We have friends visiting from the States right now, so not much time available out in the workshop or on the Elandan. This is the first time I've had a chance to spend time on the computer, but I've been sneaking off late at night for a midnight rendezvous with the shop.
My wife says it's nice knowing that the other woman in my life has wheels...
Since I only have limited time at a time, I've been working on the lathe. The lathe is now mostly operational, but not the auto feed though. The threading is programmed using gears, and there is a chart and formula for figuring out which combination of gears that you want. In the box of rusty stuff that came with the lathe was the gears, but they needed a bit of cleaning up.
The gears all had the number of teeth stamped into them which was bearly visible under all the grime. While not original, I decided to color code them and make a chart in Excel to put on the wall with the various gear combinations both in colors and number of teeth. It's going to be much easier to program it with colors than trying to find the number stamp. Plus the paint will make it easier to keep the gears clean.
The 380v to 24v transformer wasn't working.
The wire to the fuse holder had come undone. The solder had let loose some time in the last 70 years. Since it was soldered in place, I made a small change so I could solder it on the work bench and then install the fuse holder.
I talked to some guys who work at a local vintage machine museum, and they said if I'm going to use it, to paint it. It's much easier to keep clean and use if painted. Brush paint would be the norm used at the factory. They also explained how a machine would have been fixed up in a factory to be used on the shop floor. So I started painting it with that in mind; it's the best restoration I can do and still be able to use it and keeping it's history mostly intact.
The lamp got an antique white inside the shade and outside it's the original light green. The lady at the paint store worked magic matching an unexposed piece of the machine that I brought in. Bang on match!
All of the dents are still there as they would not have fixed them in a factory environment.
I started scraping the loose paint off of the machine, but it turned out that most all of the paint is loose and peeling with rust underneath from being in an unheated garage. It's more than 3mm (1/8") thick in places. Plus there is body filler in places (???) covering rust. With the rust and paint removed, a layer of primer looks nice.
Just doing a section at a time as time allows.
Linear Mode
