Andy, the top bearings looked good, not as nice as the bottoms, but I think they will work fine.

 

To bad about the DP, that thing looked sweeet. I hope it didn't get scrapped.

 

Shane

 

Edited November 3, 20187 yr by Larry Buskirk

How is the restoration coming along?

 

Ken

Edited November 3, 20187 yr by Larry Buskirk

Maybe they painted it on and it has worn off? 

Don't know but one thing I do know and that its in good hands now!
 

Doug

 

 

 

Edited November 3, 20187 yr by Larry Buskirk

Hi Shane,

 

I have been out of the loop for a while working in the shed and not paying attention to many forums, but without question that is one serious bandsaw. Great pictures as usual .........

 

 

Thanks ~ Dan

 

Edited November 3, 20187 yr by Larry Buskirk

Ken, I don't think I have had a day off from work since my last post so no change on the band saw.

Hopefully just two more crazy weeks at work and it will slow down some.

 

I still need to make up some flat belts for the Crescent Universal Wood-Worker before the owner picks it up in a couple of weeks. I have some lacing ordered so hopefully it gets here next week so I can get that done. It will be nice having that machine out of my shop so I can get some of my shop space back.

 

 

Shane

 

Edited November 3, 20187 yr by Larry Buskirk

 

I made a little progress over the holiday weekend. Spent some time polishing the 3 handwheels and a few other parts.

 

Before:

 

 

After:

 

 

Before:

 

 

After hitting it with the wire wheel you can see how pitted it was.

 

 

After 2 of the 3 wheels.

 

And the 3rd wheel.

 

 

A pictorial I put together showing how I polished them can be seen here.

Thanks for looking,

 

Shane

 

Edited November 5, 20187 yr by Larry Buskirk

Looking good Shane,

 

May I ask what you use for a sealer over the polished parts?

 

I imagine that you don't have the humidity problems in Utah, that we have by the big ponds (Great Lakes) so was wondering what you use.

 

As usual very impressive, I can allready see how your bandsaw is going to come out.

 

Fantasmatic Man!

 

Edited November 4, 20187 yr by Larry Buskirk

Larry, you're correct, Utah is fairly dry but parts will still rust just sitting out. I use Renaissance Wax on all the bare metal surfaces. It's a little pricey but IMHO well worth it. I will give everything a coat about every 3 months. Also works great on table surfaces, wood will slide across it likes it's on bearings.

 

Johnsons paste wax also does a nice job.

 

Shane

 

Edited November 4, 20187 yr by Larry Buskirk

I picked this band saw up about a 3 months ago. and I have been anxious to restore this beast but had to get the Crescent Universal Wood Worker done and out of the shop first.

 

The owner finally picked the Crescent up a couple of weeks ago so I jumped right on to restoring the band saw. The first thing was to strip the paint. When the paint is flaking off like it is on this saw I have found the easiest way to remove it is with a paint scrapper, a razor blade, and a hammer.

Scrape the loose paint off with the scraper and rest of the paint with a razor. To get rid of the old asphaltum filler you can hit it will a wire wheel, but it takes for ever and is very messy. I found that a series of light taps with a hammer and it will chip right off. I had the whole saw stripped in about 4 hours.

Once all the paint is removed and most of the filler is off I finish up with a sander and some course sand paper to clean it up.

 

 

Much better. 

 

I usually don't like to use a filler on cast iron, I like the looks of the rough surface, but on this one I decided to go ahead and throw some body filler on it. Now I remember why I hate using the crud, it took me 3 full days, 3 minutes at a time cause the stuff dries so fast, to get it all smooth. I have never sanded so much in my life and if I never see another can of the stuff it will be too soon. My whole shop now has a thin layer of pink dust everywhere. After it was done though I must say the results were worth all the hard work.

 

I originally planned on painting this satin black with gold highlights, one of my favorite paint schemes, but I decided to brighten up my shop some. The original color of the saw was a bluish green color.

So I went with a bright turquoise color ..... How's this for bright?

 

My wife hates the color but I love it and think it will look great with some contrasting black.

 

 

Since this is going to be tucked away in the corner of the shop I made a mobile base for it so I could roll it out to use it. I picked up some 1½" square tubing and made a base for it. Added some casters and it's good to go. (pic showing it upside down).

 

 

Well this is as far as I have gotten on it. Still a lot to do but I think it's coming along nicely.

 

More pics to follow .......

 

Shane

Edited November 7, 20187 yr by Larry Buskirk

Shane it looks great, I seriously love the color scheme

 

Greg

http://www.thesawdustfactory.net/

Edited November 4, 20187 yr by Larry Buskirk

All these old machines you guys are restoring, I would have thought they were "junk".

 

Now I'm seeing them differently. I may have to keep my eye out for one to restore!

 

 

Edited November 4, 20187 yr by Larry Buskirk

Looking good Shane. The jury is still out on the color for me. I will be waiting to see it finished

 

Ken

Edited November 4, 20187 yr by Larry Buskirk

Shane,

 

Wow!!

 

Looking good man.

 

Try using a little less hardener in your body filler. That will give you a few more minutes working time.

 

Looks like I'm falling way behind at getting my machines done, but had to shift to getting the workshop redone so I have a better place to keep them. The wife I'm sure would prefer that I wasn't working on them in the living room!

