2 to 3 foot dia. range. Your point is well taken on the aspect of throwing the snow. I used to have a Massey 12hp tractor with a thrower on it. It was single stage. Just an auger and the chute was in the center. It did get plugged on wet snow and was a pain to clean out. I like the rotory blade better because I can make something like that. The auger type would be to hard to make. Since I'm into railroading as a hobby also I have pictures and drawings of the rotory plows they used on the narrow gauge lines in the Rockies. A study of these drawing could posibly be scaled down. I'm in the process of developing an idea for a tracked vehicle with a blower on it. I plan on posting it as I make some mesurable progress on it.

Regards, Bernd