DeWalt GE Radial Arm Saw rebuild Part 9, last minute items prior to re-assembly

Another topic before we start; I had brought the motor for this saw to a motor repair shop to replace the bearings and clean out the motor as I was going away and wanted it to be done when I returned. Well, I opened up the motors electrical box to wire up the newly rebuilt magnetic starter and test the motor since I had finished repainting it and WOW WTF, they changed all the wiring! The wires present when I took it apart, known via the pictures I took during disassembly, weren't all there.

Wires as they were upon first cover removal

 They clearly rewired the motor to get it to work since the magnetic starter wasn't there in the shop with them.

See the difference? White wire from original and one ground are missing.

Now I have a lot of work ahead of me. Thankfully I have the other motor from the standard arm GE for reference. Moral of the story, DO THE WORK YOURSELF!

All parts have been repainted and the badges are going on the arm and base today. The arm is going to require re-drilling of the holes for the drive screws as I couldn't get any of them out during disassembly. That shouldn't be too hard but will require some setup to ensure the arm doesn't move during drilling as it is not square.

I have one more coat of clear coat to put on the base and legs but I am going to put the badge on as I like the badges to have one coat of clear on them for protection. I'll spray it after I put the badge on.

The arm is going to require new holes for the badges, it shouldn't be too bad, holes are easy to drill in cast iron.

Important things to remember when drilling holes in metal for drive screws.

1. Mark the holes very carefully. I put double sided tape on the back of the badge, align it and stick it. Then I carefully draw out the hole hole with a thin tipped sharpie.
2. Ensure the item to be drilled is secured so it cannot move during the drilling operation.
3. Drill as straight down as you can, and know what depth you need. Wrap some blue tape around the drill bit so the bottom of the tap is as far as the bit needs to drill down.
4. MAKE sure you drive punch the hole. You CANNOT drill a hole in metal properly without a punch mark to start the bit into.
5. Vacuum all the shavings out of the holes prior to installation.

You can see my hole markings below, they look like holes but they are black marker. Please note that these badges require #2 x 3/16" drive screws. You need a #44 drill bit (.086") to drill the holes for that size drive screw.

And with the new badge installed. (artfully replicated by Jim Kull jimkull@consolidated.net, he is the best.)

 

And the other side which also has the Anti-Friction badge

And the base with its badge installed.

You may recall from Post 8 that I was missing the bolts that serve as the shaft for the rip lock and swivel lock. After days of looking, I ordered a replacement from Bradley Tools. Murphy's law prevailed, and as soon as it arrived I found the other one bagged with the rest of that assembly's hardware in a box on my desk. You can see two sets of those bolts in the second to last picture of this post.

Now I can complete the carriage assembly.

You must remove the bearing nearest the swivel lock as it cannot be installed with the bearing in its slot.

The re-assembly is easy, once you figure out how to dis-assemble it. Taking it apart requires unscrewing the shaft bolt on the left (facing picture), it has the shaft stub coming out into the left side of the swivel lock. You can then unscrew the right side bolt a little and remove the swivel lock. Now the hard part, the right side bolt CANNOT unscrew out to the right. You have to reverse screw it all the way out the left side. Therefore, to reinstall it, you first screw the long shafted bolt, shaft end first, from the left, but screwing it all the way to the right. You must have the rip lock in place while you are doing this (The red knob clamp) .Once you have that all the way to the right you can put the swivel lock in its place with the right side of its center hole in the shaft stub of the right shaft bolt.

Then you screw in the left side shaft bolt and adjust the two bolts so the swivel lock functions correctly. Make sure you put the key side down so it fits in the slot on the yoke when depressed.

Last carriage parts to install.

And the completed carriage and yoke.

I am going to be making some modifications to the table and base for added rigidity. That and more in the next installment. See you then.

DeWalt GE Radial Arm Saw rebuild Part 8, base, column and arm finale

I am way too old for this. Today I stayed home from work as I am heading back to FL for two weeks and I HAD to get all the rest of my parts painted, at least one coat before I leave. Nine hours of work with minimal breaks to

• take the top off the base
• take the base apart
• finish stripping the arm (that was last night actually)
• priming the arm (so was this)
• painting the arm 
• stripping the legs and base
• priming the above
• putting the first coat of paint on the above
• sandblasting some other parts
• priming and painting those parts
• wow, could there have been anything else!, oh, yes I thoroughly cleaned and polished the key for the column

Lugging around the column, the arm and the base, all of which are extremely heavy is taxing my body badly. It's 9 pm and I can barely function. A stiff drink is keeping me awake until I finish this post.

I am literally too tired to write this so, as they say, pictures are worth a thousand words.

The base as it came on delivery. The PO used, actually NEVER used this saw, but intended it to be a rough cut down saw, thus the 2x6 table.

