first mill and its a Wells Index 745

Thought i would give an update after this weekend.
Saturday night, i did a funtion test on the head and besides some required adjustments, the head rebuild was successful. One minor brain fart, for some reason the quill power feed just would not work. Keep in mind, this was at the end of 15 hours straight of final cleaning and reassembly all day saturday. Now it was pushing 11pm Saturday night and I had thrown the top end pieces on just to make sure the head worked before final prep and painting of those parts because if i had fubar'ed the head, there wouldnt be much point of continuing. I stand there stumped when i look and notice these really flat blue spots. Ya, i forgot to remove the masking tape and install the quill power feed engagement lever :). That was my sign that the day had reached it's end. If i kept going, i would end up spending all day Sunday fixing all the mistakes from the previous night. So, i removed all the top end parts leaving the head exposed and called it a day.
Sunday was just as productive. Quill feed engagement lever is installed. Spent most of the day finalizing the remaining parts, everything above the head, as far as paint prep. Took all the exposed nuts, bolts, and washers, wire brushed them, and gave them their first coat of matte black. There was one piece i wasnt sure what to do with though. The part that attaches to the head that holds the 'Hi/Off/Low' back gear lever is an aluminum casting. After going back and forth on whether to pain it or strip it, i decided to just paint it. At the end of the day, this IS a mill, not a show car but as i was cleaning it, the paint was just rubbing off. Hmm, i guess it's trying to tell me something :). Well, who am i to argue. I went ahead and stripped the paint. I thought it would provide a nice looking contrast as polished aluminum, sandwiched between the rest of the blue parts.
 
Had a good brain fart last night.
While i am waiting on the bearings for the motor and pulley to be delivered (please be delivered today) i needed to address the rear way wiper install issue. The gib on the y axis protrudes over a half inch out the back of the saddle, preventing the way wiper installation, and also explaining why the cast aluminum way wiper was cracked at that spot. I had been researching the why's and how's of that. Did you guys know that a machine sold in 1968 may have some wear on the ways? :)
Long story short, i had two good options, and few not so good options. Im not going to even talk about the not so good options and look at the two good ones. The first option is to buy a new gib from Wells-Index. It has it's upside for sure but it also has a huge downside, at least for me. That downside is that i have no way to fit it to the ways since they come oversize and really dont want to pay someone to do that when that money would be better spent on having the ways completely rescraped, assuming the rest of the machine is good to go, which at this point is still an unknown part of the big picture equation.
So, i decided on option two. Shim the existing gib. I have feeler gauges and shim stock already. The shim stock can be cut with a paper cutter and i found i could make some clean intricate cuts around oil ports and stop grooves with the dremel i already have. So, option two is cheap and easy.
That brings me to my brain fart. I go out to pull the gib out and start measuring to fit a shim to the inside of it. Problem is the gib wont come out. It come almost all the way out, but then hard stops right at the end. It's already late at night so im just going to blame it on a long day :). After a few choice words, i start disassembling the entire table. 45 minutes later, the table is apart and I have the saddle standing there laughing at me, it seems. What happened was that i hadnt unscrewed the stop bolt enough to let the gib come out. 4 more turns on it and it would have come out like it was supposed to. Live and learn. If it wasnt for mistakes we wouldnt learn anything.
In the end, the job is done, the table has much less play in it, and i know i will never forget to unscrew the stop bolt far enough. Hopefully those bearings get here today so i can start getting this thing adjusted and ready to run.
 
Back
Top