Shopsmith Forums

charlese wrote:Troy, your tube looks better than mine which has never been rusty. Mine shows minor scratch marks from movement of the headstock and carriage.

Chuck,
I'm trying to develop those scratch marks but my boss makes it difficult. The photo is at the end of the tube where it gets less of this wear. I'm getting those scratch marks in the center but thought a photo here might confuse the issue.

Troy

Go for it Troy! The heck with the Boss! (said sarcastically):rolleyes:

Really though, you did a super job of brining back those tubes! I just can't remember mine ever looking that nice.

[quote="horologist"]Mike,

Wet sand. I chucked one end up in a four jaw chuck on a lathe and held the other end by hand with a wadded up piece of towel. 8iowa did the sanding. The finish is identical to the factory finish.



Troy,
What til you see the pic of my homemade lathe I am going to create do the sanding. I started doing it by hand yesterday but it was too labor intensive. Came up with a concept. Hopefully it's safe....enough
Mike

mickyd wrote:

Troy,
What til you see the pic of my homemade lathe I am going to create do the sanding. I started doing it by hand yesterday but it was too labor intensive. Came up with a concept. Hopefully it's safe....enough
Mike

Well, here's the homemade lathe I made up to polish my bench AND way tubes.

[ATTACH]3435[/ATTACH]

Stuck a rubber expansion plug in the end of the tube, tighten it up, and chucked it up to my drill. (Update 6-25-09 A hex spacer similar this one is best to use vs. just chucking directly on the threaded portion of the fastener like I originally did). Used a tie wrap to hold the drill trigger at the proper RPM and that allowed me to have my hands free to sand the tube.

Depending on the condition of your tubes, start off with a grit that will clean up whatever corrosions or staining your tubes have. My bench tubes had a fair amount of pitting so I started with 60 grit and worked my way up through 100, 150, 220 wet, 400 wet.

update 4-07-09 Member heathicus invented this setup
update 4-09-09 Member Bill Mayo shows this setup
update 6-25-09 Member JPG40504 uses this setup
update 6-25-09 Now that I have a functioning ShopSmith, I've abandoned my drill set up method and use this setup for the restoration on the ER10.

You can see from the various setup used above to rotate the tubes that you are only limited by the extent of your imagination.

This is one of the tubes that went through the electolysis bath. See https://forum.shopsmith.com/viewtopic.php?p=31988&postcount=13

As you can see, it turned out pretty nice. Saved me $$.

mickyd wrote:Well, here's the homemade lathe I made up to polish my bench tubes.

[ATTACH]3435[/ATTACH]

Stuck a rubber expansion plug in the end of the tube, tighten it up, and chucked it up to my drill. Used a tie wrap to hold the drill trigger at the proper RPM and that allowed me to have my hands free to sand the tube.

This is one of the tubes that went through the electolysis bath. See https://forum.shopsmith.com/viewtopic.php?p=31988&postcount=13

As you can see, it turned out pretty nice. Saved me $$.

Hi Mike,
Necessity is the mother of invention. Great job!

mickyd wrote:

horologist wrote:Mike,

Troy,
What til you see the pic of my homemade lathe I am going to create do the sanding. I started doing it by hand yesterday but it was too labor intensive. Came up with a concept. Hopefully it's safe....enough
Mike

Mike,
I like it, I had planned to do something very similar if the lathe idea didn't pan out. I like your electrolysis bath. A small scale version is on the list of things to do when I get a little spare time.

Troy