Ryobi Bandsaw Roller/Bearing Guides by newforfall

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

This is an upper guide replacement for Ryobi's 9 inch bandsaw. If you're not familiar, bearing guides are a dramatic improvement over stock in performance/ease of use, and help blades last longer (in my experience). I modeled it to use skateboard bearings, they're cheap on amazon or your local board shop. You don't need expensive ones for this. There is a dimple on the shaft in which you will need to drill a 5/32" hole and tap 10-32 threads into to use the stock bolt. There are sleeves for the bearings with a 1mm skirt on one side, these are standoffs which will need to face the body of the guide block when inserted (see photo for bolt-bearing-nut assembly). Their purpose is to space the outer bearing race from the block so it will spin freely rather than rub. Here's the only pieces of hardware you need:
1/4-20 thumb screws x 2
1/4-20 square nuts x 2
Skateboard bearings x 2
Home Depot carries a pack of two 1/4-20 square nuts, or if you're building your hardware collection, McMaster-Carr carries a pack of 100. Whatever you get, they need to be 7/16" on a side and 7/32" thick.
You could play with the tolerances on the shaft to take the looseness out, but it is negligible. I may redesign and do that, if I do, I will update the files.