Flea Market find!!!

Ststephen7

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You know... I'm often finding myself jealous of the flea market finds other people seem to show off. Well jealous no more!

Just over a week ago I found this 3/4 HP 257.191500 7" x 3/4" x 1/2" block grinder at a local flea market. It was pretty dirty...

The guy wanted $20 for it... I was really surprised that it was still there at 2 pm... I gave him his $20 and took it home.

It ran fine, however there was a nice scraping/grinding (ha) noise, so I order up some new bearings.

I took it all apart and cleaned it up with some simple green.

I don't have a press, so I used a brass hammer to knock off the old and knock on the new bearings. And... even with the brass hammer I managed to mushroom both ends of the shaft. After a couple of hours with a matching thread file (I only have one, and happened to have 20tpi) and a 1/2" x 20 tap, I managed to fix the threads and get the nuts to go back on.

It has all of the parts with the exception of the quench tray. The eye shields are yellowed and blotchy... is it possible to restore these? Or at least clear them up?

While both wheels seem to be original, the course one makes the grinder vibrate enough to shake the whole house. It runs great with only the fine on one.

I watched a few videos on getting rid of this problem and tried (and failed) to use tape the move the wheel where it needed to be. Then I put the 4 large wheel flanges on the lathe and trued the surfaces where they butt up against the shaft and the wheel, with no improvement at all. So... I just removed the bad wheel until I can get another. I may (probably will) have another go at getting it to run with less vibration. Any hints or links to instruction are welcome!

I did move the fine wheel to the other side, and it ran fine over there, so it's the wheel.

It was in such good shape I didn't even feel the need to paint it! I just cleaned it up and put it all back together.

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Nice score! ¼" clear polycarbonate (Lexan) sheet makes good shields.
 
Nice find! Nice clean-up.
I would agree that the vibration appears to be from the wheel. Let us know when you get a new one.
 
Since at the moment I have more time than $, I thought I'd have a go at restoring these eye shields. First I cleaned them with water, then alcohol. Then I put some Dremel brand polishing compound on them and used a polishing tip (at around 12k rpm). I went over them both a couple of times, smearing more compound on after washing the last go off with some warm water. They were still kind of hazy, so just off the top of my head I hit them with some Nevrdull.

The edges and top are still yellowed (I didn't touch them), and all in all I think they came out pretty good! You can see what they looked like when I got them above...

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