I,m shutting down Theworkshop.

No No, It doesn't mean I'm going to be selling off any of my tools.

Sometime next year, we are moving to Holland. My daughter lives there we have travelled back and forth now for over ten years several time a year to visit Christmas, New year,  birthdays etc we've got to love it there, Our last but one visit was to a funeral of  Edwin mother who lost her fight for life after a very long struggle to stay with us all, this sorta brought things to ahead.

While there my daughter says, mum if you or dad, were ever in that position I just could not get that sort of time off work to be with you near the end, why not,  yea you guessed the rest, Still in the early stages as yet ref the move itself,  but it not just the house to consider here the workshop a lifetime of bits and pieces, they all add up to a lot of items that have to be sorted which simply cannot be left till the last minute,  Keepers, things to pass on to number one son, and things I have to be very brutal and have to dispose of.

I decided to make a start with removal quotes (ouch).  I now have a load of packing boxes made a start on sorting and packing all items that are not being used regularly.

Oh dear why did I keep all this stuff,  I must have been nuts, Anyway  this is where I found my first big mistake, I  retired a few years ago from my jobbing days.  I have a painters trade storage bin for my wet painting brushes to which I have not touched for several years.

I had from time to time replace the bottles of brush mate inside the bin  to keep the brushes wet and soft, but yep  you guessed it I  had completely forgotten to replace the brush mate liquid and the brushes were rock hard, all ten of them, now feeling very sick,  very very stupid mistake to make and it is going to be very costly to replace those brushes.

The inside of the bin was all furred up and needed cleaning out, I also had to replace the wick, and base pad these should have been replaced a long time ago, it was time to bit the bullet and source new accessories.

I bought a new wick, a new base pad, and a couple of bottles of brush mate. I was going to purchase a new set of brushes, but, remembering how much those brushes cost me,  Hamilton brushes are expensive.

 

I inquired about any possible chemicals that just may be available to restore my brushes, might make me feel better,  I was recommended the following. Hmm, never tried it before, well, ten brushes one bottle, not enough.  I bought four bottles, well at least cheaper than a new set of new brushes, if it works that is, might at least be able to  salvage some of my brushes hopefully. Well, surprise surprise it  does exactly what it shows on the bottle it  not only cleans the brushes from being rock hard it also took all the colour out of the wooden handles right back to bare wood.

I left the brushes in the mixture for about four days completely submerged, a mistake  but never mind it did the job.

Each time I checked  I pressed the brush hard till the bristles started to bend pressing more allowing the mixture to penetrate further into the brush softening the bristles as the instruction on the bottle.

This is the second batch of five brushes stood in white spirits all rock hard.  They were all stood in the spirits for over a week but to no avail.

The lower photo shows the first patch of five brushes after they had been washed out with water,  as per instruction  I must say I never thought they would come up so clean and free of paint. As can be seen no paint left on the handles at all

 

If you look carefully you can still see on the tip of the bristle on a couple of the brushes   traces of paint, I'll give those a second soaking in a fresh batch of the solution.

Next batch of the dirty brush as seen here in for a few days soaking.

In the meantime  remove the first batch ( above) from there second  soaking  and wash out with water, after first  wrap  the brush in paper towels   and leave to dry in the sun if you can, the reasoning behind the paper towel is to soak up the water from the bristles while there wrapped tight in the paper  keeping the shape  to the paintbrush bristles so the ends don't open up  with bristles poking out all over the place.

Brushes drying in the afternoon sun.

The following day I stood the brushes on end to drain any fluid left inside the stock of the brush and to give a final drying in the sun. Here is why I wrapped them in paper to help keep there shape while the brushes dried in the afternoon sun, second pic first batch of brushes dried, the last pic showing all brushes now cleaned. 

Now finally that all brushes are cleaned at last and it going to be quite a long time before I get to use them probable mid to the end of next year. I have decided to store them in the tin but this time keep an eye on them, I'm going to try an experiment and try to slow down the evaporation of the brush mate chemicals escaping from the tin by placing over the top of the tin before I replace the lid a layer of tin foil to help seal in the fumes from the brush mate as seen here. 

