new 55 year old bandsaw

I picked this up yesterday, a 28-350 Rockwell 20" bandsaw.
It needs new tires, blade, a fence, and a pulley for the new single phase motor.
I found all the parts at one vendor online.

Awesome! Im jealous.

Those are great rigs, unfortunately the demand is limited for old wood and metal working tools. The rockwell/delta tools were well built and surprisingly there are parts available. I have an 8" Rockwell jointer of similar vintage.

It fills a hole in the shop tools. I build my own cabinets and would like the ability to resaw some local wood and also some sustainable exotics.
My other big tools are a grizzly 10" cabinet saw, a 12x4 shopsmith planer, grizzly 4 bag vac system, a Kreg 1Hp router table setup.
Next up is a sander. I'd love to saw some boards, send them a pass through the planer for dimension, and feed them through a sander.

I sell a lot of the old metal and woodworking tools as a side gig. The market is down a bit from COVID-19. Men still love their tools!!

this one had been sitting in a shed for many years until dad got tired of storing it. I'll have it up and running with a new Magfence for ~$900.
https://carterproducts.com/band-saw-products/band-saw-magfence/magfencer-ii-next-gen-magnetic-fence

I always say that old saw will still be cutting wood when the new China saws have been melted down ten times.

I also say it has to be older than me to be old...

I wish that were true. That is true about our plane though. It's a '59 and I'm a '60.

Now there's an inverter inrush challenge.

Sad to say our town has a transfer station for waste and recycling with strict no picking rule that is enforced. I see a lot of old cast iron (mostly very old craftsman) cast iron power tools in the metals pile. There is local "antique"/junk shop that has a basement section full of old hand tools and power tools. Its and old town with lots of retirees that are aging out and moving out of their homes. Their kids long ago moved to the big cities away from this old mill town and they have no use for their parents stuff. He pays very little or nothing doing estate clean outs as folks from out of state buy "cheap home" for second homes as this area is an ATV capital. Old folks like me (64) grew up with power tools and use them but the local school in my town got rid of most power tools long ago as teachers retired. Shop classes are optional at best and mostly used to deal with the kids deemed not college material. I expect in my case when someone in the future deals with my estate, they will have a tough time finding a place to get rid of my woodworking tools and the stuff I built, anyone want a free cedar strip built canoe?

Yes, that is very sad. The true point of recycling is to reuse the things not melt them down. Most of the old Craftsman tools are good. I have an early contractor's Craftsman table saw for sale now ($225) that weighs 1.5 times the weight of a new cabinet table saw.

I sell mostly to new homeowners when they find out the cost of hiring someone to come in and do the work. They look on YouTube to see how it is done and give it a shot. I give them credit. They are not like us who grew up on Popular Mechanics. Some day I will get my shop cleaned out and looking like the ones I gleamed at in the 60's... then maybe not.

I have a feeling my Bridgeport and 1500-pound DoAll bandsaw will be in my shop a very very long time after I am gone.

OK end of old people talk

peakbagger said:

Sad to say our town has a transfer station for waste and recycling with strict no picking rule that is enforced.

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Yeah that is the exact opposite of here I'm pretty sure. When I roll up to the transfer station with what I consider complete junk- i.e. an extremely gaudy 1960s ceiling fan with broken, rotting wood blades and half the glass shattered, those boys that run the station will roll up and take it to toss in the back of their truck.

I personally have never seen anything I'd consider taking. Definitely not anything cool like shop or machine tools.

peakbagger said:

strict no picking rule that is enforced

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I honestly get deep existential thoughts about the state of our society when I visit our no picking transfer station. It's like a jail for nearly working old appliances to force us to buy new.

hwy17 said:

I honestly get deep existential thoughts about the state of our society when I visit our no picking transfer station. It's like a jail for nearly working old appliances to force us to buy new.

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It's a total shame, considering "upcycling" these items is the absolute best thing you could ever do with them.

Most "recycling" is a joke, outside of some items like aluminum.

There is a local scrapper that is the only one nearby that will handle all the metal for cheap but the only way he will do it is if there is no dump picking (he has his crews do that later on). The town selectmen and public works guy likes it as its easy, having a dump "store" can cause a lot of headaches, folks will get in fights over stuff and get hurt hauling it off. There is also an issue in a rural area where some folks will bring home far more than what they brought to the transfer station and it becomes a hoarding situation.

I think there is a happy medium and I have seen town employees on occasion hauling stuff off for their own use.

I ended up with big Rockwell jointer from the sixties. It had shared parts with a Unisaw. I didnt have a use for it and didnt want to buy expensive cutters so I sold it to someone who had more use for it. I paid $20 for it and sold it for $50. He was happy, I was happy.