The caster assembly on the rust bucket needed some serious attention. Life left outside, unconvered, is brutal for
any machine.
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[ATTACH]7057[/ATTACH].
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Decided to use "Greenie I" with a lathe setup to sand the caster rods removing the heavy rust and pitting. This is the same setup used to clean up
the way tubes.
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[ATTACH]7058[/ATTACH]
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Because the rod diameters are so small (1/2" and 3/8"), unless the ShopSmith's RPM's are BLAZING, the process goes too slow. I didn't trust using those higher RPM's although I did try it. Turning at a
reasonable speed (drum sander speed setting range), the first rod I did took about 20 minutes using a sanding block with 36 grit paper. To get completely through the rust and pitting meant removing .006" from the OD's. (same amount of metal removal as when I did
the way tubeswhich were equally rusty). Anyway, to speed the process up, I decided to use use my belt sander while the Greenie did the turning. To do that, naturally I had to go to the backside of the ShopSmith so that the rotation of the sander was going against that of the ShopSmith. The sander had a 50 grit belt on it and that reduced the sanding time to about 5 minutes. MUCH BETTER since I had 2 more to do. After my wife took the photo, she asked how come my hand was so white as compared to my arm. I then realized that for whatever reason, I had a
DEATH GRIP on the belt sander handle. (wondered why my hand was getting tingly

). Guess I was prepared for some kind of incident.
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[ATTACH]7059[/ATTACH]
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[ATTACH]7060[/ATTACH]
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Came out well.
The aluminum parts were cleaned off using an 8" brass wire wheel on the bench grinder along with detail work using a dremel tool with wire brushes. You can't see them but there are still a few areas that I just couldn't get to so they still have a bit of the original 'crud' that will serve to refresh the memories of what they looked like when I got it.
Notice I didn't
mirror polishthe aluminum castings as I did with 'Greenie I'!! That was (is) a tough decision.
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[ATTACH]7061[/ATTACH]