Champion Blower & Forge Post Drill #101 Restoration

What the hell did I get myself into this time?... I was at Anderson Plywood, a local plywood store here in LA. They also have many finishing products and it their back room on the wall they have this contraption... I looked at it and just by playing with it I realized its a "Hand Crank Drill Press" or at least that is what I called it when I got home I was thinking what a cool tool that is and it would look great in my shop. Would I ever use it? Probably not since I have an electric drill press, but it will look great in my shop, I thought. So Now lets find out what it is actually called and where I can get one. First thing I found out was it is actually called a "Post Drill" and as far as I could tell its named that because its meant to be put on a post...clever naming if I do say so myself. Then I started doing some research on them and came across a couple of videos and sites and I was hooked... Now the search began for getting one for myself... I wanted to restore one but since getting parts would be impossible it had to be complete or at least complete enough that I could fabricate my own parts if needed. I finally found one on Ebay won the auction and so it began...

I have also shot a video you can watch here.

First lets start off with a few "BEFORE" pictures of the Post Drill.

 

 

 

After taking pictures not just so I could show a "before" look but also because taking lots of pictures really helps putting it back together, after all the parts are removed and cleaned things can look quite different.

THE DISSASEMBLY

I started by spraying all the parts with WD-40 and let it soak for a while. After a while I came back and started taking all the bolts, set screws and gears apart carefully because I didn't want to damage anything and I didn't know how weak the parts maybe... so I carefully removed all the pieces and set them on my second table trying to lay them out in some kind of order so I could keep the bolts close to the parts they belong to.

I was able to dissaemble everything except the most important part, the main shaft. I could not figure out how to separate it, so I decide to leave it and work around it. Here is a picture of the main shaft.

THE VINEGAR BATH

After I had all the parts I could remove I decided to give everything a Vinegar and Salt bath to help loosen up the Rust, Grime and old Paint. I left most of the parts in the solution for 2 days and some for more as I would take one piece out to work on it. After a while you couldn't see anything in the bath because the vinegar was so dirty.

THE CLEANING

I decided I was going to use the wire wheel on my grinder to clean all the parts. I didn't want to damage the cast iron so I decided to test it on just the handle before anything else, ofcourse it worked like a charm getting all the rust, grime and paint off and stripping it back down to just the steel. I this point I debated not to paint it because the steel looked so good, but I wanted some protection from future rust and corrosion so I was in a quandary... But I had time to decide later.

I was done cleaning everything. It took a couple of days and if you ever do a lot of wire wheel stripping I recommend a full face shield and at lease a simple nose and mouth mask... I had black dust everywhere even in my nostrils... the smell of steel we so prominent I felt dirty while I was at work because I could smell the steel on me... realizing later it was in my nose. Oh Q-Tips work really well to clean your nostrils, just be careful.

THE PAINTING

After going back and forth I decided to paint it.... It will protect it and help with future rust prevention. I thought well its about a 100 years old, I figure with this restoration hopefully it will last 100 years more. So what paint? What color? What parts get paint? 

Ok first the paint I decided to go with Rustoleum Forged Hammered Spray paint in Burnished Amber color, which after I tested it looked a lot more Greyish/Silver than amber but I was ok with that because it made it look close to the raw iron.

After I painted all the Cast iron pieces I moved onto the wood back board. I cut a large piece of Cherry to size and finished it with spray Shellac.

 

THE FINAL PRODUCT

After a pretty simple assembly mostly because all the pieces fit together perfectly and all helpd basically with simple set screws making it super simple. A couple of things I did have to figure out was that you can't make everything too tight because it won't spin so everything has to have a bit of play to let all the spindles and gears to turn freely. After giving everything a pretty thick coat of Ballistol (my favorite oil) all the parts worked perfectly... at this point I realized I had to make a little handle for the top gear so that I could turn it backwards to raise the drill pillar after finished drilling. So at this point my restoration is finished, I am going to add a modern day Jacobs chuck so that I can use drill bits since they don't really make bits for this old school type of chuck anymore.