As can be seen from this last photo The brush mate bottle is now in place with the wick inside the bottle which over the next few days will drain the bottle dry probable by next weekend I will have to replace this bottle which I already have the second one waiting as seen in the photo. The pad that the wick is attached to will slowly suck up the brush mate liquid and slowly release the chemical inside the tin to help keep your used brushes very soft and stop them from going hard.

Don't do what I did, I completely forget them,  that was quite a costly mistake, but,  never mind well worth doing seeing all my brushes except two are all Hamilton perfections if I had had to replace them, Ouch.

Hope you all enjoyed.

Oh yea, it is now back to the packing.

New handle for Henry Disston D8

I bought this lovely old beauty recently while mooching around in  Joseph weld charity shop a few weeks ago here in Weymouth Dorset, £3 that was a bargain.

They had what looked like an old  Ottoman, I just happened to lift the lid (you know as you do)  just being nosy, really expecting to find it empty, or, find it full of sheet and blankets,  To my surprise, it was an old carpenters chest which had been covered to look like an Ottoman, still had all the sliding draws etc,  and full of a bit of junk that accumulates in them over the years, most of the tools were already gone.

I couldn't resist a rummage in the bottom of it, buried right at the bottom was this lovely old saw a Henry Disston D8 handsaw with a broken handle.

The Blade was true and straight it had all its teeth no broken or missing teeth either,  all cut evenly on both sides of the blade, the handle was badly broken, but that's replaceable.

 

The medallion inlay ed in the side of the handle is readable and the date as shown is Dec 27th 1887 Philada  ( Philadelphia)

As can be seen from the lower photo is the damaged handle, It could be repaired but I think its always going to be a weak point.

On my way back from returning my daughter and grandson back to Bristol airport I popped into Yandles of Martock near Yeovil looking for some Applewood for the new handle but never found any, Instead, I came away with plenty of Black walnuts to do the job.

Monday tomorrow I'm taking the saw in to be re-cut set and sharpened, I use to do this my self but the old eyesight not what it used to be.

I have had the handle off of this saw from the shape of the end of the blade and positioning of the brass bolts there is no way I can cut a simple slot into a new bloke of wood and then slide the blade into for positioning because of the rounded end to the blade.

I'm going to laminate the new Handle in four thin sections,   two either side then rebate out from both sections sides with a small router half the depth of the thickness of the blade to suit the shape of the end of the blade then laminate both section together., But that's another post.  Stay tuned.

Elu ps174 TYPE a3 Mitre chop saw, A total refurbishment.

Well, this is the condition it came to me, from my son-in-law Edwin.

Parts have been ordered, but, at the moment just enough  to fire it up so I know it is still a working saw.

As soon as it is fired up, I'll strip it totally to pieces and  start a complete refurbishment here.

It appears to have a few missing parts, things like missing table extension bars, dust bag,  Allen key, blade wrench.

I have  managed to source a dust extraction hose  connector, a new  drive belt, plus the wrench, and the Allen key, I have on order two TC blades 

First of the parts arrived today and I have fitted new brushes and holders at least I now know its a runner.

No prizes for guessing as to what was wrong with it. The brushes were very simple to fit.  Shown the old brushes and holders, New brushes and holders now fitted, brush covers refitted. The trigger switch was hanging out of the handle with a muddle of wiring now sorted and refitted in position.

The ordered  Tc blade came today as well. Instead of replacing like for like, the old blade only had 24 teeth I increased the new blades to 64 teeth for a much finer finish to the cut. The drive belt I won't fit till the present one breaks.

I reassembled all parts today after fiddling here and there to work out where and how all the parts fitted which took a bit of time seeing it was already stripped apart so I didn't know how they fitted into each other,  but, as you can see it all back together.
 

As seen here an offcut of Oak 60 * 45 mm it cut spot on at 90 degrees across the gain and at 90 degrees vertically, absolutely no wobble, no signs of wear in the bearings or shaft, phew.  

I tried several other cuts with lovely clean finishes, from these cuts  I decided there is no point in stripping this saw any further, even if I were to replace all bearings and the main drive shaft it would not improve the saws cuts at all, unnecessary work and expense. I think a case of leave well alone.

All I'm going to do now is make a  simple bench to bolt it to. any ideas? 

