Please forgive the newbieness. There's no way to compete with the people here and their knowledge and experience, but this was a project I did some time ago. It's a Tomlee wood lathe. Basically it just needed cleaning,oiling and a new paint job. The front bearing on the headstock was easy enough to find locally. The backend of the headstock uses an oilite bushing, which was found at the same local place.She runs smooth and loves to make chips. She was small enough to fit into a kiddy pool and electrolysis was used to clean rust and old paint.
I hope its okay to post this, if not, please delete. I'll know better next time. Don't have before pics, but these are after pics. Please notice I had to shove all the tools out of the way to take the pictures. heh, heh.
Hi Chance, Your lathe is a little lighter than the machines we normally deal with around here, but it looks like you have done a nice clean and paint. I would be interested if you could elaborate on your experience with electrolysis, my experience with it was that it was kind of slow and I was not in love. Any pics you had would be great!
Hi Pete, sorry no pictures. Never thought about the camera until now. The dogs chewed up the kiddly pool a long time ago. I'll post a few pics of the bucket system I've used on wrenches, bells, etc. Home Depot bucket is about 4 gallons of water. Washing soda is the recommended base, but I use baking soda. And it works just fine. The battery charger and a piece of iron (old pipe wrench) hooked to positive, submerged. Got to make sure of the polarity. It took the Tomlee about 2.5 days of soaking to get clean; it could have been longer, but I don't remember. I've gotten some objects clean in a day in the bucket. Although you'll let leave it two days, just in case. If its not done, I leave it; it does take time. Coming out. I oil immediately out of the bath. Well dry first with a towel. There's other ways of stopping quick rust, but I oil.
It does take time and monitoring, but it does clean everything off. Including paint. Takes it down to bare metal.
I always try to find heavier machines, but its rare around here. I apologize.
Hi Chance
Nice job. It, not the size of the machine, to me anyay, it the care one takes in putting a good useable tool or machine back into circulation. I have seen some wonderful vices redone that were found in dumpsters.
Nice job.
Reg
I fought to keep the Gov. in power......they keep screwing around I'll fight to get rid of them.
