AprilAire humidifier Water Flow Indicator

Another science project: I could not stand the mystery of whether the water was flowing or not into the drip feed humidifier.

So I hooked up this $16 flow indicator.

I have the solenoid hooked direct to the control board so it is on when the blower is on.

Ok, experiment fail!
The low pressure gauge finally blew after a couple months.

World's only Cat Box Work Bench

Looking at the last open wall space in the shop and needing additional bench space for some new tools I began to covet the space that the world's largest cat box occupied. The cat box is actually a small cement mixing bin that I prefer to the smaller commercial ones, I learned a few years ago to put a frame around it with wheels so I could move and clean around it.

Note the filter taped to the 20" box fan, eliminates breathing the litter dust while scooping.

The bench has to be on wheels to access the crawl space door behind it.

Montgomery Wards POWR KRAFT Electric Planer TWH 8985 Restoration

Found this at the South High School Rummage sale for $8, and decided to give it a complete overhaual.
This is one of those machines that I always wanted but could never justify buying new.
A 50's era machine it looked OK Just dirty and the blades were butter knife sharp.

An ingenious design where the motor & handle are one unit and the blade & guide are another. The belt looks new, but are still available!

Its a 2" wide planer most of today's are in the 3" + range.

The really cool thing is that the bushings for the cutter head were standard off-the-shelf items so for $7 I was able to replace them.

The blades took some time to sharpen, this is a case where you have to go to the disk grinder and take a lot of material off (slowly)

I clamped them into my machinists vise and grind for 4 - 5 seconds and dunk in water, then it was on to the WorkSharp.

Setting the blades is a slow process, no wonder the newer machines have made great strides in ease of use.

Champion 10 Leather Splitter Rebuild

Not sure how old this thing is, 75 years old? Lots of net search yealded very little.

I'm looking for a manual, an exploded view, patent dwgs. anything that would help me get into the mind of the designer and understand better how to dial it in.

Picked it up from my friend Ralph over at Grosse Pointe Shoe Repair; he had never used it. It was bolted to the bench when he bought the shop 20+ years ago; judging by the cob webs on it. I asked if he could part with it.

It has 2 broken castings and the main gear is cracked. It's working fine in spite of all that.
Took pictures as I disassembled it... they came in very handy! Probably about 7 hours of time into the rebuild

After sharpening the blade and getting the bottom roller positioned correctly I got a trial split, no problem.

Its hard to beat a RED machine!

Just like Case vs John Dear you got your Reds and your Greens.

Sharpening:

The 6" x 0.25" x 3" blade is a formidable challenge, without a surface grinder however...
I have a surface plate!
It became apparent that I needed a sanding fixture to hold the angle and so made this little clamp.

I could even use it on the belt sander for the rough work.

The previous owner put a huge belly in the center of the blade so the only way out was a lot of metal removal.

With slots in the carriage plat I can level and change the angle of the blade.

The Champion can split very evenly but the blade must be even.

Adding some additional assem. photos:

These picture were very helpful in getting this contraption back together.

Landis 5 in 1 rebuild

I needed a 5 in 1 for some time now and picked up this Craig's list find.

It was a real mess.

Cosmetically it was the glue spatter covering the bottom 3rd that was the worst part. I had no intention of repainting initially but when the glue refused to come off without taking the paint with it I decided there was no way to avoid it.

Mechanically it was fine but the blade had been badly abused, someone had tried to remove it, dented it to butter knife levels, and then reassembled it in the wrong order.

Ultimately I made a holding fixture for the blade in my lathe and was able to sharpen it very nicely but, when a blade is damaged that much the diameter is reduced and even though it is razor sharp it doesn't extend as far below the drive teeth as it should, so a new blade is still needed.

I did a complete tear-down and de-greese of the "oily bits" and used a paint stripper on the casting.

Rustolium green looks pretty good.

I prefer to not repaint, instead I will scrub clean the worn painted parts and give them a coat of MinWax water based polyurethane. This method shines & darkens the dull cleaned surface and protects it but leaves the vintage look intact.

I'm ordering a new Landis badge because the old one was un-salvageable.

Amazing durable machines. 

Many people ask what are the 5 things that it does?

(Well it does 4 things) but does them all well.

Next up is a Champion Model 10 splitter getting the same treatment!

Shereline Lathe - Dremel Grinder, Dressing Attachment

One of my most viewed posts of all time is the Dremel grinder attachment post.
As of today I completed another piece of the puzzle; a dressing attachment.
I had been trying to figure it out for a while and when the Dremel drill chuck project came along I decided to get to it.

Since the Dremel moves with the cross slide the dresser had to be fixed to the bed somehow.

This design is fast and easy to set-up and take-down.

One element with my angled Dremel motor attachment is getting the grinding wheel aligned with the spindle axis, once this is done the dresser can do it's job. Although the wheel is spinning up against the diamond dresser the passes that are very light 0.001 or less per pass.

This thing is surprisingly easy to make now that I have figured it out for you.
I was not sure that the finished product (shaft grinding) could tell the difference but the Drill chuck project Proved that the finish after dressing is substantially smoother.

Shereline - Dremel Drill Chuck Attachment

For years I've struggled with chucking 60 and smaller drills in a drill press so when I got a spare Dremel chuck I decided to make a shaft for it that could be mounted to any drill press in the shop.

I started out trying to obtain a Die for the unusual thread size 9/32 - 40; although they are available not a single source in the States had them on hand, only from the UK.

After another week of "not wanting to buy" a $30 die I realized that all I needed was a old or worn out Dremel to scavenge the shaft from. I had an old Fordam like cable that I had not used in 25 years and decided that I would sacrifice it.

Any drill chuck that is not ultra precision is not concentric with its shaft and the Dremel falls into that category.

After removing the shaft from the cable I mounted it to the lathe like so.

Using a 1/8 dowel pin I got the setup as close to Shereline perfection as possible.

After rough cutting I used my Dremel grinder (one of my most popular posts of all) to get the shaft tru, and a half under 0.250.
In order to get the result I was looking for I had to finally make a wheel dresser for the Dremel.

So now I'm going to look for another junk Dremel to get the shaft from as a spare.