Can the Hercules Bandsaw and Stand Cut Straight? It Can, Here’s How! – Hercules Portable Bandsaw

The internet says that the Hercules Bandsaw and stand from Harbor freight are junk and can’t cut square. It’s easy to see why, that Blade wanders like crazy! The problem isn’t in the stand, it’s in the saw and other brands likely suffer the same problem. What if I told you there’s a super simple fix that likely won’t cost you a dime and takes less than 10 minutes. Here’s how:

There’s 2 places this can wander and adjust this, the first is right here and that controls how square it cuts in this direction (show that) but that’s not one everyone complains about.

The problem is actually right here (show the blade follower) and it’s lack of adjustment. The blade goes from it’s normal position and is twisted by the follower to the put the blade in the position to cut. The half inch blades these use, they want to return to their untwisted position and that’s where the wander gets created. So big industrial horizontal bandsaws have a follower that can move closer to the material to help stabilize the blade. These little ones don’t have that provision, so we have to fix this a different way. 

We can fix this by putting a little bit more twist to the blade by using a shim (close up of the shim I made). This .070” piece of junk makes this bandsaw cut like something that costs many times more money. This was part of a cutoff piece of angle iron I bent and cut to get to this shape.

Here’s how this works. By loosening these 2 screws, I’m able to work the follower out just enough to slide this behind this side. (show the how) Then snug each side down before tightening it for keeps, and it’s ready for it’s test cut. You may want to try different sizes to determine which one is best for your saw, but I’m seeing around 1/16th (.0625”) seems to be the sweet spot. 

By shimming that over, it essentially applies extra twist, but it puts the blade right where it needs to be to cut straight. I’m using this machinist square, you can use a 1-2-3 block and see how straight it cuts and if any further shimming is needed.

The problem isn’t the base, it’s a design flaw that they didn’t address, but luckily we can fix this pretty easily.