Ok, so here's a brief progress update. I'm in a productive mood and looking to bang this out!
I started out a couple day's ago by unbolting the wire guard and using a pulley/bearing puller to remove the 16" blade. The guard sat in the electrolysis tank for 2 days before I started the project tonight.
Imho there is no other way to strip one of these delicate cages down. A powered bench wire wheel will catch and bend the wire frame. Chemical stripper would be a mess, I highly recommend electrolysis, leaves nice bare steel throughout all the nooks and crannies.
After it came out I dried it and went to town with handheld wire brushes. about 35 minutes later I got a couple stubborn spots with the drill and then did a super quick scotchbrite.
Here's the base plate with capacitor and some other stuff I'm not sure what it's purpose is. I cleaned it up using compressed air and a toothbrush on the inside, and cup brush on the rusty steel on the bottom. No pics, i'm just going to put felt under it. Also pictured it the (Nickel?) plated flag badge. Not gonna mess with it.
This is the little exposed wheel I used to clean up the base and hardware. It took about 15 minutes with pliers to get the little nuts and screws cleaned up and the base raw. From there a little love from the green scotchbrite gave the base a nice brushed steel look. I tried to salvage the original japanning by removing the brushed on enamel with acetone, but only found rust underneath.
By unbolting the motor end bells the rotor was exposed. I made sure to keep the washers in place and used mineral spirits, a nylon brush and compressed air to clean out the rotor and windings.
Mineral spirits on a rag and a nylon toothbrush cleaned up the original finish on the motor housing. I had to use #0000 steel wool to buff out some house paint splatter from the japanning. Of course I disassembled the brass pivot sleeves, and cleaned up all the hardware and grime from that whole oscillating assembly.Also pulled the gearbox apart, flushed out the old peanut-butter-esque grease and replaced it with some modern synthetic stuff.
Where i'm at right now.
I just put the blade in tonight, we'll see how long that takes until the paint softens up. Just like a good rack of ribs, it should be just about ready to fall off by itself.
The blade will also need some balancing, here's a site I found.
http://www.afcaforum.com/forum1/24048.html
Featuring guys that actually know what they're doing! There's a lot of great reading out there from collectors if you are interested. Consider this to be an entertainment thread, I have zero clue about proper techniques but am just having fun in the shop!
