Dick Cain's Rikon Bandsaw Tool Review | Tools Rule! | Toologics.com

Aug 20 2007

Dick Cain's Rikon Bandsaw Tool Review

Written by Jude Herr

Monday, 20 August 2007

Dick Cain posted a tool review on the Lumberjocks.com forum. He was kind enough to let us reprint it here for all your reading pleasure. Thanks Dick !!

Note: if you aren't a member yet of the Lumberjocks.com forum, you should be. It's a great online woodworking community - even for a woodworker wannabe like me ;0)

"I just bought my machine back in March. Woodcraft had a weekend discount, plus free freight so I jumped at the deal. I saved $75, just on the freight. I’ve had an old Taiwanese machine for many years, but I figured I owed myself a new saw, So I did a lot of research, & decided on the Rikon.
Now I have to decide on what to do with my old saw, because it still works.

Like Jeff mentioned, the saw comes with about the lousiest manual, for such a nice piece of machinery. The pictures are very unclear. I called Rikon right after I got the saw, & they said they were working on a new manual. They’ve been kind of slow about it, because I haven’t seen a new edition yet. I haven’t had a chance to use it much yet, but the times I’ve used it, have been very favorable, meaning Man, do I ever like it.

Here are some things I’ve found out about this machine so far.
After setting it up, the first thing that happened to me, was when I hit the start switch, nothing happened it blew out the circuit breaker. Now what? I tried a couple more times with the same results, so I called Rikon, he asked what size breaker I had. I told him 20 Amps. He told me to go to 30 Amps, because of the heavy starting load, even with the motor being rated less than 20 Amps. I change too 30 Amps, “problem solved”.

I still have tried re-sawing any wde boards yet, but I’m looking forward to it.

I like the large highly finished cast iron table, & an excellent Fence.

	*The heavy cast iron wheels run very smooth.* The inertia in the wheels allow it to coast almost 30 seconds after shutting down. That helps with the power with heavy work loads.
	*The windows for tension adjustment, & centering the blade are also good features.*
	*Blade check window.*
	There’s one thing I discovered with the dust collector port. It has a steel baffle welded about 1/2” in front of the hole. It stops the air flow, & it did a poor job of sucking away the dust. I called Rikon ,& they said it was a safety feature specified by OSHA, to prevent getting fingers in the wheel spokes. I suggested drilling holes in the plate would allow air flow, & he agreed with me. He said he’d pass it on to his engineers. This is the dust port with the holes drilled in the baffle. I put a board between the wheel to prevent damage to the wheel.
	*Internal view."*