Restoration - Powermatic 66

[joe maday]

I have seen a craigs list ad in NY...Long island that is selling new......the arbor, bearings and flange with nut for 100.00....Just an idea

[Kevin W Johnson]

David,

I await the end result of your restoration. Having done so to a '79 vintage PM66 myself. There's something to be said for saving these machines.

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthre...66-Restoration

[David Falkner]

I have seen a craigs list ad in NY...Long island that is selling new......the arbor, bearings and flange with nut for 100.00....Just an idea

Thanks, Joe, but I got it off and working just fine.

Ok, I finished building two lumber racks yesterday and today and reorganized all of my lumber - what a job! Back to the restoration - David

I asked Adam, my friend who helped me retrieve the saw and jointer, if he knew a good sandblaster. Turns out he had used a shop 5 minutes from my house. The guy was really nice and as I described the saw and its parts he just said he'd do it for $100, that he didn't need to know how many pieces.

So I began prepping everything for sandblasting. I can assure you that this takes a long time if you do it right. Each piece had to be thoroughly cleaned with Naphtha to ensure the duct tape would stay in place through the blasting. Prepping each piece with duct tape trimmed precisely where I did not want any blasting - machined surfaces, through holes for shafts, gears, etc. After all, if they blasted an area that I had not intended then it would have been my fault for not protecting it good enough.

I used cardboard secured with duct tape for the top and extension wings. Also, I wanted to preserve as much of the labels and Powermatic markings as possible, so I taped those off, as well.

After two nights working several hours each night and most of Saturday, I had the pieces ready.
Parts prepped for sand blasting 1.jpg

Prepped and ready for blasting -
Parts prepped for sand blasting 2.jpg

We took the saw in on Monday morning and they said it would take 3-4 business days to get to the saw for blasting. That worked out well for my timing to clean up in the garage and get ready for the saw to return. Only thing is they called Monday afternoon the same day about 4 and said it's ready and they close at 5. Oh, and it was about to rain so they suggested I come get it now before it starts to rust again. LOL! Quick service isn't always what you want .

Adam and his truck were in town and available at that time so this all worked out for both of us. He lives 45 miles away and very little of this would fit in my MINI...

Parts back from blasting
Back from sand blasting 1.jpg

Another view. I didn't send the plate that the magnetic starter mounts on because I wanted to use that to match the Powermatic Gold paint. The panel under the starter had never seen daylight and was not faded, rusted, or marked up.
Back from sand blasting 2.jpg

Since I had to pick it up before I was ready and it was about to rain, I used rattle can primer and covered every piece that same day.

Primer in a hurry before rain and rust coming back -
Primer has begun.jpg

Gotta' go pick my daughter up from work (Starbucks, a cool first job for a teenager!). More in a little bit - David

[David Falkner]

Then I started looking for a match to the Powermatic Gold. Before anyone bothers to tell me, I have searched and searched and found all sorts of paint formulas and recipes and I've been to automotive paint stores looking for something that would be an exact match. I was not willing to settle for 'close' and I certainly wasn't going to paint it Powermatic Mustard Yellow or whatever the current color is called. My jointer is that color and it's fine for that but this saw is a 1990 and came in PM Gold so that's what I wanted.

Several automotive paint stores locally said they could get a perfect match but the cost was around $150 for the catalyzed finishes and clear coats they recommended. I'm too frugal (cheap) to spend that much on paint for a table saw. So I kept searching... for two years the saw sat in the shop, primed and ready. I painted all the internal pieces black right away and they were ready. Each time my daughter asked me to build her a small table or something I just said, 'When I get the table saw together' and it sort of became a standing joke around here.

But still it sat on its side, like this, for two years.
Primered cabinet.jpg

At least I had done all the body work right after I primed it, so that was out of the way.
Bondo bodywork 1.jpg

More Bondo work -
Bondo bodywork 2.jpg

I used the side of the cabinet as a resting spot for small pieces and the inside for parts and sandpaper storage. It had become a fixture in the shop, sad to say.

Then, after two years, I announced to my wife that I had decided on black and would start painting right away (late October 2014). She just laughed and said she would have painted it black two years earlier if it had been up to her.

But I decided I wanted the inside of the cabinet white for higher reflectance when I needed to see inside there. I no longer have those young eyes that can see in low light so white made sense.
Cabinet inside painted white.jpg

Continuing on with painting everything in sight! Everything in white was brushed on very heavy and followed up with Rust-Oleum in rattle cans - High Performance White.

