Well…I might have bitten off more than I can swallow, however I bought these 4 items. A powermatic table saw (14″), Moak 16″ planer, Moak shaper, and a Delta lathe. Anyone have any experience referbing this kind of stuff? All of the bearings seemed to be tight. All of it is 3 phase but I have access to a rotery phase convertor. Pictures are attached. Oh, by the way, I paid $500 for all 4 pieces.
Replies
Once again I seem to be unable to post everything right the first time. Here's the lathe.
Well, I love old iron. But, I think there's more rust than iron there. Do they run??
In that wet environment, I'd be concerned about the condition of the electric system on each.
What kind of bearings on the Moak jointer? Babbitt?? How many knives??
What spindle size for the shaper?? Most Moaks are either 1 1/8" or 1 1/4".
If they were mine, and they ran well, I'd take into consideration what a fantastic price (nearly free) that I paid, and take them all to have the tops blanchard ground to dead flat, and have em' bead blasted to remove the rest of the rust. Hope there's some tool left when you're done.
Good luck, and let us know how they turn out. For $500, it's worth the risk.
Jeff
They cut the service to the building a year or so ago and supposedly everything worked. If I remember correctly the jointer has 4 blades, I'm not sure about the bearings other than they turned freely and had not move ment that I could tell. The shaper has a 1 1/4" spindle. I probably will have the tablesaw ground but I don't know if I'll be able to move the jointer around much.
For $500 you stole that stuff. It's probably worth that for scrap iron. You'll have some work cleaning it up, but it will last longer than you will. Great find.
uh..the bearings did not have much movement...
You need to find out what kind of bearings the machines that aren't moving have. I am not a fan of babbitt bearings, but I also believe I'm in the minority. My disdain most likely comes from my lack of familiarity. If RickL is around, he might shed some insight on the issue. He's been working on old iron a long time, while I have simply been working on my own machines.
If you haven't tried to clean up THAT much rust on a tool before, then take it from someone who has. It is no frickin' fun at all. And, you risk gouging the surface and introducing low spots which, on both a jointer AND a shaper, are the cause for destroying the usability of the machine.
Those 4 machines in cleaned up, properly tuned, and running condition will fetch in excess of $5000 easily. Do yourself a favor and have them all ground, not just the tablesaw. As someone stated, you "ripped" them, pricewise, so take advantage.
Keep asking questions, and also check out owwm.com, which is old woodworking machines, a website dedicated to these finely made older machines that make the c@#$ they pass off today as machinery look like a childs toy.
Moak, while not being in the same quality category as old Oliver, Northfield, Tannewitz, and Powermatic machinery, still is of very good quality. Treat them well, and your grandson will be making furniture on them 75 years from now.
Jeff
I could be wrong but I think he meant the bearings were tight in the sense of not being sloppy or worn out rather than seized.------------------------------------
It would indeed be a tragedy if the history of the human race proved to be nothing more than the story of an ape playing with a box of matches on a petrol dump. ~David Ormsby Gore
Oh. Thanks Don. I took it the other way. We'll just have to see what he says.
Jeff
Yes, the bearings all spin freely. I meant they had no slop. I know the ultimate test is when they are running but when I jerked, pulled, etc. I could feel no play. Any idea what it might cost to have the tops ground?
I had the three pieces of a Unisaw top edge ground, bolted together and then ground flat as a unit. It only cost me $120 but that was several (less than 10) years ago.
Please post refurb. photos.
Regards,
Mack"WISH IN ONE HAND, S--T IN THE OTHER AND SEE WHICH FILLS UP FIRST"
That's was a great price. I called a shop in Atlanta today and got an estimate for $300 just for the tablesaw.
You know...the top really didn't have much rust on them. When I shot the corners with WD40 and cleaned them a bit, they were dark but felt pretty smooth.
That's great, then. Pictures can be deceiving. They look like they've been used for boat anchors, from here.
Good luck with them. WD 40 and scotchbrite pads will take you a long way if the rust is just on the surface, with no pitting. If there is pitting, then grinding below it is worth the $$, IMHO.
Get em' running, and let us know how they are.
Jeff
Hi Jethro ,
I would guess the shaper may have oil mist bearings .
dusty , also an old fan
Wow, Gray, that's a ton o' iron! T'were I you, I'd be finding a close-by distributor of EvapoRust and buying a 20-gallon lot. You'd need some big troughs to soak some of that iron in, but it would save you a whole bunch of elbow grease. Soak a part overnight (even if it has plastic, or aluminum with it), clean it off the next day, good to go usually. Sometimes I will soak for a few yours, run some steel wool over it, and then soak it overnight. You can re-use the solution many times before it stops working. No gloves, no worries about disposal. If you want more info, LMK.
I don't have anything huge I've treated with it, but here's a little Inca mortising table that had some steel parts (levers and rods), all of which were rusted, before and after:
View Image
View Image
Here's a page with all of the before parts, and below is a picture of most them after they were soaked and wiped off:
View Image
Sold the saw for $700, sweeeeeet!
Jamie
That evaporust looks like some remarkable stuff. I'll have to give it a try next time I'm working on a rusty treasure.
Jeff
It make restoration of rusty items almost a joy. Little elbow grease needed. Any "scrubbing" you do is more like rubbing -- using 0000# steel wool to rub off the converted rust, which is just a thin black coating, to reveal the pleasant suface below. An for things like screws, bolts, files? Wow, so easy, they come out so clean.
What helped tremendously with restoring the Inca saw is that it won't hurt aluminum, so I was able to soak the items that had both aluminum and steel and not worry about the aluminum being affected. Made cleaning this a bit easier, as the bottom parts weren't easily removed:View Image forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
Check out http://www.owwm.com they are dedicated to big iron like yours with lots of articles about restoration and photos of other tools bought buy people who can't help themselves:) The jointer is awsome buy the way.
Troy
Looks like a steal .One thing concerns me PLEASE DON'T use the that shaper tooling if it is v edged with no locks or it will be biting you !!!!! Quite possibly fatally
I'm not quite sure what you mean. Do you mean a way to lock the blades into the shaper head?
Is this the type of tooling you speak of ?
Over the years I have heard many horror stories , my guess you have also , have you experienced problems first hand or only heard about them ?
I have been using the old school collar knives for over 20 years and have the ability to do some of my own grinding for custom profiles .
BTW I have never had a problem , yes I have heard the stories also .
I think common sense prevails , if you think it does not look or feel right stop ,don't do it .
The question I ask is this : have you ever broke carbide tips off saw blades ?
Most of us have , where did the carbide go ?
dusty , still got all 10
Yes they are the collars I refer to.I totally agree with you as to common sense and if it feels right.At present I have several shapers and have tooling of most varieties,French head, your style of collar system (which a lot of knife grinding companies now refuse to support),Lock edge knives,serrated back knives and leuco indexible carbide.Funnily enough the knife that exploded and exited through the dust hood was a serrated back.Why I wasn't disemboweled is still a mystery but living is terminal anyway. I merely wanted to warn of the danger as many of our fellow knots readers are less experienced than yourself and I. e.g. the regular finger harvest on contractor/hybrid saws.At the moment I still have 10 and have cleaned hamburger out of table saws (a disgusting job) but never forgotten
jako ,
" living is terminal anyway "
Man isn't that true , you said a mouth full , and very real .
I am careful with the collar knives as well as with any cutting tools .
dusty
The Moak jointer will be worth more than $2,000 when cleaned up. Definitely a ball bearing machine.
Edited 1/28/2008 9:07 am ET by RickL
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