Carol Reed
In Memoriam
- Messages
- 5,533
- Location
- Coolidge, AZ
The saw I picked up from Jim Bradley yesterday had some surprises. It has a flexible shaft drive system rather than belt and pulleys. I'll get pictures once I get it out of the car. I did some research and found the owner's manual and exploded parts diagrams. I also found what few parts Sears has in stock for it. It dates back to the '90's and was never highly regarded. I'd call it a saw that was a good idea from a safety stand point. The flexible shaft has no exterior moving parts that present a danger. However.
What began as an innovative idea ran afoul of the bean counters. From the manufacturing side, with no heavy motor hanging off the trunnion, that part was made of aluminum, rather than cast iron. Thus the table top is thinner and has fewer bolt bosses to attach the trunnion to the top. The bearings are far less substantial as well since they don't need to carry the lateral stresses of a heavy motor. The coup de gras was the size of the flexible shaft was reduced from 1/2" to 7/16" from the original design and shortened so that it is curved to its minimum radius, putting extreme wear on that part. And fail they did, roughly between 40-100 hours of use. That caused tons of returns and Sears quickly abandoned the design.
The shaft is still available at nearly $200 a pop, but a design flaw is a design flaw.
Also missing is one of these guys:
Sears wants $6 plus shipping for one. Not on my watch!
Of course, I can wire around it to see how things run. I suspect the shaft is royally dried out and needs cleaning and re-lubing before I turn it on. The entire saw needs some serious cleaning and de-rusting. Everything but the blade guard is there, though. Plus a bunch of steel saw blades good for making shop clocks, but not worth sharpening to actually cut wood!
The reason that I wanted the saw was to refurbish a contractor type saw and make the little improvements to greatly magnify its accuracy and functional use for the woodworking book I continue to labor away at. The jury is out on this. Everything I read suggests it is not worth the effort. I just have to decide how much work I want to put into this.
All that said, I am still looking for the usual blade guards for these kinds of saws as they can easily be modified to be both more useful and also function as a pretty good splitter. And I also need one for the old Rockwell bench saw I picked up last month (which has its own weirdness, but another thread on that one later). I think I can modify any guard to make it work. Anybody got something like that laying around unneeded? Or a little yellow switch key?
What began as an innovative idea ran afoul of the bean counters. From the manufacturing side, with no heavy motor hanging off the trunnion, that part was made of aluminum, rather than cast iron. Thus the table top is thinner and has fewer bolt bosses to attach the trunnion to the top. The bearings are far less substantial as well since they don't need to carry the lateral stresses of a heavy motor. The coup de gras was the size of the flexible shaft was reduced from 1/2" to 7/16" from the original design and shortened so that it is curved to its minimum radius, putting extreme wear on that part. And fail they did, roughly between 40-100 hours of use. That caused tons of returns and Sears quickly abandoned the design.
The shaft is still available at nearly $200 a pop, but a design flaw is a design flaw.
Also missing is one of these guys:
Sears wants $6 plus shipping for one. Not on my watch!
Of course, I can wire around it to see how things run. I suspect the shaft is royally dried out and needs cleaning and re-lubing before I turn it on. The entire saw needs some serious cleaning and de-rusting. Everything but the blade guard is there, though. Plus a bunch of steel saw blades good for making shop clocks, but not worth sharpening to actually cut wood!
The reason that I wanted the saw was to refurbish a contractor type saw and make the little improvements to greatly magnify its accuracy and functional use for the woodworking book I continue to labor away at. The jury is out on this. Everything I read suggests it is not worth the effort. I just have to decide how much work I want to put into this.
All that said, I am still looking for the usual blade guards for these kinds of saws as they can easily be modified to be both more useful and also function as a pretty good splitter. And I also need one for the old Rockwell bench saw I picked up last month (which has its own weirdness, but another thread on that one later). I think I can modify any guard to make it work. Anybody got something like that laying around unneeded? Or a little yellow switch key?
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