• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

Wadkin DH bandsaw

W

wallace

Old Oak
Joined
Aug 17, 2014
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I bought this about 18 months ago, I'd been after something a bit smaller than the 30"DR I had previous. It came up on ebay and I won it for not much money. The only issue was collection, the seller said his place wasn't suitable for a pallet courier. I removed the seats from my VW and put a engine hoist in to help load it. It was located in leicester.

When I got their I didn't realise how close the place was to where the bandsaw was built. It was litterally a stones throw from the factory.

The joiners that had it was a peculiar setup, it was in the middle of a terrace of houses up a narrow alleyway. It had been in the family for a good few generations. You went up some tiny stairs to a bench room where stuff was made. When completed a door was opened in the wall and it was lowered into a courtyard.

I had to use every bit of skill reversing up the alleyway, I had 1.5" either side of my mirrors. Its lucky I drove FLT's for many years. I did have pics but they are on my instagram.

Luckily the bandsaw was downstairs where timber was machined up, but there was still some big thresholds to lift it over.

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I stripped most off the bits off it at leicester

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I had to use a jack to get the top column out the casting

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They were big horses back in the day, this is 2hp

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The whole top wheel bearing assembly is kept in place by two pointed bolts

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I started stripping the paint, it scraped and sanded off really easy

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A belt sander on the 'wadkin' works a treat

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Very cool. What do you actually do with all these lovely machines?
 
AJB Temple":2x9f7808 said:
Very cool. What do you actually do with all these lovely machines?
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Alot of them I sold and are now working for their living in workshops from scotland to london, new zealand and australia. A good few I kept. I'm taking a break from other peoples machines to finish off my final few machines.
 
We had that exact same machine where I served my yacht joiner apprenticeship. Its the bandsaw equivalent of Stonehenge!
 
Wallace,
I'm in envy, just to work on one would be a treat.....
but if one came my way it would never be sold.....
been looking at a few antique Greek made machines just lately for myself....
found one that has a spiders webb cast iron frame but just mist it.....
I gueuss it was 1920's.....
thanks for ur postings ...always interesting....
 
Time to strip the motor, that doesnt look very wadkin



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the grease was very black which isn't a good sign.



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I think it might have spun



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It has a roller bearing on the wheel side



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I'm going to take it to my motor guy to get the leads done better and maybe put some varnish on the windings, the bitumen is cracking a bit.
 
A Ransome and Marles brass-cage self-aligning ball bearing and a Hoffman brass-cage roller bearing, I dread to think how much the equivalents would be if you wanted to buy new, even if you could!
 
Trevanion":zod1vc84 said:
A Ransome and Marles brass-cage self-aligning ball bearing and a Hoffman brass-cage roller bearing, I dread to think how much the equivalents would be if you wanted to buy new, even if you could!
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I've found old stock hoffman self alligning for £50 but I cant find the roller one yet
 
I found the pics of when I went to collect this, I had to reverse 30m



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I'm not sure if the business was their before the houses



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Just around the corner was the site of wadkins original factory. I reckon that could be the original chimney.

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Anyway I digress. This is the bracket that holds the top wheel. Its seen a bit of action and had a repair



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The bearings have been changed, they came out a bit too easy so I will reinstall with some compound



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The spindle has a bit ware



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The castings on this are really nice with very little fettling



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The evaporust is getting a bit old, but still working



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This cheap little ROS has earned its keep, it has been hammered for a few years now and still performs.

I bought a new bosch and it is pants compared to this. I think it was £35 from b&q
 
Just noticed there was no pic of the cheapo ROS,



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I wasnt sure what to do about the wheels, if I fettled and filled them they would need balancing. I suppose I could take them to a tyre place. I decided to leave them as is. The vulcanised rubber is in good condition. It doesn't appear to be crowned either.



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The covers are in good condition, the hammerite paint came off easily with a chisel.



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The side is fixed with little rivets, peened over.



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Time to chuck some primer about



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I laid it on pretty thick so I can wet sand it



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These dont look very wadkin



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wallace":1l92hkml said:
...These dont look very wadkin

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They're Chaco guides - a Swiss company that still makes bandsaw guides. I have Chaco guides on my Preston (Canada) bandsaw and bought replacement plastic/resin guide bushes from Switzerland a couple of years ago. They were very good to deal with.

Scrit reckoned they were the best guides available (shame he hasn't posted for 10 or more years). I don't have enough experience to judge.

Cheers, Vann.
 
Why do they have 3 adjustable plastic guides? For different thickness blades?
 
wallace":1624joih said:
Why do they have 3 adjustable plastic guides? For different thickness blades?
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I'm not sure.

I've run a 5/8" blade in my bandsaw for most of the 5-6 years I've owned the machine, so I haven't experimented. The 5/8" blade only comes in contact with the front two of the three plastic strips on each side, so there's no wear occurring on the third strip.

I guess if it had been a single strip, I'd have to pull them out from time to time, and trim them, when the unworn part at the back came into contact with it's opposite strip - preventing further adjustment. This way, when they're 1/3 worn I can rotate them to even up the wear.

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Note: my bottom guide is a Vee guide with the wear strips at 45 degrees, but the top guide has the wear strips at 90degrees to the blade - hence some of the guides are cut square, not angled.

Cheers, Vann.
 
Before I found out that I could get new wear strips from Chaco, I bought a couple of old bowling balls with the intention of making wear strips from lignum vitae.

I still have the balls, but between the old plastic strips and the new ones, I doubt it'll ever need wooden ones in my lifetime.

Cheers, Vann.
 
A bit more done, I got my motor chap to put some new leads on, he also checked it with a mega and found the reading out so stuck it in the oven to dry out. He also noticed the rotor had been rubbing on the stator making a groove. Probably because of the bearings.



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The end bell got a bit filler



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I managed to find new old stock bearings which didn't cost the earth, £107 for both of them.



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This is one of those rocky horse poo items, I've had it stashed in my junk store for years waiting untill I found my holy grail bandsaw.



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A clean and coating of smchoo



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Then primer



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Now if you want to get really silly about paint you wet sand and prime again



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The table is in decent condition and still has alot of its original machining marks, but it does have the usual tea cup circles and some heavy staining. I was going to get it ground but I doubt its worth the effort and expense.



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The fence I have is designed to go to the left of the blade, this table only has fixing holes on the right so I will need to drill and tap the table.



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This paint drys to a nice soft sheen



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All this prep for 20 seconds with a spray gun



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Watching these transformations is great!

This one looks like it will be a very pretty final assembly.
 
Got the fence assembled



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The saw was missing its tag but I have a few in my stash. The eagle eyed will notice some rivets, they came from fred dibnahs place when the contents of his workshop were being auctioned off.



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I still need to put a brush on the bracket for the bottom wheel and their are brackets that look like they hold a guard that covers the blade between the wheels. Other than that its onto the next one.
 
Looks magnificent :)

Does that motor directly drive the bottom wheel? Blade must be moving a lot faster than on my 14" 'toy' bandsaw.
Guess it will be on a speed control drive so any speed you like is possible.

Another enjoyable thread. Hope you have some more to come.
 
This one is a keeper, I've been searching for a few years to find a small one since I sold my big 30"DR. Something like this would sell for around £2k. My next machine is a nice saw bench from 1928
 
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