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+-- Thread: Restoring an Old Drill Press (/showthread.php?tid=4978276)
Re: Restoring an Old Drill Press - WIRE WHEELING PARTS - Jonny Rocket - 08-10-2010
skizzo said:
I know of another guy who picked up almost the identical machine a couple days ago, too. Three very similar machines, with unusual but desirable features, in three different parts of the country.
Yeah but mine has the foot feed setup....
I will have to take some pics of mine as I noticed this morning that my table crank setup is upside down relative to Bill's and Ricks. Someone added a bearing for the shaft to turn on too.
Re: Restoring an Old Drill Press - WIRE WHEELING PARTS - skizzo - 08-10-2010
Jonny Rocket said:
Yeah but mine has the foot feed setup....
So says you... rumor is it's missing a part. And that your fancy original belt guard thingy isn't even CI, sheesh.
Kidding aside, nice find, J. Good luck in deciding what your plans are for it, now that you have it home.I've sort of been out of commission on this thing for the past few days, going on a week now without much to report. Life, love and commitments getting in the way, along with a couple unexpected tool runs. I started putting the motor back together yesterday and should have updates in a couple days. This last weekend was a lost weekend completely, as I didn't touch this thing at all. C'est la vie.
Re: Restoring an Old Drill Press - WIRE WHEELING PARTS - Rickbaro - 08-10-2010
Jonny Rocket said:
I will have to take some pics of mine as I noticed this morning that my table crank setup is upside down relative to Bill's and Ricks. Someone added a bearing for the shaft to turn on too.
I don't know about that. If you look through some of the catalogs, they show the raising mechanism to be set up with the crank at top. Because my clamp is cracked, I was going to reverse mine anyway so that the good clamp is at the bottom. A thrust bearing (even a small one) would be an excellent idea.
I would like to see a picture of yours for sure.
Re: Restoring an Old Drill Press - WIRE WHEELING PARTS - skizzo - 08-10-2010
Rickbaro said:
I don't know about that. If you look through some of the catalogs, they show the raising mechanism to be set up with the crank at top. Because my clamp is cracked, I was going to reverse mine anyway so that the good clamp is at the bottom. A thrust bearing (even a small one) would be an excellent idea.
+1 on the photos. I don't recall exactly, but it seems to me the upper collar on mine also serves as a head support collar. If you have a spare collar that could be used by itself for the head, I could see it being useful to have the crank up high, above the table. But I wouldn't want to sacrifice the support for the head if it's there's only one collar.
Re: Restoring an Old Drill Press - WIRE WHEELING PARTS - Jonny Rocket - 08-10-2010
Photos coming. Bill, I should have said my foot feed is relatively complete. Like "relative" to yours...
Joking aside, the foot feed on mine has an upper collar that supports the head, so maybe that is why my crank is the other way around.
Re: Restoring an Old Drill Press - DISASSEMBLY - Ken C. - 08-10-2010
Skizzo...if you want that column out it can be done. I know you saw the post that Walnut Charlie wrote on using that column/flange and bolts to remove a column. I obtained an identical clamp and that's how I removed the column from my Atlas.
I can get the current holder to ship it to you if you want. I deemed it a community column removal tool and someone else has it right now.
Here is some encouragement in my post on this same issue.
DP Column Removal
It was so "stuck" that even with the flange tight I had to add 2 lock collars above it to keep it from moving. I ran the all-thead down against metal plate I placed in the base. You can see the ring around the column where it started to move.
I did not read this entire thread so if you already have it out....disregard.
Re: Restoring an Old Drill Press - WIRE WHEELING PARTS - TomFromStLouis - 08-10-2010
I just discovered this and enjoyed the read immensely. I love the before and after money shots!
BTW, my DP has three knurled nuts on the depth stop too. One below to set the height when up (not a critical setting) and two above to set and keep the depth you are drilling. I thought this was normal? My point is, I do not think you have an "extra" nut at all.
The color will be great. WTs always has just nice lines, almost any decent color looks great...
Re: Restoring an Old Drill Press - WIRE WHEELING PARTS - skizzo - 08-14-2010
Two posts to update, with subject lines reflecting the differences. I finished up cleaning the table and head, and finally got the painting done.
First, the table. This is the table as it came out of the spooge tank a couple weeks ago. There are still remnants of rust and gunk, plus the table needs its spit and polish treatment to get it ready prior to painting.
