Urethane Tires and Sanding Discs

[wurlitzerwilly]

Hi all.

I had issues with my bandsaw today. It was fine until I put a little pressure on the blade and I could hear something slipping and the blade was obviously slowing down, but the PowerPro was indicating full speed. On inspection, I found that both of the urethane tires I fitted some years ago were slipping on the wheels. I could fairly easily slide them from front to back, by hand. Fortunately I have a spare set and will be fitting them. I remember when I fitted the 1st set, they were very, very tight and needed very hot water to allow them to stretch, so they were a good set at that time. Is there a known issue with urethane tires expanding over time. The temperature here today isn't high, so I'm sure it's not down to that.

Also, I've been re-arranging the shop and I "found" my sanding discs, one plain and one conical. Unfortunately as they've not been needed for a long time, the glue has dried out and the abrasive is not sticking to the metal. The glue looks perfectly good apart from being non-sticky.
Is there any way to rejuvenate the glue, or would I be better off (and safer) just ordering new abrasives?

[beeg]

Which brand of tires do you have? Use a spray adhesive on the sanding disks.

[wurlitzerwilly]

The tires are the bright orange original Shopsmith ones.

Thanks for the tip on the adhesive.

[RFGuy]

Yeah, there have been at least a handful of us here on the forum that have had the orange (red on Website) urethane bandsaw tires from Shopsmith fail and come off the wheels. I recommend the bluemax urethane bandsaw tires. You can find them by searching for that on eBay with the term Shopsmith. Another forum member recommended the bluemax tires in the past and so far mine have performed well. Below is a link to one of the few threads that discusses the orange bandsaw tire issue.

viewtopic.php?p=296724#p296724

[wurlitzerwilly]

Thanks, that's useful.

I'll fit the set of orange tires I have, as they're new and should last at least a short while. In the meantime, I'll search out the Bluemax ones. Not sure if they'll be easy to obtain in the UK, but there may be an equivalent. Possibly our UK Shopsmith supplier may have them.

What's with "RF Guy"? Are you a Radio Ham? If so, 73 de G4GNX. If not, you probably won't know what the hell I'm talking about.

[RFGuy]

Thanks, that's useful.

I'll fit the set of orange tires I have, as they're new and should last at least a short while. In the meantime, I'll search out the Bluemax ones. Not sure if they'll be easy to obtain in the UK, but there may be an equivalent. Possibly our UK Shopsmith supplier may have them.

What's with "RF Guy"? Are you a Radio Ham? If so, 73 de G4GNX. If not, you probably won't know what the hell I'm talking about.

Good luck getting the 2nd set to stay on. I don't know if it is a certain percentage of the urethane bandsaw tires that Shopsmith sells that are defective or if all of them are. It would be good to know if this 2nd set holds up and stays on for a period of time for you. Do consider coming back and updating us in the future if you have luck with the 2nd set staying on. I can't speak to whether you can get bluemax in the UK or not, but I suspect it is possible. I believe there are more than one seller on eBay for them so it may just be a matter of finding a seller willing to ship international. Not a great solution I know, cost-wise, but maybe an option. Try the link below as I believe it shows UK sellers that have the Shopsmith version of bluemax tires for sale. No, I never got interested in Ham radio unfortunately, but did have a good career designing and building integrated circuits for many RF wireless systems commonly in use today...hence my online moniker here.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_from ... e&_sacat=0

[wurlitzerwilly]

I hope that the 'spare' set could last as long as the previous ones, which is quite a few years. They are very, very tight and I'm sure I can't fit them without hot water and dish soap, as per the instructions, so they don't seem to have deteriorated as much as the 1st set. Maybe it's a reaction between the urethane and the aluminum wheel? As long as they last until the new ones arrive, I'll be happy. I did find a UK seller, but there price was nearly twice the US seller's price including shipping, so I've ordered them from the US company who claim to be the sole distributor and they should be here between 5/27 and 6/17. Shipping is about 10GBP, it could be worse.
Ebay does list sellers, but they're all in the US and all around the same price.

Thanks for the explanation about the 'RF'.

[garys]

I've stayed with rubber tires on my bandsaw and have had pretty good luck with them. The bandsaw has been in use since 1982. One of the tires failed after around 20 years and I replaced it with rubber again. The other one is still the original one from 1982 and still works great.
I feel urethane is overrated and rubber isn't respected enough.

[wurlitzerwilly]

You may well be right.
I think the appeal of urethane is the lack of glue and the relative ease of replacement without a lot of mess.
ISTR that in the heyday of orange urethane original Shopsmith tires, it was the thing to do, maybe pushed at us by sales promotions.
As I already have a spare set of orange tires and I've ordered some BlueMax ones, I won't be going back to rubber, unless the new ones break - sorry.

[edma194]

Good old Super 77 spray adhesive is often recommended for sanding disks. I have used it for all sorts of things including sanding pads but never on a 12" disk. If you read that 3M 90 spray adhesive is the that way to go I guarantee you'll regret it when you want to get that stuff off someday.

3M Super 77 spray adhesive: https://www.lowes.com/pd/3M-3M-Super-77 ... lsrc=aw.ds