Option 1 has larger wheels and uses slightly longer blades, and there are about 30% more blades on Amazon that fit Option 1 than Option 2. But Option 2 is available free, though Option 1 is perfectly affordable. I don’t know any reason either wouldn’t work.
Intended use is mixed occasional light use on steel, aluminum, plastic, and wood. I’d be wanting to get 2 or more blades suited to these different materials. I don’t have a bandsaw now. It’d be nice not to have to mess with a vice and hacksaw.
They’re both probably going to work fine for light use. I’d use the free one. Worst case it breaks or doesn’t work and you can buy the other one. On average older tools are often better made (and made of heavier materials) then newer ones at the low end, but it’s hard to say how well any specific old Craftsman bandsaw is going to work.
The WEN is a much better saw, in theory anyway. It’s a two-wheeler, the Craftsman is bending the blade around multiple small wheels and will have alignment problems. The table, fence, and blade guide for the WEN look much better than on the Craftsman even when it was new.
My recommendation is a somewhat larger bandsaw of higher general quality. It will cost much more, but it will last and retain some value over time.
Yes. I have a Wen, it’s ok for small jobs. The dust collection port does not work very well, I still get sawdust everywhere. I wanted something to cut small logs or branches into usable lumber, the Wen is not up to that task. The motor can’t do anything over 4 inches. It also took a couple hours to get the blade to cut straight. I found the tire on the lower wheel was not flat. Thanks to a guy at a Rockler store, I made a new tire from an inner tube, that fixed my problem.
As I suspected it has only one fixed speed. You’ll melt plastic and blades won’t last long on metal that way. My experiences with these small bandsaws haven’t been good. They can work fine for light duty for a while, expect blade drift, it’s a low tension blade with a minimal tracking and alignment system. If you put it aside for a while and come back to it you’ll probably have to readjust everything to use it again.
On the other hand, for light enough work it will do the job for a minimal investment. @iamthewalrus_3 suggested trying the free one before buying one, that makes a lot of sense.
For one more option, consider some type of scroll saw. This Rockwell BladeRunner might do all you need. WEN also has a scroll saw more like the traditional Delta benchtop configuration. Scroll saws have the advantage of being simpler machines. Just about anyone of them will last well, the difference is mainly in the size of the motor and speed options. You can also saw interior holes in material with a scroll saw. They are reciprocating saws so they do vibrate a lot.
I’m learning, I think, that metal wants to be cut at speeds at least an order of magnitude lower than wood. And that saws that run at those lower speeds cost several times what saws running at higher speeds cost.
Not quite clear how to find “way better than a hacksaw” for a couple hundred dollars. Seems like stepped pulleys would have been a cheap enough thing to put on some of these products.
You’d be surprised how easily that would boost the price. Tools driven directly off a motor save a fortune in all the parts it takes to make any kind of transmission. You’re adding the pulleys, set screws, another shaft and bearing plus a belt and making the frame bigger and stronger to handle the extra load, and then robbing power from the motor also.
I don’t know what capabilities you need. What thickness and length of what kind of materials do you need to cut?
Some examples would be: little aluminum extrusions less than 1/8" thick, bigger aluminum extrusions that are 1/2" thick in places but still only 1.5" square in overall outline, steel angles that are 1/16" strips bent into shape, possibly some real rolled steel angle of perhaps 1/4" thickness, and in one case steel bar 3/8" thick by 2" wide. And probably the occasional threaded rod typically 1/4" to 1/2". By “steel” I mean mild, low carbon, cheap steel.
I also use plywood, plain wood, and plastics such as PVC pipe, some 3/8" thick rigid PVC sheet I got, and scraps of polycarbonate. But I think the higher speeds could be OK for those, or at least for the wood.
I don’t have well specified needs. It’s just that for years I’ve had a couple hacksaws kept above the vice, and when I’m sawing my way through something or another I contemplate how much easier this would be if I had a bandsaw. I also find myself designing whatever I’m cooking up so that I don’t need a bandsaw (or lathe or mill) to do it.
BTW for a few years now I’ve had a cordless right angle grinder, and I tend to leave the abrasive cutoff wheel on it. I’ve unexpectedly fallen in love with how convenient it is to grab it for cutting some of the miscellaneous steel tidbits.
