Saturday, July 23 2016
The Soda Ash (Sodium Carbonate Anhydrous) I ordered arrived today. Time to do some rust removal. I added a little to a couple of gallons of water and bent up a steel rod to use as an anode. I hooked up the battery charger to the anode and one of the pieces to that needed some care hoping for a little current on the charger meter and some bubbles in the solution.
Rust removal
I’ve current and bubbles. I turned off the charger and used some copper wire to link several parts that needed de-rusting. I placed them in the solution making sure nothing touched the anode. While the parts were cooking I spent some time cleaning up small parts, chasing threads on fasteners, etc. Nothing worth taking any pictures.
Yuck!
Better
I let the electrolysis go on for about two and a half hours. Over night would have been better, but I wanted to see how well it was working. Quite well. I can already see the degree markings which were completely hidden when I started.
Good thing I kept that old non-smart charger that’s been taking up space in the garage for 20 or 30 years. I can see it’s going to be in use for a while geting the 618 lathe parts de-rusted. I do need to find a container big enough to hold the bed. That can wait until I figure out how to disassemble the headstock assembly.
Sunday, July 24 2016
spindle removal
I took more of the lathe apart this afternoon. The feet have been removed from the bed along with the head stock. The picture is an in progress shot after I removed the key before removing the spindle. Later I found indications that some previous owner wasn’t so careful – the bushing was notched from the key.
I’ve found a bunch of mis-matched hardware and hardware in improper locations, e.g. the thrust bearing and thrust collar were swapped and the back gear assembly was installed with the handle on the left, not the right. I’m also missing several items like the detent ball and spring for the back gear. The shot, spring, and set screw for the collar on the end of the spindle were also missing. The collar looked like it had been attacked with a monkey wrench some time in the past. That turned out to be OK – it took a monkey wrench to remove the collar. Maybe someone beat on the end of the spindle with a hammer sometime in the past.
Removing the collar was also difficult because the index pin is broken. That made it hard to lock the spindle to remove the collar. I finally got the spindle removed and discovered gouges where someone had tried to remove it with the oil set screw in the pulley and gear assembly cranked down onto the spindle. Ouch.