budnder
Member
With some recent birthday money burning a hole in my pocket, I got in the mood to treat my bandsaw to a new blade and some new guides from Carter Products. I thought I'd share my experience with the upgrade. In short, I'm happy with the upgrade, but maybe not quite as happy as I thought I'd be. Time will tell, but since they're easier to adjust, I think I'm more than likely to keep the guides tuned up, whereas I didn't like futzing with the Rikon guides and consequently was not good about keeping them set up correctly.
I ordered the $209 "RIK14DMA- Rikon 14" Deluxe with Micro-Adjustable Guides" upgrade kit off of Carter's website and shipping was incredibly fast – I think I got them in two days. There was no instructions included, just a few plastic bags of parts in a box. There was definitely some head scratching as I compared the various bits that I received to the Rikon bits they were replacing.
If you notice, Carter sells two versions for the 14" Rikon upgrade kits - a "Standard Rikon" and a "Deluxe Rikon". The difference looks to be primarily in the lower guide, where the "standard" expects to be bolted to the frame, and the "deluxe" expects to have a square hole receiver/set screw arrangement. Even though my original lower guide was bolted to the frame (so appears to be a better match to the Carter "standard Rikon 14" guide), it does have a square hole in the right place to accept the "deluxe Rikon 14" Carter guide (and I scrounged my own M6x40 set bolt for it).
So... even though I clearly have a saw labeled "Rikon 14" Deluxe", the Carter upgrade kit marked "standard" looks to be more of an exact match for my old Rikon guide. However, I actually like the way the "Deluxe" Carter attaches better. I don't think it matters, but there's no provision on the Carter guides for the plastic blade guard that attaches to the lower Rikon guide.
The upper Carter guide is where I ran into a little issue. I was only able to get the edge of the guide to within 1/8" of the back of the blade gullet, rather than the suggested 1/16". The forward travel needed is blocked by the Rikon blade shroud. I'm willing to live with it, but have contacted Carter to see if I'm missing something about the way I installed it and will update this post if I hear back from them.
Each of the Rikon options from Carter (standard Rikon 14 and deluxe Rikon 14) also has separate version that is tool-less for an additional $30. I got this tool-less version. It looks like all this amounts to is an extra bag of thumb screws in your kit so you can remove the guide wheel's Allen screws from the non-tool-less version and replace them with the thumbscrews.
I ordered the $209 "RIK14DMA- Rikon 14" Deluxe with Micro-Adjustable Guides" upgrade kit off of Carter's website and shipping was incredibly fast – I think I got them in two days. There was no instructions included, just a few plastic bags of parts in a box. There was definitely some head scratching as I compared the various bits that I received to the Rikon bits they were replacing.
If you notice, Carter sells two versions for the 14" Rikon upgrade kits - a "Standard Rikon" and a "Deluxe Rikon". The difference looks to be primarily in the lower guide, where the "standard" expects to be bolted to the frame, and the "deluxe" expects to have a square hole receiver/set screw arrangement. Even though my original lower guide was bolted to the frame (so appears to be a better match to the Carter "standard Rikon 14" guide), it does have a square hole in the right place to accept the "deluxe Rikon 14" Carter guide (and I scrounged my own M6x40 set bolt for it).
So... even though I clearly have a saw labeled "Rikon 14" Deluxe", the Carter upgrade kit marked "standard" looks to be more of an exact match for my old Rikon guide. However, I actually like the way the "Deluxe" Carter attaches better. I don't think it matters, but there's no provision on the Carter guides for the plastic blade guard that attaches to the lower Rikon guide.
The upper Carter guide is where I ran into a little issue. I was only able to get the edge of the guide to within 1/8" of the back of the blade gullet, rather than the suggested 1/16". The forward travel needed is blocked by the Rikon blade shroud. I'm willing to live with it, but have contacted Carter to see if I'm missing something about the way I installed it and will update this post if I hear back from them.
Each of the Rikon options from Carter (standard Rikon 14 and deluxe Rikon 14) also has separate version that is tool-less for an additional $30. I got this tool-less version. It looks like all this amounts to is an extra bag of thumb screws in your kit so you can remove the guide wheel's Allen screws from the non-tool-less version and replace them with the thumbscrews.
