Wednesday - November 28, 2018
As we all know, sometimes life throws you a curve ball that keeps you out of the shop. That happened to me over the weekend. I'm happy to say this wasn't some tragic curve ball... it was an eBay curve ball.
Just before traveling to the Lone Beech Melon Farm in southern Indiana for Thanksgiving, I won an eBay auction via a best offer bid. The auction was for a set of Metric Transposing Gears for my 11-Inch Rockwell Metal Lathe.
These are unobtanium so I was happy to have won the auction. On Saturday they were delivered by the Post Office in a flat rate box.
Bummer!
The seller had placed padding around the inside of the box but nothing protected the individual gears from each other.
I contacted the seller with pictures of the broken gear. He responded immediately with a return-for-refund message.
I asked if I could take some time to investigate the possibility of repairing or replacing the gear. Like I mentioned - this setup is pretty much unobtanium. The seller agreed to stand by.
I posted a query in the Garage Journal's Fabrication & Techniques section as well as in the Rockwell Lathe Yahoo Group. I got many helpful responses and most of these seemed to indicate that a repair was possible. The Yahoo group had some additional thoughts on taking a stock gear and modifying it.
On Monday I contacted a friend of mine. A retired Delta mechanic, I had met him because he had an Allis-Chalmers Model G like I have. Mostly we had laughed & scratched at an annual local Farm Heritage Days event so I knew of his welding skills mostly by reputation. I had used him one time to do some aluminum welding on my trailer and I was impressed by his work on that project.
On the phone I told him I had a broken gear that I believed was cast iron. I asked if would look at it and give me his opinion on if it was a repairable situation. He said to bring it to his shop and he would look at it.
I drove about half an hour to his place and he examined the gear. He stated he thought it was repairable. I asked him if he knew someone that could to the repair. He replied, "Yes".
I asked, "Is he close?" He smiled a big smile and said, "Yes".
He gave me a quote on the repair and I left with the gear. I still needed to negotiate with the eBay seller on a reduction in the price to offset the cost of the repair and other incidentals.
By Tuesday morning the seller and I had come to an agreement that allowed me to keep the gear set with some compensation for the damage during shipping. I called my friend and asked when I could drop the gear off for repair.
He told me to bring it right over and - because he was busy with other projects, to leave it in a designated location. I did this at about 11:00 am yesterday. I had already told him there was no hurry in getting this gear back to me.
This morning I got up and, as I was drinking my coffee, I was thinking about calling him to see if he had found the gear. As I was considering when would be an appropriate time to do that, my phone rang. It was my friend: "Your gear's ready." he said.
I drove over to his place. He was away from his shop and had left the gear where I could find it. I left the agreed to amount in an envelope under a brick and departed with my prize.
I am very pleased on how the repair turned out. My friend indicated he had welded it with silicon bronze. It has been pointed out to me by others that this repair was probably actually brazed not welded.
I am aware of the difference between brazing & welding but that's about it. I'm pretty sure my friend said he "welded" it. He was probably talking to me like one would talk to a slow child - trying to use words he thought I would understand.
Continued in next post...
