A neighbor was moving and had an old 9″ Delta-Rockwell tablesaw about 30 years old I really didn’t have a real need for it but for $50. I couldn’t turn it down. It had a lot of stuff stacked on top and I couldn’t see the top very well. He brought it over and left it in my driveway, the top had white paint splashed all over it and it was solid rust. I’ve never seen a saw this rusted, it was solid. I got a scraper that has a single edge razor in it to try and scrape off the paint, it took the rust also. I used about 6 razor blades and it cleaned up beautifully. It had a 90 tooth carbide blade it was almost as bad as the saw top, I used the razor on it also and gave it a good bath in degreaser soap. I probably would not have bought it if I could have seen the whole saw. I’m glad I did the bearings are good, a nice blade, everything works easy. About 3 or 4 hours cleaning, not a bad way to spend a Sunday afternoon.
Gods Peace this Holy Week
We have 7 real good reasons to be thankful this Palm Sunday
les
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Finish your job by taking 300 or so grit wet dry sandpaper with oil and a backer block. Lube up the top and use the block to sand it down to clean metal. If you do it enough you'll start to see the machine marks from when the table was originally milled. Lube can be WD 40 or whatever oil you have handy. Sand and wipe up the slurry with paper towels, relube, repeat as necessary. Clean it with solvent then when it dries wax it with car wax.
If you really are going to make it look good get some UHMW plastic and put a face on the fence. Change out the shives (pulleys) to machined steel and put on a new belt. The final step is the Epoxy Linen board (phenolic resin) miter face.
Sounds like you got a bargain. These steps will turn this into a tool you'll never give up.
When I finished planeing down the top with the razor blade I had some 220 sandpaper I used a block and kinda finished it up. I have some crocus cloth here at work and will take some home and finish it off with that. If that don't finish it I will give the oil a try. I been trying this morning to locate the machined pulleys, haven't found them yet. Do you have a source for them? About 15 years ago most of the catalogs had them, I bought a set and a link belt for an old Craftsman saw I had, cost about $50. It was well spent, sure helped the old girl perform a lot better and quiter. The link belt is no problem, I found 3 catalogs with them. I will probably buy one of the precision fences for it. With the little money I've got in I can put white side walls, fender skirts, mud flaps and still not have a lot of money in it.
I have a workshop about 5 miles from my house, this will be my garage saw at home. Sometimes I worry about my sanity I was almost as excited to be working on this old saw as I get out of my woodworking.
Gods Peace this Holy Week
les
I got my pulleys at a motor and mechanical drive distributor here in Milwaukee. It was Weinniger bearing & transmission. These are common places. Look under bearings in the phone book.
Good luck. PS the oil floats the rust offf the surface and preserves the paper longer.Jack of all trades and master of none - you got a problem with that?
You can save some sweat equity when doing the final sanding by using 220 and 320 wet/dry discs on a random orbit sander and a very light spritz of WD40, at least if you're ROS has hook-and-loop arrangement. This is the method I used on the steel router table top I just finished and it worked quite well. I just lined the holes in the paper up so the vent holes in the sander were covered, put a film of WD40 on the table and sanded away. The finish was way better than it would have been had I done it by hand.forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
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