Underside of table -
Painted white under table.jpg

Underside of extension wings -
Painted white under wings.jpg

I'll try to get some more posted tonight in a bit - David

[David Falkner]

Hey Kevin - I actually reviewed your restoration during mine and really enjoyed yours. I wish I could have matched the color with some off the shelf paint like you did but that isn't the case with the PM Gold. I trust you're still enjoying your saw, right?

[David Falkner]

Moved it back to my spray booth for the cabinet (outside in the back yard, at night no less). I used Rust-Oleum High Performance Gloss Black Enamel in rattle cans from Lowe's. These have a decent spray tip and it went on well, smooth.
Painting cabinet black.jpg

Brought it inside after two good heavy coats. No bugs, no drips, no runs, no errors. I also caulked with black Silicone every gap in the base to the cabinet, every void in welding, every place where two pieces meet and didn't close up precisely. I have thoughts of later creating as close to negative pressure inside the cabinet as possible for dust control, although that may be a pie in the sky dream and is definitely not on the front burner. But sealing these up now was certainly easier than later with everything installed.
Painted cabinet black - not bad.jpg

Here's a sample of the cleanup process. This worm gear was encrusted with what seemed to be the equivalent of concrete. This packed sawdust/grease/rust combo would not soak off with any number of solvents I tried, would not wire wheel or wire brush by hand off, and I couldn't budge any of it with compressed air. What I ended up doing, for 3 hours one night, was to use a small brass rod sharpened on the end like a chisel and chip away at what seemed like each molecule of the crud. My hands were sore!
Worm gear, encrusted like concrete.jpg

After 3 hours it looked like this -
Worm gear after 3 hours cleaning.jpg

Many parts required the same attention to get cleaned and ready for assembly. No single part came clean with a good soaking in solvents or wire brushing. Every part required a lot of time and there were nights, like this worm gear, where I cleaned one part only.

Here is my layout table with parts, some ready and some soon to be.
Parts being prepped.jpg

I believe all of these are ready. And I got lucky on the angle scale. There was a blemish on it and when I tried to get it off it just started getting bigger, which wasn't cool. But then I looked a little closer and realized it still had the protective plastic on it from 1990. I peeled it off and there was a brand new angle scale under there!
Parts being prepped 2.jpg

That's all for tonight - I'll probably finish this restoration thread tomorrow evening. Thanks for following along!
David

[David Falkner]

Remember that height shaft that was bent and I had to support it with a wood wedge block because I was having to beat it out of the trunnion? And remember I said one of the first things I did was to order a new one? Well, I didn't remember the 'part ordering' because it happened two years ago. As I was laying out all the items for assembly I came across a bag I had not seen with some parts. Lo and behold there was a new shaft and worm gear... the same worm gear I had spent 3 hours cleaning a couple of days earlier!! Bummer! Of course, those are new bearings on the arbor.
One new part amongst the old.jpg

Here are the parts laid out for assembly, including 3 different sets from different years of PM manuals on the 66. Even though I have a reprint from 1990 none of these show the three belt pulley. But that's ok, I figured out where the third belt went...
Parts laid out for assembly.jpg

I didn't show this earlier but the only clean portion on my old rust bucket of a saw was the magnetic starter. When I pulled the cover off I was quite surprised to find not only how clean and dust free it was, but also the original wiring diagram tucked neatly in the lower right corner.
Magnetic starter - very clean.jpg

Since I couldn't get a match for the PM Gold I wanted to preserve some little facet of the original color, so I masked off an area under the starter in case I ever want to go back and look at it for matching later (doubtful).
Original PM Gold preserved.jpg

**** I've been out in the shop all evening (actually since about 4:30 and it's 11:30 now - that's like a second job!) uncovering a rats nest of a wood stack under my lathe so I'm not going to finish this restoration thread tonight. I did find some cool lumber ranging from Brazilian Rosewood to Cocobolo to Padauk to Macassar Ebony... a boat load of wood I haven't seen in over 7 years - neat stuff! I'll hit this again tomorrow. ****
David

[Jesse Busenitz]

Great job! I never would of had enough patience to do a complete restore....

[David Falkner]

Great job! I never would of had enough patience to do a complete restore....

Thanks, Jesse! Patience I have in spades and it was actually a lot of fun to restore. I don't want to do another any time soon, though - I'm ready to do some woodworking! I love your signature, btw.

