I started another project today that I have wanted to do for some time now. I’m tired of fighting with the motor mount on my 7x12 horizontal/vertical band saw. The factory mount consists of two thin pieces of stamped 14 ga. sheet metal. In order to change the belt position (speed) of the saw, you have to loosen two bolts on the underside of the top plate which are not easy to get to. The lone tension adjusting bolt is off set to one side of the mount, which cocks the motor sideways when you try to tighten the belt. The other problem is that the thin sheet metal bends and sags under the weight of the motor, which throws the pulleys out of alignment as well.



I purchased another heavy duty motor mount to replace the original one, but it is too long to fit on the saw. When lifting the saw to the vertical position the mount would hit the chip pan and prevent it from being fully raised. So I needed to shorten it up to get it to work. I scribed out a couple of cut lines to remove the center portion (2-1/4”) of the mount which should give it just enough room to clear the chip pan.



Unfortunately, I had to take the motor off of the saw to get measurements for the new mount, and I didn’t really want to put it all back together again to cut up the new mount. So I resorted to using my plasma cutter instead. The first step was to install a high tech fence guide (wooden yard stick) to make a straight cut.