I got this off Kijiji yesterday.
As you can see, it's still on my vehicle. I'll enlist my wife's help later today, and see if the two of us can manage to safely lift it out; the thing is HEAVY!
The machine dates back to the mid 1960s. I was a teenager back then, and I had one like the one pictured for a while. I ended up returning it to the store because its accuracy and repeatability were disappointing. As I learned later, practically all radial arm saws suffer from extreme difficulty of fine adjustment, and iffy repeatability.
So what's behind my buying a piece of gear that I long ago rejected? Nostalgia, I guess -- trying to recapture my long lost adolescence. The saw may end up as nothing more than a firewood saw, but that's ok --at least I'll have a piece of my youth back, for whatever that's worth.
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Progress So Far -- WEDNESDAY, MAY 3, 2017
I've been remiss in not documenting what I've been up to with the saw. I've dismantled it down to its component sub-assemblies, and rigged an old machine stand for it to perch on. Here's a view of the saw's base frame mounted on the stand.
I don't have space in my shop for it; it's going to have to live outdoors on the patio, with a tarp over it for protection from the elements when it's not in use.
The machine is massive in all of its elements. The base frame is a heavy gauge weldment of great rigidity.
What I mean to do is dismantle and clean/inspect/lubricate all the pieces, then reassemble the saw into the best radial arm saw that I can make of it. That may take a while -- there's quite a lot to the machine.
The Column
Here's the column off on its own.
It fastens to the base frame with four 3/8"-24 x 1" bolts, with hex nuts and split lockwashers.
At the rear of the column, there's a key affair that engages a groove in the post, so that angular play can be adjusted out of the post.
Here's the 3" diameter post cranked fully out of the column's base.
There's a wad of sawdust packed into the lower end of the post's groove.
Here's how that area is supposed to look.
Here's a close-up view of the elevation bevel gearing.
And here's the gearing dismantled, and the elevation screw out of the column.
That screw is 8 tpi, and the gear ratio is one-to-one, so each revolution of the elevation crank yields 1/8" of vertical post travel. The screw's thread is left-handed, so crank operation is intuitive; i.e. clockwise = raise.
Now what I have to do is --
- Clean and degrease everything.
- Paste wax the post and its bore for protection.
- Reassemble with fresh grease on the elevation screw. I won't grease the exposed gearing, that'll just attract and hold sawdust.
- Reinstall the column on the saw's base frame. Once that's done, I can go on to tackle the radial arm.
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Here's a view of the rear end of it, with the top cover and the degree indicator wheel removed..
That semicircular item down in front is the detent block that provides the 0° and left and right 45° detents for the arm's swing.
Here's the front end of the arm with the front cover removed.
The long cover with the rip scales on it just slides off the front, and we can see the arm casting that carries the track.
I'd rather not have to take all that apart, but it appears that I'm going to have to. The detent pawl seems to be seized from disuse. From the appearance of the detent block, I don't think this saw was ever taken off its 0° detent. The only way to get at the pawl is to remove the track from the arm casting.
The Carriage -- SATURDAY, MAY 27, 2017
Here's a view of the top of the carriage less the yoke and motor/transmission unit.
The stud at the centre-right is the nut for the carriage travel lock screw. The lever at the centre-left is the detent for carriage swivel.
The bearings are marked "HEIM-553A". I can find no reference to that on the internet. There are HEIM bearings though, mostly rod ends.
The two left side bearings are fixed in place -- they're not adjustable. The two right side bearings are mounted on eccentric studs -- they're adjustable for elimination of play between the carriage and its rail. That adjustment had best be made while the carriage is as pictured, without the yoke and the motor/transmission unit attached to it.
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Update -- FRIDAY, JUNE 21, 2019
I've been remiss here, as I sometimes am. I never kept up the above post to completion.
To make a long story short, I did get the saw into good working order, fitted out with a capacious particle board table. The saw served me well in the construction of a small woodshed.
The saw had to reside outdoors with a tarp over it, and that didn't work out too well at all. Here are views of the saw's current state after two years of idleness.
Those cheap, low-end tarps aren't worth the powder to blow them to hell. The particle board table got soaked and stayed soaked -- it's a ruin. I have enough material on hand to make a replacement table.
What I don't have is a good site for the saw. The saw needs to be indoors, and that's not on around here. A radial arm saw also needs lengthy clearance at either side to facilitate rip cuts, and even my outdoor site doesn't provide that; there's a small shed in the way at either side.
So, there's not much left to do but to get rid of the thing. I suppose I should fabricate a new table from the material I have on hand. If I put the saw up for sale 'as is', I'll be lucky to get twenty bucks for it.
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Done And Sold -- THURSDAY, JUNE 27, 2019
Here's the saw with a new table.
I've left table alignment and scoring for its next owner. Table alignment on this machine is a nightmare. There is no provision for fine angular adjustment of the radial arm -- the table must be tweaked in order to achieve saw-path-to-fence perpendicularity. That's difficult to do, to say the least.
Anyway, the saw sold for $60.00 CDN. Three big guys with a huge van came for it in response to a Kijiji ad. So, that went well, and I'm rid of the thing.
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