The trunnion, remember, took many weeks to even get it to move when I first started this project a couple of years ago. Well, when I put the trunnion back in I expected it to move rather freely - it didn't. Because I wanted it as freely moving as possible I started shimming the mounting brackets/bearings until it moved as I expected. I have some 0.003" brass shim stock and I used three pieces on the right and two on the left, if I remember correctly. You have to be very careful each time you loosen the bolts and raise the flange or it will move left/right and then you have to start all over. As you can imagine, this took a while but I think it's worth the effort.
Shims under trunnion.jpg

This is how it moved when I first mounted it -


One thing I failed to mention is all the fasteners required to put this back together. There were only a few specialty fasteners I reused but I went with a list of all the nuts, bolts, washers, set screws, etc. to an old fastener company and they had all but a few items. It's a neat place if you've never been to a true fastener supply company. We used to have a few around here but now there's only one, but I handed them the list and for the next 20-25 minutes or so the young man individually bagged and wrote on each what the bag contained. Total invoice for this - about $14. Fabulous!
Bags of new fasteners.jpg

As you can imagine, there was a LOT of this - cleaning threads after the sandblasting, rust, and painting. Most of it I did prior to assembly but I forgot about some, like this one, and had to do it in place around what was already installed.
Cleaning threads.jpg

My friends will pick on me for the detail I go to on a project but they love it when I help them with their projects. Here's an example on the start/stop switches. I couldn't leave this looking dingy so I pulled them out of the starter box and cleaned best I could but in the end I needed to repaint the lettering bright white.

Before/during -
Start-stop button, applying paint.jpg

After -
Start-stop button finished.jpg

I know it will run better with the lettering properly tended to...

Earlier I showed the video of the trunnion, where it was too tight and then after shimming I was able to get it freely moving. Here are some photos of the trunnion installed.
Trunnion mounted.jpg

[David Falkner]

And after shimming, and a couple hours of tweaking, it moved like this -


The worm gears are centered and backlash set as best I could so that there isn't much play when changing direction. Only the tilt gear is active in this photo but the raise/lower gear was set to the same specs when I installed it. You can also see the back Silicone caulk I used on any gaps in the cabinet seams.
Worm gears mounted.jpg

Everything mounted!
Completed inside 1.jpg

Another view, tilted -
Completed inside 2.jpg

One more -
Completed inside 3.jpg

When I got the saw back a few years ago one of the first things I did was to take the motor down to a shop in town and let them make the necessary repairs. I understood that the motor was 'burnt up' but in fact, the windings were still good. They changed the bearings, cleaned the motor, replaced the capacitor and fan - $160.

I've got 'work' work to do so I'll cover the fence later today (I hope I get to it). Thanks for following along!
David

[David Falkner]

Well, I didn't get back to this last night. I had a big quote to work on last night and it was due today, along with a 500 mile round trip drive to deliver it - north Louisiana to south Louisiana and back to north Louisiana, all before 2 o'clock this afternoon! Long day...

On to the fence. It was pretty bad if you remember from the photos. Cleaned up like the rest of the saw, put on new UHMW that Adam gave me, and now it works better than I remember it ever working. Very smooth and accurate.
Rebuilding fence, UHMW.jpg

Rebuilding fence, UHMW 2.jpg

Rebuilding fence, UHMW 3.jpg

Earlier I said that I would just order a new cursor but I couldn't find this particular design. I found a few that were close and many that said 'discontinued' but were very pricey. So I used some lacquer thinner to remove the paint from the cursor, after testing a hidden area to make sure that it wasn't going to eat into the plastic. Then I used some Meguiar's to polish it until it just sparkled. No need to replace it, just a little elbow grease and patience and it's about as good as new!
Cursor cleaned, restored.jpg

I went back with 1/2" MDF on the fence but have yet to find the plastic laminate I want. I'm kind of holding off until I decide on what I want for my extension table and I'll use the same for the fence. So for now it'll stay as MDF. And since I'm into guitars and gearing up to build acoustics, I made a push stick out of Walnut I milled to 1/2" and then shaped like a Grand Auditorium guitar with a Florentine cutaway. It may not work any better than a simple push stick but it has to sound better!
MDF on fence, guitar shaped push stick.jpg

[Doug Ladendorf]

Great work on the saw and nice stylin' on the push stick! Are we almost caught up to today?