LOML came by and insisted on taking a couple of action shots. The basic process is spritz with WD40, run a scotchbrite under a ROS, wipe off gunk, and repeat. After a couple rounds with WD40 and an extra coarse scrubber to work on rust, I switch to mineral spirits and a green scotchbrite to pull out embedded oily black stuff.
Half an hour later, it's looking pretty good.
Flip it over and hand scrub the webbed underside using the same materials, and we're ready for taping and painting.
Finally, the last of all the parts to strip is the head. I go back outside and get out the angle grinder with a wire cup brush again. The second photo shows a good example of the original WT grey/green color from the area that was behind the original switch.
And after hand cleanup of nooks and crannies, final wipedown with mineral spirits to pull oily remnants, taping machined surfaces, and protecting holes, it's ready to paint.
Time for the table, from the start to the completed taping (not shown), was an hour-and-a-half. The head was about the same, including quite a bit of taping and hole-filling.
Re: Restoring an Old Drill Press - PAINTING - skizzo - 08-14-2010
Finally... time to do the painting. I'm one week later on getting to this than had been anticipated, but that's because I went almost a full week, including all of last weekend, pretty much not working on this project at all.
In any event, Saturday morning rolls around and all of the paintable parts are cleaned, taped, and ready to go. All of these parts, both small and large, need to be painted on all four sides. Just as importantly, most are roundish items that don't have any clear corners or edges that can be easily taped to do one side one day, and then retaped to do the other side another day. So to do this effectively, I really need to have 360-degree access to each part independently... not a surprise, as I've been down that road before. Bottom line, they need to be hung and suspended.
The head and the table are large, heavy, and bulky, and cannot be moved around easily. A couple ladders and long dowels work well to hold them solidly and far enough apart that they can be worked on independently.
The smaller assembly parts also need to be hung to make it easier to spray everything in one stage. But they can also be lifted and moved to work on one at a time. They are stashed close together between two stands, and lifted one at a time to another area, sprayed, and replaced in the storage space.
A couple coats of primer on everything.
And three coats of paint. Basically, it's just a round-robin process, one part at a time, and by the time you get through each piece, the first is ready to go again.
The color again doesn't come through in these outdoor photos, but they are the same Sage Green color as the base from a couple weeks ago. Everything is now done and sitting hanging in the front yard for the next few hours. I'll bring them inside later and let them hang over night. I may work on some of the smaller assemblies tomorrow, but don't plan to touch the head or table for at least 48 hours, which puts me at Monday or Tuesday to do machine assembly. In the mean time, I'm going to work on final clean-up and buffing of the non-painted parts so that everything will be ready to go in a couple days.
The total time for this morning's work was an hour-and-a-half, including setup. Two coats of primer and three coats of paint took exactly, to the minute as it turns out, one hour.
Re: Restoring an Old Drill Press - THE CHUCK - skizzo - 08-14-2010
Long post warning.
While paint is drying, I started cleaning up the bench and workspace because I'll be working with mostly clean stuff from here on out. So I thought.
Ughh... there's that chuck that has been soaking in mineral spirits ever since the night I popped it off the spindle. It has been absolutely frozen solid, I mean won't budge even the slightest bit, with the jaws completely recessed. In order to see if it can be restored, I HAVE to get the jaws to move, because the outer sleeve can't come off unless the jaws are moved towards their outwards, or closed, position. If they won't move from fully open, I'll have to cut off the outer sleeve and replace it with one from a previous parts chuck that was sacrificed a long time ago. My actual backup plan, rather than put a makeshift chuck on this drill press, was to repurpose another good one that I recently picked up on *bay for pocket change because it was mislabeled and nobody else seemed to notice or bid. Then I would work on this one later.
But before going that route, I wanted to see what could come of this one with a little effort. I've been picking it out of its MS bath every few days and fiddling with it to see if it would break loose at all. Today, I finally went after it with more force and some tools, in combination with a chuck key. BTW, repeating something I said way back earlier, a guy has a great website about Jacobs chucks that I go back and visit every time I work on one of these.
http://www.beautifuliron.com/jacobs.htm
Back and forth, a little more pressure each time, what's this... movement? A couple more tries... half an inch of rotation. Ok, now we have some potential for the first time yet with this thing. A few minutes later and it has come all the way closed. Good news, because I know what do from here, although I don't know what I'll find when I get it apart. The last one I took apart was found to have broken teeth up and down one of the jaws, which are completely unusable.