 

Edited November 4, 20187 yr by Larry Buskirk

Harry,

 

As long as most people see them as " junk," we're all the more happy.

Most people just see the dirty old coal, but we see the diamonds in the rough!

 

Edited November 4, 20187 yr by Larry Buskirk

Thanks for the comments guys! 

 

I worked on the band saw most of the day but didn't get as much done as I wanted. I painted the upper and lower bearing blocks and got them mounted. Stripped the old rubber and paint off the wheels and get them ready for paint. I also got the new tires glued on using epoxy paint. I was hoping to crown them but the paint took forever to dry so they will have to wait til next weekend.

 

 

Here's the latest pic. The color is a little more accurate on this one than the ones above.

Thanks for looking,

 

 

Shane

 

Edited November 4, 20187 yr by Larry Buskirk

Looks good so far.

 

As you know I like the smooth casting look. The argument that they don't look like cast ARN is a lame one if you ask me. Lets face it it's a lot of work. One thing I try not to do is put Bondo on the corners or edges. What ever the fillers were in the past they were a lot harder than bondo and could take a hit. I like to grind the castings edges if I can, but this takes more time as well. I take a long time to do things though.

 

jack

 

English machines

 

Edited November 4, 20187 yr by Larry Buskirk

Awesome job Shane. I love the paint, I admit too it looked pretty bright until I saw the following pics with the black and polished hand wheels and hardware. I can sympathize with your hatred of body filler, when I was 17 I worked in a body shop, I have seen my share of Bondo!

 

It's pretty amazing the vision it takes to bring these back to life, it never ceases to fascinate me, I have a hard time seeing the possibilities of these machines when in their run down state. But when you do it long enough as you have, and others on here, I am sure the vision pops as soon as you see it. Color schemes, accents, etc. Congrats on another great machine in progress.

Edited November 4, 20187 yr by Larry Buskirk

I for one love the paint scheme. It looks really great. You do such an awesome job on the restorations. I would be scared to death to start one, but would love to find one I could do and give it a shot.

 

Thanks for all the great pictures.

 

Edited November 4, 20187 yr by Larry Buskirk

I made a little progress on the band saw this weekend but there's still a lot left to do.

 

I put new tires on the wheels last week and now that the epoxy glue is dry I can crown the tires. I picked up a grinding stone from my surplus store and used a dressing wheel to shape the stone to the profile I wanted on the tires.

 

 

The best way to crown tires is while the wheels are on the machine in case there's any runout in the spindles. My plan was to mount the stone in my large radial drill press and crown the tires while they were on the saw. I figured since I could slide the head in and out raise and lower the head with a turn of the wheel, it would make it easy to line things up just right.

 

 

I turned a mandrel on my lathe and mounted the stone to the drill press. I used my pallet jack and moved the drill press into the room where my band saw is. I spun the head on the drill press thinking I could rotate it 90 degrees but soon found out it will only rotate 45 degrees ... so much for that plan.

 

 

So back to the drawing board. I looked around in my rathole and found an old motor that I robbed off of a little lathe a few years ago and used to use it as a buffer. It has a jacobs chuck on it so I used that to mount the grinding wheel. Then I clamped the motor to the table of my spindle sander and using the tilt on the table I was able to raise or lower the grinding wheel slowly into the tires. I was worried that the 1/6 hp motor would be underpowered but it worked perfectly.

 

 

 

 

Here's a pic of the grinding stone. The profile looks a little exaggerated in the pic, I shaped the outside two inches of the stone so it would give the tires a little less than a 1/16th of an inch crown.

 

 

Once the tires were crowned I went ahead and painted the wheels. While I waited for the paint to dry I turned some feet for the leveling screws on the mobile base. I turned a groove near the bottom of the 3/4 inch threaded rods for the set screws on the feet to ride in. I put some lock tight on the set screws and turned them in until the end of the screws were just touching the inside of the groove, loose enough that the rod will spin inside of the foot but tight enough that it wont fall off when I raise the rod up to roll the base around. I still need to cut the threaded rod a little shorter and make some knobs so I can adjust them without using the pliers.

 

 

Next it was time to tackle the tables. Some of the metal on this band saw was heavily rusted leaving some of the parts badly pitted as you can see in the pic below ... it kinda looks cool polished up ... lol.

 

 

 

I was worried about the tables being pitted but after cleaning them up they didn't look to bad.

Most of the rust was just surface so I used a razor blade and started scraping.

 

 

After an hour of scraping and 12 razor blades I had a nice pile of rust and the table wasn't looking to bad.

 

 

With most of the rust scrapped off I mounted a scotch brite pad to my sander and worked at it for another hour. I finished it off with some 0000 steel wool and the table was looking pretty good. I could of kept polishing but I didn't want it to shine to much. I think I stopped at the right time, still has some character and you can still see the original old planning marks running across it.

 

 

I painted the underside of the table and mounted it to the saw. It took four of us to lift the table, it's a heavy sucker, up and on to the saw.

 

Well that's as far as I got this weekend. I still need to design and build some guards for the wheels and then tear into the motor.

 

 

Shane

 

Edited November 4, 20187 yr by Larry Buskirk

Sweeet!

 

Looking real good Shane. That table looks heavy!

 

Edited November 4, 20187 yr by Larry Buskirk