The milling post has arrived and it's stunning. Looks brand new although it's actually referbished. I ordered it from a gunsmith in the USA. He has other parts I am missing too so I may be able to sort most of the ones I need.
A disaster with the bench drill! I found a lovely old E. Gray & Sons drill I got for a fiver. I wanted to use it as a referbishment project, but the arsole delivery carrier must have dropped it because the cast iron base was in 5 pieces when it arrived.
This little machine has been faithfully drilling holes for nearly a hundred years and then some twat from DHL goes and kills it! I have heard that cast iron can be successfully welded or brazed but that's beyond my current skills or wallet.
I think I will start work on the other parts in the hope that either the base can be repaired or another similar one comes up for a song and I can get one out of the two.
At some time in its past the drill has either been converted to power operation, or at least had the motor moved. The English Electric motor is worth a tenner on it's own so I haven't actually lost money.
So I've stripped down the drill to see what jobs need doing. It's a strange animal. With the exception of the base, all the castings are in good order. The platform has a few minor marks where drill bits have gone through the work, but I expected that. The motor pulley is the wrong one for this drill, and I think that originally this was a fixed motor model, not one where the motor is mounted to the head as it is now. The motor bracket is a pretty poor shop made one so I may look out for an original fixed motor drill and fit this motor to that.
The quill gear rack kept sticking, and when I dis-assembled it the pinion gear had a lump sticking out of it. This should have been a tapered 'cotter' pin, but it seems to be square! God knows what has been jammed in there.
The spindle runs in a phosphor bronze bush at the bottom and an open roller bearing. The top of the quill has some grey metal insert that the shaft rotates in. This looks suspicious since I would have expected another bronze bush.
There is quite a bit of slop and play in the spindle, which I expected on a machine of this age. I may attempt to make up a new spindle, it's pretty simple, but since the spindle is 11mm diameter and my Mk4 will only take a 10mm shaft I would have to get access to a bigger lathe. Bugga.
The original hand chuck had a broken tooth, but I wasn't worried since I have been keeping a brand new Jacobs for just such a project for 10 years or so. I will recut the spindle nose to 3/8th x 24 TPI for the Jacobs and that all seems good.
More pics to follow.
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