"Jerry Foster" wrote in message
. net...

"Bob Engelhardt" wrote in message
...
There are various web sites showing modifications to the ubiquitous 4x6
HV bandsaw (Roy's is a good one). I made a few of the mods shown, but I
put a twist on a couple of them.

One site showed a drill press vise mounted on a plate, which was then
held by the saw's vise. The plate could be extended towards the blade
and this allowed cutting pieces that were too short to be held by the
saw's vise. The trouble with that, for me, was that the saw blade guide
wouldn't clear the DP vise. So I turned the vise on end and it worked
just fine:
http://home.comcast.net/~bobengelhardt/bandsawvise.jpg

Another mod suggested was to replace the very light weight vise wheel
with something heavy, to get some inertia to speed up lengthy movements.
One guy cut a wheel out of plate. I went to the junk pile and found
this:
http://home.comcast.net/~bobengelhardt/bandsawwheel.jpg
It's cast iron and weighs a few pounds. Give it a flick and it spins
about 4 revs. It's a collar used to hold plates on a weight lifting bar!

Bob

One thing I do fairly often to hold short pieces is to make a "vise
extension" with a couple pieces of square tube. I put the piece to be cut
between the tubes, put some scraps to build up the same thickness between
the opposite ends of the tube and clamp the whole thing with the saw vise.
If need be, I can saw through tubes and all. The forces involved in
sawing
are fairly light, so it's nothing like clamping something to be milled...

Jerry

I drilled and tapped the jaws 1/4-20 and bolted extension plates (almost out
to the blade) to the insides of the existing vice jaws; countersunk the
screw heads below the surfaces. Then there was one problem remaining, that
of the entire moveable jaw assembly wanting to skew around its mount when
tightening up on a short workpiece. That was solved with a 3" long packing
screw threaded through the moveable jaw and its extension plate. The
packing screw is turned out to meet the fixed jaw at a point that holds the
jaws roughly parallel to each other when holding a workpiece.

Bob Swinney