The base after a relatively simple disassembly.It's tough to tell since the saw was painted brown but there is minimal rust on the legs and they are in very good shape. The base has some rust where it was in contact with the legs but it also appears to be quite sound.

After almost 90 minutes of flap-wheel grinding and sanding with a sanding block, the base is primed, poorly I might add, as I ran out of my good primer. It looks blotchy in the picture because, since I ran out of my good primer, which is grey, I had to finish with some white primer I had around. When I wake up I will surely look at this in the daylight and throw up; and decide to sand it and re-prime it.

I cleaned the column thoroughly with steel wool and Scotch-Brite, it came out pretty nice but the picture got lost in the cloud. Here it is painted. (the part that is cast iron)

Here it is primed, I just couldn't get this picture to post before the painted one.

Some parts I forgot to prep and paint, the housing for the bottom of the column(the elevating bushing and gearbox mount to this housing) and the bushing for the elevating handle rod which mounts on the underside of the front of the base.

Speaking of the elevating assembly, here is a good question. The long arm has the elevating gearbox at the bottom of the column. Here is the gearbox.

This thing was crudded up with greasy sawdust (Not shown, I removed most of it). What is the general consensus here? Fully clean this out and re-grease it? Or add some new grease and leave it. I'm for the former. Hmm, see this picture, another interesting question.

That looks like an oiler ( on the underside of the gearbox bottom), wonder why, the gearbox has grease in it not oil. Any thoughts or comments from the readers?

Shown here are the legs, primed and first coat of gloss white, the arm completed with two coats of paint. It will get its gloss coat tomorrow morning before I head to the airport. Also shown are what I used to flap-wheel these big items. A Metabo grinder, Benchmark Abrasives 120 grit flap-wheels (4.5 inch). These abrasives are available on Amazon for about $22 per ten pack. I used 8 to complete the legs and base.

And obviously, a respirator and a face mask. PLEASE use these safety items when doing this work, it's annoying but man you can screw yourself up if you don't. I did wear glasses under the face mask.

After I finished, and went to clean up the garage shop. I found the blade guard from this long arm. I had stowed it away and forgot about it. I am going to paint this white. I was thinking of having a vinyl decal made of the "DeWalt Keep Blade Sharp" with the arrow made in red. Comments?

I had hoped to test the motor and starter before I went back to FL. This is not going to happen so Part 4A is still in limbo. I am going to bed now as I can barely see the keys on my keyboard. See you in part 9 in about 2 weeks where I start putting this beauty back together.

DeWalt GE Radial Arm Saw rebuild Part 4A, getting motor running

Now that all the electricals have been re-wired and I have the motor bearings replaced, the motor fully cleaned and the new paint on the motor has dried and cured, I can connect the motor to the starter and see if it actually starts!

I had the bearings replaced at a motor shop as the motor is very heavy and I was going away, so I wanted it ready when I returned. I also wanted them to inspect the windings as I wanted this motor to be in top shape. They were fine. They cleaned the whole motor out for me while it was there. Unfortunately, they also painted it grey, including the motor badge!. A bit of Citri-Strip took that grey off but it also marred the black paint on the badge itself. I may take it off and have it remade, we will see. Seriously, of course I am going to have it remade, and it is already off to Jim Kull to be replicated. I painted over their grey for now with the metallic blue that I wanted.

An interesting color scheme for the whole carriage assembly, the yoke is white with red handles, the motor and motor mounts are blue and the handle on the yoke is red, good old red, white and blue.

The motor cable from the magnetic starter control box will be connected to the motor exactly as it was disconnected. I labeled each wire as I disconnected them at the start with different color electrical tape. All that needs to be done now is match them back up.

Magnetic starter with all new wiring installed.

The starter box is complete, well almost. I won't install the reset button until I'm sure everything is working. Actually, that reset button assembly is broken so I'll either have to source a replacement or try to fix the broken back piece of this one.

I set out to connect the motor up to the magnetic started box assembly and noticed that there didn't seem to be the right amount of leads in the electrical box on top of the motor. I took the cover off my standard arm GE motor and sure enough, the motor shop changed around the wiring for this motor, likely because I did not bring them the magnetic starter box and arm switch assembly. I was annoyed at first, but after thoroughly looking to see what was changed the fix was easy.

You can see in the photo above There is a lead coming off the top most terminal in the photo, it has a yellow end on it. That lead was removed by the motor shop. I'm no expert but that must be how they had to rig the wiring so they could test it.

I simply had to replace that lead and I should be good to go.

You can see the new lead, white wire, yellow terminal with black shrink tubing.

The re-connecting is fairly easy if you've labeled your wires when you took the motor assembly apart.
The ground obviously goes back to the ground screw, (green wire) the hot lead (black wire) goes back the black wire which comes out of the motor and the neutral goes to the new white lead we installed, technically you could wire that right to the terminal mount and I probably will when I put this together its final time.

