August 2021

First I disassembled what I could, which meant the pulleys and motor table stayed attached. I managed to get the foot off (which pivots on two large pin bolts), the motor table tensioner and the pulley tensioner. An impact driver was needed on a pivot bolt and on a hinge pin, which was nerve wracking as the bracket could have fractured. But it didn’t. The small bits were cleaned up on the wire wheel, but instead of a wire wheel or multi tool I used coarse wire wool and a small wire brush to clean up the motor mount/ and pulley bracket. This worked quite well. I used the small wire brush to clean up the pulleys – as I said before, I think that they’re some sort of aluminium alloy and appeared soft and fragile.

Two coats of paint and it was looking good. I didn’t mask anything (except the pulley V grooves), but maybe I should have filled some of the holes in to keep the threads from blocking up with paint. We’ll see…

Not having the bolts to mount the mount I then moved on to the motor itself.

I cleaned this up with wire wool and small brush also, then masked up the label, the shaft, the foot bottom surface and blocked the air vents with tissue to keep paint out of the innards. Oh, and took the pulley off (which wasn’t keyed although the shaft was).

I decided to use a satin black spray paint for the motor just to avoid the lathe looking too much like a grey-fest.

Ok, now to get the motor mount and pulleys mounted on the cabinet to check the pulley to wall clearance and move the cabinet if necessary. Trouble is the new bolts to do the mounting haven’t arrived, so time to think about something else, like the headstock. Or gearbox. Or tail stock. Or bed. Or maybe just the gear cover, ‘cos that’s nice and easy! Meanwhile, I’m waiting for the mounting bolts and the foot levelling bolt to arrive from Mr Ebay…. 12 days so far and counting, waiting for the latter to arrive. Not good.

The next step in the rebuild is here

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