The metal cutting you are talking about sounds like all cut-off work, cutting long narrow pieces to length. That is something that can be easily handled by a portable bandsaw, even the cheap ones from Harbor Freight like this. I have one that is modified with a hinged arm to work like a horizontal metal cutting saw similar to in this video. Mine is even simpler than in the video, just one piece of heavy aluminum angle for the arm, another small piece and a bolt for a pivot, and all mounted on a piece of plywood.
These saws work surprisingly well on metal mainly because the proper blades are available for them. Good quality bi-metal blades make there way through heavy steel slowly but surely, even railroad track. Many smaller and larger bandsaws aren’t very suitable for metal because the proper blades aren’t available. You can use these saws manually with a vice, sure beats using a hacksaw. And even though I don’t need to, I could add a bolt to hold the saw in the vertical position and use it like a standard bandsaw for small items. I use this same saw for cutting off plastic pipe and 4x4s.
For cutting up larger sheet goods you just need a larger bandsaw with a deep enough throat to handle larger pieces. If you need to do enough of that you might as well invest in a decent bandsaw, but that same saw may not be any good for those heavier pieces of metal. Most are not meant to cut only thin soft metals, if any metal at all. But bench type and hand held scroll saws may do all you need for that, certainly easier to work with in wood and plastics than metal.
An abrasive cutoff saw would make short work of that metal also, a full size one that takes a 14" wheel is not ultra-expensive and will last a lifetime, useful for metal, ceramics, and masonry, or you can use a small handheld cutoff saw or make a stand for one to operate as a chop saw.
Yes, I see what you mean. I just ordered a modest one, also a WEN brand and highly rated by many customers on Amazon. Only $101. It goes 60 to 420 feet per minute, adjusted with a little knob that has numbers printed on it (so I’m not just guessing with a trigger). Maybe I’ll order a table accessory for it, but since (now that you mention it) I do seem to do all cut=off work, I might be happy just leaving the work in the vise.
I do have a full size corded right angle grinder too, and if I had to cut bigger stuff, large rebar for example, I’d probably get a cutoff wheel for it. Rebar in a messy construction site is one thing, but for cutting small stuff in my nice clean bright indoor shop/lab (which also has an electronics bench and some scientific instruments), I don’t want to fling the sparks very far!
I have a 14" chop saw, and a couple of smaller angle grinders, and except for cutting the head off a nail or something like that it’s just too much smoke and sparks for use indoors. There are incredible metal cutting circular saws now but they are very expensive and more suitable for cutting up large pieces of heavy plate than cut offs.
The speed control on that motor is just a resistor, so you lose power as the speed goes down, but with a good bi-metal blade it will cut steel without a problem at fairly low speeds. If you’re cutting hardened steel or some alloys you might need to use the grinder to score the metal to get started. If it’s this WEN portable it comes with a bi-metal blade, and those blades are available at big box stores and Harbor Freight.
Also, I strongly suggest you find a way to build a pivot arm for that saw. There is nothing like the pleasure of clamping down a piece, turning on the saw, laying it down on the work, and then sitting back and watching it cut. It can be something very simple, even if you just clamp the saw to a board swinging on some kind of pivot. And even in a more permanent structure you should still be able to detach it from the pivot and use it hand held.
I have the speed set at 5 on the dial for steel, and it will slow considerably as soon as it touches the metal, and then continue steadily. The current blade has a noticeable ticking as the weld crosses the workpiece, it’s actually soothing, and all I have to do is watch. The blade is under a lot of tension, another key to accuracy in cutting that the small benchtop bandsaws lack. I recently cut a 3/32" slice off the end of a piece of 2"x2" square steel tube. It cut square and clean and I keep the cut off piece around because it looks like it came off a milling machine.
I actually had this saw around for a couple of years before I began to use it for metal. It came with a wood cutting blade and I didn’t find it that useful and the blade liked to wander going through wood. Maybe the blade was stretched or too long and wouldn’t tension properly, but I just didn’t find much use for it until I saw one of those videos about converting it to a horizontal metal cutting saw. Once I set it up and got a metal cutting blade I was very impressed. I gotta say that out of all the ways to cut metal this simple bandsaw outperforms abrasive wheels, cutting torches, cutting electrodes on a stick welder, and my small plasma cutter. It is just faster to set up and cut with it, it’s clean, and no smoke and sparks.
And I think I’ve seen it cutting 12" stainless solid rounds. It has a hydraulic valve to control rate of cut, and shuts itself off when it finishes the cut and falls a little further into a limit switch.
So, yes, there’s nothing like it. But tuppence is tuppence…