Ok get ready for some tool porn.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stanley No. 104 Wood Level Restoration

This story starts on a Saturday morning when I got a Facebook message from my friend Rob. "We are having a yard sale and there are a ton of old tools" Rob said. So ofcourse I got in my car and headed over there. I found a lot of great old tools but this week we will focus on the Level I found, It's a Stanley No. 104 Level 18" long. This will make a great restoration project I thought...

I made a video of the restoration as well, you can see it here:

As you can see in this first set of pictures the Level needed some help, it was dying...

The top level vial was in good shape but the vertical (plumb) vial was broken and missing. The brass was rusty and really dirty. The wood had lots of cracks in it both on the sides and the ends, those will have to be filled in.... Wait maybe for the ends I can add brass plates to help the cracks from getting bigger as well as making it look nicer too. This is the reason I will call this restoration "Better than the Original"... that is if eveything goes as planned of course.

The first thing to do is disassemble the level, as you can see I was able to get all the parts off, at this point I left the top level in so I could plane the bottom and get it level... later on I realized this was flawed thinking but well I learned.

I started planning all the level on all four sides to get down to bare wood.

At this point I took out the top vial, of course I broke it in the process...Damn! Stop everything, go to Amazon and order new parts.... Damn! I can't find the right size shape of vial, what the hell am I going to do? Ebay to the rescue... I found a listing on Ebay that had the vial I needed and his posting had 2 vials... perfect I thought, 2 that way I have an extra incase I break it again or I can make a new level in the future.

As you can see in the picture the planning of the top got rid of the mortise for the brass plate to protect the vial... that will have to be re-cut into the wood.

Using chisels and a router plane I was able to get the mortise back and in place for the brass plate.

At this point I started filling all the cracks with Timber Mate, my favorite wood filler as you probably know by now. After all the cracks were filled we had a little bit of waiting time... Although we have been having a huge heat wave here and well lets just say it didn't take very long to dry. LOL!

While I was waiting for the wood filler to dry I started cleaning all the brass parts, using rust remover and a wire brush.

Then a little buffing at the grinder... I love the way brass shines.

Next I cut the little brass plates for the edges... Oh boy! did I make a mistake and luckily I didn't get hurt. Basically I was trying to cut the brass on my miter saw, but I didn't think to put a back fence to hold it, I thought that double stick tape to a piece of wood would be enough, but the heat made the glue let go and the piece went flying.... I still haven't found that piece of brass....

I made a little safety video of this that you can see here:

Yikes..... ok don't ever do that!!!! Lets move on.

After finally cutting the pieces I drilled holes and countersunk them so I can attach these little plates to the edges of the level.

As you can see there are oversized but that is what I wanted, so I could sand the brass flush to the wood.

I sanded the brass flush using a large piece of sandpaper glued to my table saw table worked like a charm... I also added small chamfers to all the edges so they would be sharp.

Next I put in the plumb vial and the top and bottom brass discs. Using an acrylic vial will make it much harder to take apart in the future, but then again it probably won't need to be replaced, at least not in my lifetime.

I applied a coat of BLO (Boiled Linseed Oil) and this did not go as well as I had hoped.... the wood took the oil in all different ways... The sides got really dark but the top didn't, the top had a thin strip of sapwood and was so different in color to the sides that it just didn't look very good....Shit! what now?

I used a little Gel Stain in JAVA from General finishes only on the top and the light areas of the sides to get the colors to match better. The great thing about Gel Stain is that you can aplly to just certain areas and it worked great.

Next came a few coats of Shellac and at the end a nice wax buffing. Now for the hard part... how to get the vial attached to the top?

First I was going to need a tool, so I added a little leather lining to these tweezers and I was ready.

I mixed up some Plaster of Paris and using a cheap plastic level under the wood level to tell me if I was putting the vial in level I was able to get it all done. All that was left was to replace the top plate and the project was finished. 

Of course this blog post wouldn't be right without some....wait for it.... TOOL PORN!

Thank you.