Last year I bought an old Delta/Milwaukee 14" bandsaw and it came with a horrible stand. I have been meaning to replace it ever since. I finally finished my "bandsaw box" this weekend.
As with most of my projects it was a learning experience. The box itself is made up of ~1 1/8" thick solid pine-ish wood. It is ~19 1/2x18x17 1/2 (WxHxD). I hand cut dovetails for the carcass as an exercise
. Actually this box was meant to be significantly larger. But my first attempt at jointery failed (finger joints at the corners) and I had to trim down the panels.
The butterfly's on the top are not just decorative, they are ~1/2" thick and are needed. When trying to fit the DT's a hairline fracture started. I had never cut/used butterflies so I gave it a shot.
The walnut drawers were from some wood I picked up from saw4u (thanks Jack!) and are finished with a Maloof style 3 part mixture. The pulls are out of maple.
This was always intended to be a platform for my bandsaw so it has a couple features:
And it wouldn't be my project without a list of lessons learned:
As with most of my projects it was a learning experience. The box itself is made up of ~1 1/8" thick solid pine-ish wood. It is ~19 1/2x18x17 1/2 (WxHxD). I hand cut dovetails for the carcass as an exercise
. Actually this box was meant to be significantly larger. But my first attempt at jointery failed (finger joints at the corners) and I had to trim down the panels.The butterfly's on the top are not just decorative, they are ~1/2" thick and are needed. When trying to fit the DT's a hairline fracture started. I had never cut/used butterflies so I gave it a shot.
The walnut drawers were from some wood I picked up from saw4u (thanks Jack!) and are finished with a Maloof style 3 part mixture. The pulls are out of maple.
This was always intended to be a platform for my bandsaw so it has a couple features:
- On/Off switch built in.
- Bottom/left "drawer" is a false drawer. The motor will sit behind it.
- If you look carefully at the first picture you will see I cut a slot in the back where the belt will run.
And it wouldn't be my project without a list of lessons learned:
- If a DT feels too tight it doesn't need a larger hammer.
- Don't glue in your mortised pulls before finishing. Doh! Probably obvious but this makes it MUCH harder to get a good finish.
- Plan better and stick to the plan. The bottom right drawer was originally sized to fit bandsaw blades. Well... after having to resize the panels and adjusting to add more room for the motor they don't fit anymore and I have a mostly useless drawer . Oh and the whole box is a tad bid low for my liking.
- Clean off your workplace before you break something (heh, I know I knew this one already ). After cutting ALL of the DT's for the box I set one of the panels down on a crowded "bench" and it fell off, splitting when it hit the floor! I ripped out the split and glued the panel back up with a piece of maple to make up the difference. Amazingly I got this right and the DT's still fit!
