Restoring an old powered hacksaw

To the OP, I had to laugh when your neighbor offered it for "free."

This is the same sort of neighbor who offers seeds to his neighbors, saying "I just can't seem to get these to grow", figuring correctly that pride will take over, the neighbors will grow them, ending up with too many to eat, and end up giving him some "in payment."

In your case, your generous neighbor ends up with someone who has a fully functioning saw, so he'll probably be showing up eventually with this or that to cut, so that you can "show off" the saw to him. Pretty clever on his part... and he doesn't have a big, barely-working saw cluttering up his shop :)
 
MrCrankyface said:
Figured I'd share my restoration project!
I've always found these old machines quite cool and when a neighbour offered me a defective one for free, I couldn't say no! :D

This is the machine as I got it, it runs but won't lower the sawblade so you have to manually push it against the work piece, which becomes quite the challenge and dangerous as heck when it's moving back and forth.


The thick bars protruding on the side are from an automatic feed system that's been cut off.
By pure chance I came across a previous owner of this saw and he gave me these two pictures of how it used to look.
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At first I was just going to get the downfeed to work again and leave it at that, not spend too much time on it because I have quite a lot of other stuff that also needs doing.
But just trying to understand how the machine is built and what could be the problem, I was already in waaay too deep to not do something more serious.
Just trying to get the downfeed mechanism out I somehow ended up with this after like 14 hours of work ... Many of those were just shoveling out old sludge and nasty cutting oil.


Every little mechanism is completely packed with old grease that is long overdue for a cleanup, this picture was after I scooped handfuls of it out.
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Eventually after a lot of beating I managed to get the entire hinge mechanism off and the parts are starting to pile up.
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One really interesting thing is this motor. It's 2 motors in one, double shafts and everything.
There's a smaller shaft, inside the bigger shaft, powering the smaller pulley.
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With everything stripped it was time for it to travel outside for some major cleaning.. Quite a big of degreaser, scrubbing and high pressure washer.
By now you can even see that it has some color underneath all the crud. :D
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MrCrankyface said:
Continuing on.
Using a mix of sanders and wire brushes, I got most of the old crud off.


Both sprayed and brushed on a layer of epoxy primer.


And ontop of that a layer of grey polyurethane.
It looks quite light in the pictures, as it hardened it became a bit darker.
I did so many mistakes here that really ****** me off. Stupid mistakes like how I somehow forgot to mask the top and floor, sprayed way too much paint on and so on.
I will have to get back to this and sand down the runs and do a final top coat again.



I did a quick brushjob on the legs, I think the black should constrast nicely.


To get away off from the frustration of the bad paintjob(I don't like painting but I like a good end result..), I started working on the pump which was the initial problem.
To the left you have the "lid" of the main piston and to the right is the main unit I guess.
The big rod on the lid has a smaller rod inside it, and the big piston has a smaller piston inside it that gets act upon from this smaller rod.
Basically as the saw runs, it acts upon the smaller rod, transfering the motion to the smaller piston down inside the bigger piston.


A closer look on the main piston and the smaller rod.


With the bottom taken off the main piston, you can see this smaller piston. I have taken the seals off it for the photo.


Eventually all that was left to take apart was this part on the lid.
Aaand here we find a completely busted seal.
Hopefully this is all that was keeping it from working as intended.
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Great job on your restoration.It seems to be the way to go.Im a local too.
 
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