Best Bandsaw Blade Tension Handle Yet!

If your bandsaw has a blade tension adjustment knob on the top of the saw, it can be inconvenient or downright uncomfortable to use. We found a great crank handle that is made for 14” (36 cm) bandsaws, but could be easily adapted to our Grizzly® 16” (41 cm) - what a difference!

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If the stock blade tension knob that came with your bandsaw isn’t easy to reach or is difficult to turn, chances are you’ll avoid using it. That means that you’ll likely leave your saw fully tensioned when you are done with the saw for the day. That’s not good for the blade, saw, or tires.

Our first course of action was to see if there was a speed-adjust lever or another quick device to solve the issue with our 16” (41 cm) Grizzly® bandsaw. Nope. There are units for all the popular 14” saws - but nothing for our sized saw.

We then took a look to see if there were better handles that gave better leverage when tensioning the saw’s blade, as well as speed, both when tensioning and de-tensioning. Again, nothing we could see.

But, what if we could adapt something that was made for other saws? That’s when we took a look at the BigHorn® 14330 Bandsaw Tension Crank for 14” (36 cm) saws. We’re pleased to say that the handle fits our saw and required only minimal alterations to have it work beautifully:

Remove a couple of the nuts that came with the handle
Remove the handle by loosening the handle’s set screw
Shorten the shaft about 2” (50mm)
Grind a flat spot on one side of the handle end of the shaft to allow the handle’s set screw to securely grip the handle and resist spinning
Reinstall the handle at the desired height above the top of the case

After this, we simply removed the stock “star” knob and shaft after loosening the shaft’s combination position/compression set nut, washer, compression spring, and bottom washer. These were simply utilized in the same order when the BigHorn® handle was installed.

The specifications of the handle are:
Thread: 3/8-16 tpi
Shaft Thickness: 3/8" / 9.5mm
Shaft Length: 13” / 33cm

You wouldn’t think that ⅜”-16 TPI thread would fit into a saw that was made in Taiwan - but it does.

To see where you can buy the BigHorn 14330 Band Saw Tension Crank, visit:

UPDATE: Apparently, Big Horn has discontinued the handle. You can also use the existing shaft by using a pin punch to take the pin out of the star handle and replace it with a 3/8" crank handle. The best source we've found for this sort of thing is mcmaster.com.

https://www.mcmaster.com/products/cra...


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