Handheld band saws exist, and can be highly useful tools. However, they lack some of the finesse and precision of the more traditional upright units, particularly for with smaller workpieces. [Honus] set about rectifying this, building a stand for their DeWalt handheld bandsaw out of scrap lumber.
The stand consists of some hefty wooden beams sawn to length and screwed together to make a support for the bandsaw. A nice 1/4″ thick aluminium plate is installed as a baseplate for cutting.
Then, the handheld bandsaw itself is attached to the rig, held in place with a bolt and a large zip tie. The zip tie is fastened around the trigger, holding it down all the time. Then, a switched powerboard is used to turn the saw on and off as needed. Importantly, simply cutting a ziptie and removing a bolt is enough to restore the handheld saw to its original purpose.
It’s a tidy build and one that makes an existing tool more useful for minimal extra cost. We’ve actually seen bandsaws built from scratch, too. If you’re cooking up your own great hacks in the home shop, be sure to let us know!
I did a similar thing, but using toggle clamps to hold the bandsaw in place on the table so that it can be quickly demounted for use by hand or on the horizontal angle table.
If you do this, I would advocate fitting an NVR switch with a stop/start button to make it easy to turn off when things go wrong.
(I used this on https://www.axminstertools.com/axminster-bs-13a-plug-socket-nvr-switch-103621 But that’s only any good if you use UK plugs)
I made a Youtube video of my take on this.
https://youtu.be/RX-BGFxNA0E
Why are people needing to convert handheld bandsaws into fixed ones though? Surely a properly made one would be better at the job.
A vertical bandsaw with table can do more intricate work. A real floorstanding bandsaw is a lot more expensive and a lot bigger. A vertical/horizontal cutoff bandsaw is often cheaper but still fairly large. If you’re constrained by space and/or fundage a converted handheld is useful.
Correct, the other reason is that these portable bandsaws are designed for cutting metal and geared as such. A tabletop bandsaw is relatively inexpensive, but it not setup for metal in any way.
Commercial kits are available that do a very similar function. I think the target market is hobbyists who do metal fabrication of some sort. They are great for cutting raw stock to size and doing basic straight cuts. No sparks and cheap to use.
I made a mount to attach mine to the lathe, for jobs where the parting-off blade is too short.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/e4iU1Au9pg7AZECR7
To be honest it hasn’t been used very much, and it would have been better mounted to the carriage rather than the taper-turning attachment slot.
the alternative it to have to buy two tools that arguably do the same job, one of which probably costs substantially more, and might not even see that much ussage
I cut out knife blanks with mine. The reason I chose a handheld bandsaw is because it’s about 5 times cheaper than a regular bandsaw, and it actually has enough power to cut through steel.
+1 for using scrap timber, and not 3D printing
Nice way to adapt the portable tool! Adam Savage did a very similar build a while back, and included a mechanism to allow for variable speed instead of just zip tying the trigger to the max speed. That would be a nice version 2.0 for this build.
https://youtu.be/28h_WlfD4k4
Outside of this being made out of wood, and apparently it still got a pretty substantial metal plate, there are many videos of people doing this all over youtube. It is not at all a new or uncommon thing.
If you have to put together any amount of steel tubing in a project, something like this will make your whole life just that much better by cutting the ends accurately and quickly.