In the shop tidying up after the re-build picked up the old blade and was going to chuck it in the bin but took a closer look at it, hmm maybe not, I scraped off some of the gunge that was baked onto the teeth, Couple of photos before and after.


Monday send it off t for re-sharpening seeing it has wear I'll keep this one for rough cutting and as a spare while the other blade is away for sharpening.

I love a good bargain

Hi, all I bought this last week off of e bay it arrived this afternoon.

Its a craftsman router 746-21 heavy-duty, originally made for the  English markets at 240v unlike the Americans there own at 110v  same models just a different power requirement.  It was originally bought back on 18/07/1981  from Self-ridges of London this make it approximately 32 yrs old. It's brand new, never been out of the box, why I don,t know  I tested it here this afternoon and it works fine.


below showing the base plate unmarked and the router template guide.



front glass screen with internal light.



As its been in the box for 32 yrs the power lead is very stiff so tomorrow I'll pop out and buy some new I'm just gonna use it and enjoy it
£50 + £6.50 del   
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Craftsman Routers

hi all

I have this lovely old Craftsman router  which I obtained through a job a lot  when bidding on something else, I decided to keep this as it is in good working condition,  it has now become my favourite router that i reach for every time I need one.

I have tried sourcing a new switch for it  from America, the few websites i did find a replacement switch they would not ship outside of the states grr.



As seen above the router  switch which is a sideways click on or off, sometimes when in use it jumps  off I need to keep my thumb on it  to stop it happening.



I managed to source a micro-adjustment fence from e bay a few yrs ago.



on the silver plate, its  stamped with P9209



 here is the router, anyone knows off a possible supplier here in the UK?  it would be very much appreciated if you do. thanks for looking.
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battery drill maintenance

So come on then hands up, how many of you actually do it, maintenance of course on your power tools,  what did you think I meant. lol.

I usually do mine every two years, this time around I have been a force to do mine early as one of my cordless the drill has developed  a start-stop intermittent problem  bloody annoying, it always seems to happen just when you get the drill lined up to drill a hole press the trigger and nothing Gr.

While I sort the start-stop problem out I may as well service both my other cordless drill at the same time. I like to keep them checked over to get the best from them. Quality battery drills are now very very expensive items to buy, the spare part is not cheap either.

I have three  Bosch battery drill two of these are hammer drill as well as being drill drivers, one being the 14,4v the other 12v  drill driver. I have one  Makita drill driver 7.2v  which goes right back to 1988  and is still in perfect  working order, I still have the original battery as well, still charging although it is getting lazy.



My other Bosch is a 12 v hammer drill  which I'm not going to service this time around I have not included it in the photo, I'm going to sell that one on, I also have a Hitachi SBS electric hammer drill so don't really need three hammer drill any more. Here are the three I'm going to service.

On the right is the 14,4v hammer it's quite a heavy drill to use this is the one with the start-stop problem, In the middle to be serviced is the 12v drill driver lovely comfortable drill to use. On the left, the first battery drill I bought an excellent drill is my trusty old Makita 7.2v I semi-retired it a few years ago and only bring it out when I need several drills sets up all at any one time. I used this one today as I had to get into a tight spot, ooh I had forgotten just how much torque this little guy really has for such a small low the powered drill did the job a treat.

Here's the 14,4v drill stripped apart, as soon as I opened it up it was obvious what was causing the stop-start problem. I searched Bosch's web site for new parts which are available at £31.00, then I searched e-bay and found 1 at £7.50,  I do like a bargain.



As can be seen here a lot of damage and corrosion to the  contact connection arms inside the handle, it appears at some time in the past one side has been bent and each time a battery was removed for charging and then  replaced with another, it has slowly rolled the end of the connections arm inwards until it never made contact with the battery terminals at all, or it was just slightly touching the terminals causing the stop-start problem I was experiencing.

New switch how it should look.



Next was to solder the new switch to the wiring which only takes a few moments. On the right, the switch reassembles back into the handle with the trigger forward/ reverse mechanism set up as well.



While I have it stripped down  I think it would be a good time to remove the brushes and replace them.



I have some special grease somewhere I used in the past,  just a few small spots here and there just to keep the gearing and bearings lubricated. Hmm now, where did I store it away to? enjoy.