Scroll Saw Restoration : Start & Progress Report
Before Tear-Down
I took a LOT of pictures before tear-down. I want to make sure I can get it back together. These are only some of the pictures, I have detailed shots of just about every assembly, sub-assembly, etc. I have the original operating manual, but it doesn’t have any diagram for putting the thing together.
Close Ups of Leather Dust
The whole thing has leather dust, oil, and rust all over it. It’s in pretty rough shape in places. The table is atrocious. It’s very, very pitted with black rust. The red-rust came off nice and easy with a straight razor.
The Nasty Crank Case
This thing stunk like rotten, old oil, and gosh knows what else. In the bottom of the thing was a mess that looked like puppy poop. The stench was exactly the same as the smell that coated me working at Jim Edwards Ford back in 1997, cleaning the oil pits in the service bays. As a side note, I have seen this job prominently shown on “Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe” and let me tell you. Just watching someone else do it triggered memories of the smell. I swore I could smell it again. It was horrendous. I didn’t expect that smell when I opened the crank case, but I got accustomed to it pretty quick. Reminded me of the ‘good ole days’. Yeah, whatever.
Painting
Before painting, I througly cleaned the thing with some mild de-greaser, scrubbed it with a scotch-brite pad, and then wire-brushed it with the working, old beater black n’ decker drill I got for free when I picked up the saw. When I got the drill, it wouldn’t move. I tore it clear apart, cleaned up the rust, oiled it, replaced the cord, cleaned the brush contacts, and viola! I have a working multispeed drill that only works in one speed, and it’s pretty darn slow. It works great for wire-brushing though.
I’ve masked off the important bits, and now have three coats of brushed-on rustoleum paint on the base. I think I’m going to leave the saw white, and spray a hard, semi-gloss clear-coat on over the primer. That should give a decent enough finish for a shop tool.
The Table
You can see the condition of the table when I got it above. I scraped the red rust off with a straight razor, then started in with a scotch-brite pad and some mild cleaner. That wasn’t going fast enough, and it was rusting again because of the exposure to water. I got creative. I decided to try wet-sanding with a carnuba-based spray-wax. It’s what I use on my cars. I’ve started off with 180 grit paper in the quarter-sheet sander, and it’s worked really, really well so far. Ideally, I would have the table re-ground at a machine shop. I think that’ll be more expensive than it’s worth. As you can see, after a few minutes (I’ve put maybe a half hour into this) with 180 grit, then a move to 400 grit paper, it’s looking really good. Here’s some pictures of the progress.