[David Falkner]

Great work on the saw and nice stylin' on the push stick! Are we almost caught up to today?

Yes sir, let's finish this! Thanks!

Obviously by showing you the fence you can see the top is mounted but here's a shot of just the top and for the first time you can see the cabinet. As noted earlier I masked off all the labels that weren't removable but one PM item not salvageable was the stripe. I saved a portion of the original and gave it to a friend who owns a promotional products company and he made me a roll of the stripe. Hard to see the colors but it's a match with a little hint of metallic in the dark green center section. It's been in my desk for two years so it was fun to finally get it out and put it on. However, it took 4 attempts to get it on straight... 4 very time consuming attempts! I think Sandy and I together spent 2 or 3 hours just on that stripe because I had no tolerance for it being more than 1/32" off level and wanted zero wrinkles. Also, when I painted the table and extension wings on the underside and on the casting inset on the mating edges, I figured it would just easily scrape off, so I didn't mask it. I was wrong. It took only minutes to put the paint on but over an hour to get all the paint scraped off on all these edges - ugh! I put it on thick enough that I didn't want it to influence the wings being mounted squarely so to me it was important to get it off.
Top mounted.jpg

Having some good 8/4 Purpleheart and Maple along with a well setup jointer equals a nice, hard, solid straight edge for clamping the extension wings on and helping keep them level.
Leveling extension wings.jpg

I won't bother posting the close up photos but in all my detail oriented rebuild I never noticed that the wings are not symmetrical. There are two holes in the front edge but only one hole in the back, yet they'll mount on either side of the table. No matter how much I adjusted, persuaded, shimmed, etc. I couldn't get the top like I wanted. So after hours tweaking I walked away. I came back early the next morning before work and noticed the holes, so I went back and looked at my historical reference (early photos) and noticed that the wings were swapped. So even though it made no difference for mounting the rails I swapped the extension wings back to where the two holes were in front. Lo and behold the top was now in what I would call acceptable tolerance!
Top leveled.jpg

Here you can see what a difference it made to paint the edge black. The wings are still not swapped in this photo, though.
Table, wings edge painted black.jpg

Notice the holes in the extension wings? Now they are swapped! I also won't bother with photos of the brass shims for the extension wings but I went through the leveling process with the Purpleheart and Maple another 3 or 4 times until I was satisfied with the flatness of the top. I wanted to have it Blanchard ground but there isn't one in the area. I designed my own that I could build in my shop but it was a Catch 22 scenario - I needed a table saw to build it but mine was in pieces. I may one day pursue that little design but it has moved way back on the list for me. I spent several hours with a smooth file and fine wet/dry paper going over the joints after everything was mounted. The joints are smooth and the top very level relative to where it was.
Top scraped, filed, sanded level.jpg

A few days ago when I started this thread I mentioned that the top was almost 0.090" out corner to corner with a dip in the middle of the top (at the blade). I know some of that was rust, but that's a long way from flat! Well, I improved it a bit. Here's the setup I used with a 48" HF level (which may be more than 0.005" out on its own).
Corner to corner with HF level, about five thousandths.jpg

And here's a close up of that feeler gauge (a Craftsman set I bought in 1968, matter of fact) showing 0.005". It bumped when it went under but that's not too shabby. I have a 24" Starrett straight edge that I placed perpendicular to the T-Slots and across the blade opening and got a better reading on that, albeit on a smaller sampling of the top - 0.002" bumped the straight edge and 0.0015" just touched when it went under. I'm gonna' call that close enough!
Corner to corner with HF level, about five thousandths 2.jpg

[David Falkner]

So, just as a reminder on where I started this process -
Saw table rusted.jpg

And where I am now -
PM 66 - Completed 1.jpg

Another view - I think it's a nice looking saw and I'm pleased with the color scheme I chose. I know it shows dust but I keep it fairly clean and I'm ok with it.
PM 66 - Completed 2.jpg

And here's a panorama of the shop three weeks ago. There's a router table and a miter saw set up now. It'll change again... they all do!
Shop - 12-13-14 - 2.jpg

If you look at the process photos you'll notice there was a large pile of 'stuff' behind the saw. I have dispensed with all of that and reclaimed it as usable space.

Thank you all for following along, for the suggestions, the compliments, the comments - I've enjoyed this!
David

PS - It's time to build a project on the saw and I did for Christmas. I'll post a quick build thread later tonight or tomorrow.

[Dale Schafer]

Well done! It's just like a bought one