Taking my lead from Matthias Wandel’s new band saw, I though I would make the new wheels from MDF. These wouldn’t be a whole lot lighter than the first set, but I would be more careful this time, to get them well balanced.

I cut the rough blanks from a sheet of 3/4″, leaving them a bit oversize and used a circle cutting jig (a future article on this site covering the design and building of this jig) to make them exactly 17-7/8″ diameter. I want to fabricate these wheels precisely, and not have to ‘turn’ them to shape after they are mounted.

After they were cut out, I laid out for six holes, to lighten the wheels. I used a 4″ hole saw in my drill press (speed all the way down!) to cut the holes, then cleaned them up with a chamfer bit in my router table. The results so far:

It’s balanced on a pointy stick. I used this method to roughly balance it, sanding the inside of the holes on the heavy side until it would stay on the point without tipping. It didn’t take much.

I’m on the fence about leaving them this thickness. I think I’d feel better about them if the rim was a bit wider. Running a 3/4″ blade on a 3/4″ wheel seems like it’s pushing it. As Matthias points out, with the crown on the wheel ,the contact area is only about 1/4″ wide anyway.

I have new bearings on the way for these wheels. The ones I used in the first set don’t seem to be of a high manufacturing standard: one of the top two bearings is noisy and gets pretty hot after using the saw for a while. Fact is, I don’t trust them – they were cheap and at this time I believe the saw is worth good bearings.