It ended up being a Shop Master which were produced in the late 40's and through the 60's. At one time they were the premier tool producer for home workshops. It sports an external induction engine with a pulley to provide the power. I believe the engine was rated at 3/4 HP. I have no idea the year of this one other than to say judging by the dust, grime and dirt it had to be about 50 years old give or take. Being that it may be about the same age as me, I approached it with loving care. My goal was simply to have a band saw that could perform some initial cuts for me. Nothing high production. So my intent was to clean everything, replace the blade and pulley, 'refresh' the motor and oil and lube where needed. I did not want to get into re-finishing, i.e. sanding down to metal and repainting etc since I did not even know that it could run yet.
I decided to start with the engine. I did some research on the Internet and discovered it was a Westinghouse 3 phase electrical induction engine. The wiring looks to be all original with the cloth and fabric insulation which was extremely dry and frayed. I decided to replace all external wiring.
It is obvious from this picture that base plate for the engine was very eroded. It is made from a very heavy and thick metal which has oxidized over the years. My initial plan was to knock the rust off, use Naptha as a solvent and see where I got. Where ever I ran into a bolt or screw I would replace them. Most of them had the square heads that you don't see anymore.
I was able to pop the front of the engine off after some gentle prying. The entire engine was fairly well packed with sawdust and grime. I do not know a lot about electrical engines, just that this was a brushless and enough to know not to mess around too much here, so I ended up using compressed air and removed as much of the 'sediment' as I could.
Here you can see the axle still looks good, I wanted to repack it in grease but only got to use some DW40. Next time I crack it I can add some. For now it was all sawdust removal and some external re-wiring.
Here is is after being scraped with a wire brush, naptha'd down and a little oil applied. I tried to replace the thumb screws but they only had these in a much smaller size. So I don't see me moving the motor much so I decided I would keep them.
So turning my attention upstairs I started to look at the main chasis. All in all pretty good shape for a 50 year old piece of hardware. Still a lot of sawdust stuck every where. The wheels seemed to turn fairly well. As long as the bearings don't go I should be good. I took all the pieces off I could.
I needed to pay particular attention to the band saw guides. The guides were very rusted and had marks that they may have either been the originals or well used replacements. I am thinking they are original. The thrust bearing, which allows you to push the wood against the blade had a lot of gunk in it so it was not turning properly.
I let it sit in solvent, then wire brushed it and then let it dry. After liberal amounts of oil it seemed to be responding much better. I took out all the guide screws and repeated the procedure and oiled the screw holes to make adjustment easier. I am amazed at how simplistic it is but seems to work. The design has changed very little over the years.
Here you can easily see the amount of rust and corrosion over the guide as well as the saw.
Here is the guide after 'treatment'. Looks a little better but really works much better. Once I am convinced that the saw is good and will be used, I can look at a replacement.
I had forgotten there was one under the saw table... I had to remove and do the same process here as well. Not difficult but it did take some time to really look at it and understand how it works so I could put it back together :-)
I also discovered that the table has a tilt mechanism underneath. Once I removed the table I looked at the mechanism which was pretty much frozen in place. The mechanism is a split wedge.
The metal is supposed to separate enough to move the tilt mechanism. Know matter how I tried I could not get it to budge more than a couple millimeters. So I will leave it as is for now. Another component for a return trip if there is one...
Here she is all 'spruced' up, although the throat guard still needs to go on. The engine drive belt and the saw blade are both on order and will be replaced when they arrive. The saw blade was an odd size (77.5 inches) so I had to pick one up custom. Cost me more in shipping then it did for the saw blade...
I fired it up for a test run just cutting a board. It chugged and kind of wobbled to life. This baby was pre-rubber lined wheels, it is a noisy. It didn't seem to have any problem biting into the board. It was fairly slow though, when I pushed I did get some burning. But all in all, it did the work! I thought it fitting that the first board it cut be installed on to it. Be interesting to see how it cuts with the new blade...
1 comment:
That was a nice piece of equipment back in the day. Good to see it being brought back to life.
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