The process for cleaning or repairing one of these chucks is to nearly close the chuck jaws, press off the outer sleeve, remove the split nut, pull or punch out the jaws, clean everything up, and put it back together in the reverse order.
Time to get out my little arbor press to remove the sleeve. You only have to move the sleeve about half an inch to break the press fit, then it slips off (with some fiddling) the rest of the way by hand. A tip from the OWWM guys after I posted this makes a lot of sense and is something I'll do from now on... slip a pipe fitting or something similar around the jaws so that you press directly on the chuck body rather than on the jaws themselves. I close the jaws all the way as shown below so that they can support each other and provide some stress relief when pressing on them. That would not be needed if using a round tube to avoid pressing on them in the first place.
You may have to spin the sleeve around to some particular location, I've never really figured that part out, and it will eventually slip off. The split nut will probably fall off at this point, but the jaws aren't likely to go anywhere.
The jaws usually need a little prompting to come out of the main body, which means a small punch. These happen to pull out by hand, most likely because they've been soaking in MS for two weeks. Once they're out, the chuck is apart... seven total parts: the sleeve, both halves of the split nut, the three jaws, and the main body.
A quick inspection shows that the split nut appears to be intact and the jaw teeth are all there. That's good news, but we won't know for sure until they're cleaned up on the wire wheel. After cleaning, the jaws appear to be in surprisingly good condition.
If you look closely at the second photo above, you'll notice slight differences in the jaw teeth from left to right. Specifically, look at the first step/tooth up from the solid jaw. These matter, because they are required to go into the main body in a certain orientation to each other so that the split nut will line up everything correctly. On the main body, where the jaws are inserted, there are numbers 1, 2, and 3 stamped respectively. I've lined up the three jaws above accordingly. Slot #1 gets the jaw that has a little half first tooth, slot #2 gets the jaw with the full tooth, and slot #3 gets the jaw with no first tooth. The "beautiful iron" site that I linked to above has a nice discussion about these.
Anyways, the parts all clean up nicely.
The jaws slip into their respective slots, tooth-side facing outwards. At this point, each jaw should smoothly slide its full length of travel in and out relatively easily by hand. If it sticks, catches, or binds, spend some time cleaning or troubleshooting the bore or the jaw, because it isn't going to get any better on its own once it's back together.
And now, one of the trickiest steps of all... orienting the jaws to install the split nut. The split nut is machined as a single piece and fitted to the jaw design as I described above. Then it is literally split in half, roughly, to be able to go onto the jaws and into the channel on the main body. Installing this thing takes some trial and error pretty much every time.
The first problem is that the jaws slide up and down on their own when you'd really like them to stay in one place... aligned with one another if possible. Second, when you put the first half of split nut on one or more of the jaws, it's going to intersect with the jaw teeth and move that jaw. After some fiddling, you eventually get what will feel and look like a good fit.
Once you have one half in place, don't lose your grip on that half and that jaw (or jaws). Carefully slip the other side of the split nut into place, making sure that the bottoms of the jaws are all lined up properly. At this point, holding tight to both sides of the split nut, you should be able spin the assembly and watch the jaws move in and out. Drop it, though, and you have to start over.
Carefully slide the outer sleeve back over the assembly, without anything moving, until it gets a slight grip internally on the split nut.
Back to the arbor press to press the sleeve back into place. There is one bit to pay attention to here, and that is how far to press the sleeve back on. Not quite far enough and you can't get a chuck key into place, too far and the chuck key will slip. After pressing to make sure there's a solid bite, I sort of gradually work my way to the proper depth and check it with a key a couple times as I go. Once the key slips in smoothly but tightly, that's it.
Run the chuck open and closed a few times, and this one turns out to be as flawless (knock on wood) and smooth as any that I've ever had apart. There is a little bit of external pitting on the exposed portions of the main body, but that's cosmetic only. The chuck itself appears to be pretty darn good, considering its original condition. To be honest, that's a big and pleasant surprise... I had pretty well assumed this thing had little chance of surviving for use, and was figuring at best I might be able to salvage the jaws and/or split nut for parts another time. Turns out to be as good or better than any I have in use on other machines.
Total time from start to finish, a bit less than 90 minutes, and one of the biggest pleasant surprises so far.