Hello Everyone,
about a month ago I purchased a bunch of Lapidary equipment from an estate sale. I never met Jim Scheirbeck but he was a rockhound for a long time and had collected a lot of equipment. I see his craftsmanship and foresight in some of the equipment I acquired. I believe Jim built this 20" saw.
When I found it, the wheels were all but buried in mud. There was 4" of water standing in the box. The whole saw was buried in other lapidary stuff.
The carriage was frozen on the slides and the power drive engagement was all frozen up. After I got it home I plugged it in and found nothing ran.
I cleaned the slides and worked for a couple hours to get the carriage to move. After working it back and forth with lots of PB Blaster, the bushings cleared up and the carriage moved easily. I also sprayed the drive engagement mechanism and freed it up. It still needs to be disassembled and cleaned but for now it functions.
I turned my attention to the electrical. All the wiring was ancient. The wires were fabric insulated. I replaced all the wiring to both motors.
Yahoo! Both motors run and appear to be in good condition.
Now it time to start working on it. Last night I got out my scrapers, brushes and shop vac to begin cleaning it. There was a lot of material in the box and the water has caused some rusting. I got most of the box cleaned and then it was time to empty the sump. Yes, my saw has a sump.
Welded to the bottom of the box is a 3" wide radial sump that allows the 20" blade to spin below the bottom of the box. Below the radial sump is what looks like a 1 foot section of the top of a compressed gas bottle with a 2" pipe nipple welded to the bottom of it. This is the oil reservoir. It looks like it can hold a couple gallons of oil and the blade will dip down into it as it spins.
Clean the sump? OK, I removed the 2" pipe cap from the bottom of the reservoir expecting the gallon or so of water to pour out. Nope.
I stuck a bar down through the sump and finally managed to push it through the bottom opening. About a half gallon of water came out. The rest of the reservoir is full of mud. Mud and sticks and pieces of plastic and muck. I worked on emptying it for another hour. Tonight, I'll haul it outside and hose it out.
Hmmm Ok the reservoir is a sludge trap. There is a pipe coming off the top of the reservoir that I see is for draining the oil prior to cleaning the sludge trap. This system screams "Please put a filtered oil system with a supply pump on here"!
The plan;
Finish cleaning the box, sump and reservoir.
Pull the saw motor, fix the motor mount up.
Clean and check the motor out (repair as needed)
Pull the carriage drive system out. Clean the engagement mechanism. Clean it, fix it, make it pretty.
Check out the spindle bearings. So far they seem to be good.
Clean and paint the box. I'm liking Rustoleum silver hammered finish paint for this. Still debating about painting the inside.
Clean up the lid.
Clean up ALL the wiring. It's missing box covers and is not really configured the way I want it.
Make a belt cover. I don't have sheet metal tools so I am considering wood. I think it may work.
SO IT BEGINS!