My lastest sawmill adventure- a Kasco Saw IIB

[backwoods sawyer]

Crown on the wheel is hard to see with just the eye, Take a new razer blade and stand it up on the wheel there should be an equal sliver of light on each side, if not a machine shop can grind a .008 crown on them as steel wheels do wear down. 
Ussualy when the saw wears the grind marks off the wheel you are about halfway to needing them crowned again.

take a look a the saw guide arm on the Cooks mill if you have to rebuild, simple and solid.

[Celeriac]

The wheels on the mill are definitely flat. My understanding is that they were flat from the factory.

Until proven otherwise it appears the guide arms aren't the problem,  rather the traveling rails that adjust the guide.

I will do some additional sleuthing next time and report back.

-Aaron

[36 coupe]

This mill only has 1-1/2" shafts, so I assume it's an earlier rendition. I don't see any signs of the shaft being loose in the bearing, but I don't have it apart yet.

I thought I read that the blade should not run against the rear guides during normal operation?  Is the "new" guide just a larger bearing?  If the existing guide prove to be problematic what about changing to something more like Cook uses?

Probably 2/3 of the blades were with the mill were broken, so that is a bit worrisome. Granted, many of them look like they were ground to a negative rake, which cannot help  :-\

Back when the Ross Band Mill came into use around here I got a used blade from a fellow.There was no resharp service here.I thought my Belsaw Sharpall could be used to sharpen band blades.One thing I noticed was the face of the blade was not at 90 degrees.The blades were sharpened and then set.I think this puts a negative angle on the face of the tooth.A dealer I talked with said the blades had to be sharpened right out of the box to cut well.I had put a 5 degree face bevel on hand and power rip saws when I sharpened them.They cut faster and went longer before dulling.The blades for the Ross mill came from Simonds.I gave up the Belsaw idea because there was not enough headroom in the sharpening shop.I do think that grinding the entire profile of the band saw blade is a waste of time.The face and top of the tooth do all the cutting.Photos Ive seen of band mill blades show deep scratches in the gullets.Grinding with too coarse a grit and grinding too hard is hard on saw steel.

[ozarkgem]

I had the same problem with my Mighty Mite . The blades would dive and cut lousy boards. The factory couldn't help. The guy I bought it from changed the bands wheels to all steel. I read a article about how the wheels needed crown. I checked mine and they were flat and sloped. I took them off and put on pulley wheels with V belts and ended the problem. Just a a thought