Not only did I complete Glue-Up No.3 of my walnut and maple chopping boards last night but, I also spent a little bit of time afterwards (correctly) rewiring the new capacitor I purchased for my 1980s Scheppach TKU.
How it should’ve been!
My first problem was that I had reinserted the wires in the wrong places; essentially reversing the polarity, which is what caused the motor and blade to rotate in reverse (I honestly didn’t realize this was possible through wiring a capacitor alone). It was again very fiddly to get in there and also to twist the pairs of wires together (I think they were originally soldered together) but I got it all back together and it now works fine.
16amp socket for my bandsaw.
Another slice of advice came from David’s recent comment on a previous post. He owns the same saw but probably made within the last decade(!). It has a 3HP motor (input) which is very demanding on a standard 13amp supply. David advised me to try a 16amp socket and, as I had one installed for my bandsaw a few years ago, this was a possibility.
13amp to 16amp convertor.
I also took his advice to plug it directly in to the port (no extension lead), which was problematic, given that the mains lead from the saw is barely 2ft long… With the aid of a 13amp to 16amp converter (I knew there was a reason I bought that), I was able to push the green button and to witness the blade spinning at full speed again!
Super-clean finish from a 32t Wealden saw blade.
It ripped through this 85mm width of 45mm thick softwood relatively easily and left an impressively clean finish (no burning). It did sound as though the saw was bogging down a bit in the cut but, at more than 3in deep; it’s asking a lot of any single phase motor, in my opinion. I pushed quite hard and fast but there was no risk of stalling.
I rose the blade (300mm diameter) to as high as it would go but it wasn’t enough to cut more than 85mm and that was without any clearance for the tooth gullets and removal of sawdust and waste. It will take a 315mm blade and I’m sure I’ve read somewhere that it’ll cut 4in thick stuff… Maybe I haven’t cleaned the rise and fall bars as well as I thought.
Dust…
Dust extraction? Well, I’ll leave that decision up to the next owner, when I get around to finding a new home for this rip saw in the not-too-distant future.
Thanks for reading.
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