Blade Guide for Beaver 3300 Bandsaw

The upper and lower blade guides are identical on this vintage -circa  1950 bandsaw, replacements are difficult to find, and the design would be a little tricky to machine, so I made a printable one.   I made this one in PETG and I used a 608 bearing as the back guide.  I used pieces of brass flat bar for the lateral guides, the original ones were hardened steel.

I printed mine without supports, though had to do a bit of cleaning in the lateral guide slots.

PETG worked well enough for mine, though a more rigid material would be nice to have,  The way this fits in didn't allow for adding more material to the design, so I had to use the same dimensions as the metal part.  This allows some flex of the lateral guides, though if the saw is set up properly these should barely need to touch the blade at all, so it hasn't negatively impacted the performance that I can see. 

The design uses captured nuts and M3 bolts to clamp in the lateral guides similar to the setscrews on the original metal part.   A captured nut at the back allows a 1/4"-20 bolt to adjust the position of the back guide bearing.  If you need a metric equivalent I can do an M6 version or you can tweak the design yourself STEP files are included. 

A short length of 8mm rod (or an offcut of a bolt) is required as an axle for the 608 bearing. (The original part used an imperial bearing size I believe 7/8" OD 5/16" ID, I didn't have any of these and a 608 bearing is a pretty close match. I was able to install one just fine on the remaining metal guide I had to replace the seized original. )