pacer_3iii
New member
- Joined
- Dec 3, 2021
- Messages
- 3
I was given a 103.23130 drill press by my father in law that he had purchased in an estate sale for $20. It didn't have a motor, and had sat in a pole barn for decades. I'm not sure when the last time it was used, but it was covered in oily/greasy dirt, and dirt dauber nests filled nearly the entire head casting and the bottom of the table and the base.
I sprayed PB Blaster on the column and let it penetrate for several days before I even attempted to separate the pieces. I think I used probably more than I should, but I don't really have a lot of experience or the tooling to do much actual repair work, so I really didn't want to break anything. A wooden dowel, a crescent wrench, and a dead blow hammer were pretty much the only tools I used to separate all the pieces. I had all the supplies ready to do an electrolysis rust removal, but really once I got the crud off, the column was the only overly rusty part. I guess years of dirt and grime did well to protect the metal. I soaked all the big pieces in a tub of Simple Green diluted about 4:1 to get the grime off. I didn't want the paint stripped in case it was still useable, but the only places that had salvageable paint were under the headband and the labels.
For the column, I improvised a lathe by mounting 4 cheap Harbor Freight casters to some 2x and clamping them down, then just rolled it by hand while I ran my angle grinder with a cup brush. This took forever and wore me out, so I found some pipe and soaked it in citric acid for I think 2 days. Once I took it out of that, I got the bright idea to use my drill and a hole saw with duct tape around it to fabricobble a lathe motor. This worked somewhat better than turning it by hand, but I still had to hold the angle grinder with one hand and the drill with the other, so not ideal. Once I knocked the majority of the rust off, I went through several grits of sandpaper trying to even out some of the pitting. I didn't want to take off any more material than absolutely necessary, but the pitting had to go.
I soaked all the small parts in Evaporust for several days while I worked on the big pieces. The only parts that weren't salvageable were the 3/4" machine screws that hold the pulley bearings in place. I'm not sure if I broke them pushing the pulley out or if they were broken before I ever got it. I honestly didn't even know they were there until near the end of the project because dirt daubers had filled the holes nearly completely. I was able to reuse all the bolts and screws other than those 2, with only minor pitting and discoloration on most.
The headband I decided to just leave alone. There is something splattered all over it that I can't easily scrub off without destroying the engine turning, so I just cleaned off the majority of the grime and left it as is. The label on the base was completely bare of anything but the stamped model number, so I just cleaned it and put it back in place. I saved the pins that held both tags on, and chucked them in my drill with 300 grit sandpaper and some polish to get the rust off, and they drove back in snugly.
I really liked the gray color and had a really hard time matching it with what was available locally. I ended up buying 3 Rustoleum cans (Dark Smoke Gray, Royal Blue, and White) and mixing them until I got fairly close, and then added a bit more blue than I should have. I sprayed a thinned mixture of this on after a coat of bare metal primer, and put about 4 coats on all told. I tried to get a little thicker coating around wear points, but I still have a couple pints left over for any touch ups. The $14 HVLP sprayer from Harbor Freight did a fantastic job with this mix, so I'm glad I chose to go this route over just a hammered finish rattle can. It makes it a bit more personal to me.
For the motor, I found a 2002 model 1hp 1720 rpm for $35 that I'll use, even though it's way overpowered. I found a pulley for the motor on Amazon, and that's currently the only thing I'm waiting for to be 100%. I had to figure out the wiring of the motor to make it CW, the manufacturer only put the wiring diagram to switch to 230v so it took a bit of experimenting to get it right. For the switch, I didn't want to go with a lightweight toggle like the one that came with these, so I got a residential style switch and an outdoor-rated cover to make it look a bit more industrial. This makes it fairly easy to get to. Since it was the bench top model, and I don't really have a workbench to put it on in my garage shop, I made a little table out of some milled-down 2x4s. I'll fill the shelf at the bottom with concrete or sand, it's still a bit top-heavy as is. I think the runout will be fairly tight from what little knowledge I have, and should work great for small woodworking or other uses. I didn't do a bearing replacement, they seemed to be still fairly good but I'll do that if I need to now that I know how to take it apart fairly quickly.
Overall, I'm extremely satisfied with how this turned out. I've never used a drill press, and to start from ground zero rebuilding one really gave me a good understanding of what I'm dealing with. I have one missing handle that I need to replace (the end is stuck in the hub along with 2 broken extractors), but I love the looks and feel of this thing. I really wish manufacturers would put this type of quality back in production, there's zero plastic and the only aluminum is in tags. I'm really glad I found this website about 2/3's of the way through this project, because I had no idea these were commonly restored and thought I was in over my head. Several of the rebuild threads here were valuable, and now I'm interested in rebuilding a vintage machine instead of buying new whenever I can.