Here is a video clip of the motor in operation.
The file was too large to post as a video here. You can copy this link to your browser to download it from my Azure Storage Account and view it.

https://machineryrestorations.blob.core.windows.net/publicfiles/images/IMG_0436.MOV

All that is left now is to install the switch back into the end cap, route the wire back down the arm and out the side so I can reinstall it to the magnetic starter box. Once that is complete, I can cut the cable for the motor-magnetic starter to its proper length and get that connected back up.

You will see all that in the rebuild part of the blog which will start next week.

DeWalt GE Radial Arm Saw rebuild Part 7, base, column and arm

My apologies for the long time between posts. Work, vacation and a family illness got in the way. Thus is life.

I finally got the column base and column separated. It was a lot of work. I shot Kroil down the key and around the rim for 4-5 days. Finally on the fifth day after repeated bouncing the column bottom on a heavy rubber mat on top of a 3/4" piece of plywood, it finally freed up and dropped to the ground. I thought I was good to go, but an hour later after a lot of pounding with a rubber mallet, the column finally came all the way out of the base.

That column needs some serious Scotch-Brite attention.

The column base is very heavy, as are most of the big parts on the GE. I took it outside to apply some Citri-Strip to it as there are three layers of paint, the original blue grey, a dark gray and then the ugly brown it was when I got it (Sorry Bruno I hope when you got it, it was already brown). The Citri-Strip only took off the brown layer so I had to do it again. Here is what it looked like after two coats of Citri-Strip and a lot of scraping. (You can see its original blue/grey after scraping off the Citri-Strip)

I decided that instead of media blasting at this point, I would use the flap wheel disk on my angle grinder as the original paint is REALLY hardened on there. Smart choice, 20 minutes later it looked like this.

Another 30 minutes in the blast cabinet and I was ready for the primer. It was hard to get the nooks and crannies and the curved areas with the flap wheel so media blasting took care of those spots. Now its primed and ready for its first coat of paint tomorrow.

I was working on the arm the same way, but man that original paint is tough. I am going to use the flap wheel on that as well. (Oh did I mention, the Long Arm doesn't fit in my blast cabinet. The good news is its only a few inches short, so my standard GE's arm will fit) The arm will take quite a bit longer than the column base I'm sure. Oh, and did i mention I could not get even ONE drive screw out on the badges or the pointers. I'm going to have to grind them flat, center punch them and drill them out slightly larger and use a larger drive screw to reset them. That also means slightly enlarging the holes in the badges and pointers. Ugh, more work.

Here is the arm after 4 coatings of Citri-Strip were applied and removed.

Since it was dark out, I quit working on the arm and decided to put the roller head carriage and yoke together. My dog screw was compromised as the sides of the slot were damaged. Fortunately, I was able to source a new one from Bradley Tools. (The one on the right, $17, not cheap but...)

All new roller head bearings were installed. I just don't see why, once you've gotten a piece apart you wouldn't replace bearings. The ones installed were the originals, they've done their work the past 70 years, time for a rest. The roller head bearings are MRC 5203, they are still available today as are other makes of 5203. I used the MRC 5203's here. Of course, I couldn't find my small bearing puller to press the bearings on the shafts, so I had to adapt. The tools I used are below. I seated the bearing as best as I could by hand onto the bearing shaft, put the thick felt washer over the shaft end and onto the bearing races (Actually, its a furniture leg pad with a hole drilled in it) and tapped the bearing on with the pipe. This works well, just don't bang to hard. Heating the bearing makes it go on very smoothly.

Once the bearings were installed, I put the roller head on the yoke and attached the clamp. It all got tightened up with the new dog screw. Unfortunately, I could not put the lever and locking clamp on as the hardware was missing. It better be in Florida where I cleaned it! ( I have a picture of the cleaned parts). Good thing I'm going back there tomorrow, I'm going to be in trouble if I can't find them, they probably aren't that easy to find. Here is the yoke/carriage assembly all test fit together. Everything works smoothly. I'll leave it together for now until I return with the missing parts!

I didn't like how the motor came out (paintwise), so I had to strip it, prime it again and repaint it. It looks better now. This has delayed my getting Part 4A of this blog completed. Now that the motor is ready, I will hook it up to the overhauled magnetic starter and hopefully it will work as it should. That will have to wait until I return.

The next big project will be taking the table and base apart, stripping all those parts, cleaning or replacing the hardware and priming and painting all the pieces. I need to get that done as I can't start putting this beast back together until the table and base have been completely restored and re-assembled. That will encompass most of Part 8.

 Part 8 and Part 4A should be up in the next week or so when I return.