I sprayed PB Blaster on the column and let it penetrate for several days before I even attempted to separate the pieces. I think I used probably more than I should, but I don't really have a lot of experience or the tooling to do much actual repair work, so I really didn't want to break anything. A wooden dowel, a crescent wrench, and a dead blow hammer were pretty much the only tools I used to separate all the pieces. I had all the supplies ready to do an electrolysis rust removal, but really once I got the crud off, the column was the only overly rusty part. I guess years of dirt and grime did well to protect the metal. I soaked all the big pieces in a tub of Simple Green diluted about 4:1 to get the grime off. I didn't want the paint stripped in case it was still useable, but the only places that had salvageable paint were under the headband and the labels.
For the column, I improvised a lathe by mounting 4 cheap Harbor Freight casters to some 2x and clamping them down, then just rolled it by hand while I ran my angle grinder with a cup brush. This took forever and wore me out, so I found some pipe and soaked it in citric acid for I think 2 days. Once I took it out of that, I got the bright idea to use my drill and a hole saw with duct tape around it to fabricobble a lathe motor. This worked somewhat better than turning it by hand, but I still had to hold the angle grinder with one hand and the drill with the other, so not ideal. Once I knocked the majority of the rust off, I went through several grits of sandpaper trying to even out some of the pitting. I didn't want to take off any more material than absolutely necessary, but the pitting had to go.
I soaked all the small parts in Evaporust for several days while I worked on the big pieces. The only parts that weren't salvageable were the 3/4" machine screws that hold the pulley bearings in place. I'm not sure if I broke them pushing the pulley out or if they were broken before I ever got it. I honestly didn't even know they were there until near the end of the project because dirt daubers had filled the holes nearly completely. I was able to reuse all the bolts and screws other than those 2, with only minor pitting and discoloration on most.
The headband I decided to just leave alone. There is something splattered all over it that I can't easily scrub off without destroying the engine turning, so I just cleaned off the majority of the grime and left it as is. The label on the base was completely bare of anything but the stamped model number, so I just cleaned it and put it back in place. I saved the pins that held both tags on, and chucked them in my drill with 300 grit sandpaper and some polish to get the rust off, and they drove back in snugly.
I really liked the gray color and had a really hard time matching it with what was available locally. I ended up buying 3 Rustoleum cans (Dark Smoke Gray, Royal Blue, and White) and mixing them until I got fairly close, and then added a bit more blue than I should have. I sprayed a thinned mixture of this on after a coat of bare metal primer, and put about 4 coats on all told. I tried to get a little thicker coating around wear points, but I still have a couple pints left over for any touch ups. The $14 HVLP sprayer from Harbor Freight did a fantastic job with this mix, so I'm glad I chose to go this route over just a hammered finish rattle can. It makes it a bit more personal to me.
For the motor, I found a 2002 model 1hp 1720 rpm for $35 that I'll use, even though it's way overpowered. I found a pulley for the motor on Amazon, and that's currently the only thing I'm waiting for to be 100%. I had to figure out the wiring of the motor to make it CW, the manufacturer only put the wiring diagram to switch to 230v so it took a bit of experimenting to get it right. For the switch, I didn't want to go with a lightweight toggle like the one that came with these, so I got a residential style switch and an outdoor-rated cover to make it look a bit more industrial. This makes it fairly easy to get to. Since it was the bench top model, and I don't really have a workbench to put it on in my garage shop, I made a little table out of some milled-down 2x4s. I'll fill the shelf at the bottom with concrete or sand, it's still a bit top-heavy as is. I think the runout will be fairly tight from what little knowledge I have, and should work great for small woodworking or other uses. I didn't do a bearing replacement, they seemed to be still fairly good but I'll do that if I need to now that I know how to take it apart fairly quickly.
Overall, I'm extremely satisfied with how this turned out. I've never used a drill press, and to start from ground zero rebuilding one really gave me a good understanding of what I'm dealing with. I have one missing handle that I need to replace (the end is stuck in the hub along with 2 broken extractors), but I love the looks and feel of this thing. I really wish manufacturers would put this type of quality back in production, there's zero plastic and the only aluminum is in tags. I'm really glad I found this website about 2/3's of the way through this project, because I had no idea these were commonly restored and thought I was in over my head. Several of the rebuild threads here were valuable, and now I'm interested in rebuilding a vintage machine instead of buying new whenever I can.
