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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Jan 2019
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    Pennsylvania, USA
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    54
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    12

    Default Brown & Sharpe #2 Surface Grinder Not-as-much-of-a-basket-case

    Much like StrayAlien (hi Greg!), I was fortunate to come into possession of a 1928 Brown & Sharpe #2 (serial #8046) automatic table-feed surface grinder. Mine fortunately was intact, but had been through a fire in the shop, and between the years of grinding dust, spotty maintenance/care of the machine, the soot and water from the fire, it was in tough shape.


    Drove about 90 miles to just outside of New York City to pick it up, and here's what it looked like once I got it into the basement shop:
    IMG_20190113_155805.jpg
    Attachment 378122

    When I picked it up, despite it having sat for a year+ while the insurance company determined the nature of the fire, the manual table feeds worked in all four directions fairly effortlessly, but the head elevation handwheel was stiff; lots of rust and gunk to be seen on the elevating screw; and I didn't want to jam more debris in there by moving things around.

    So even though things seemed mostly in order, based on the amount of grinding dust and grime everywhere, I decided to strip the machine down, clean, evaluate, paint, etc. as needed. Let the disassembly begin:

    Getting the hand feed wheels and assemblies off:
    Attachment 378123
    IMG_20190120_110755.jpg

    Close-up of the general state of the machine; lots of grinding dust 'gunk' build up, broken/missing oil cups (many packed with grit), etc...
    IMG_20190120_110940.jpg
    Attachment 378124

    Getting the carriage off of the main table was a chore; the only manual I found detailed a procedure that was NOT relevant to my machine. Thankfully I found StrayAlien's thread here and he was kind enough to point me in the right direction (thanks again)!
    IMG_20190121_190515.jpg
    Attachment 378125

    Here's the mess that awaited me beneath the carriage (with some ares where it looks like grinding dust got into the ways as a bonus):
    IMG_20190121_190519.jpg
    Attachment 378126

    Here's the oil-distribution network of copper tubing beneath the main works cover -- looks like art to me.
    IMG_20190121_191928.jpg
    Attachment 378127

    Parts disassembled and awaiting cleaning. My poor tablesaw table got a good bit of abuse on this project:
    IMG_20190121_193638.jpg
    Attachment 378128

    Rigged up an electrolysis bath for cleaning lots of the items. In-action shot and the wheel shroud and a hand wheel after an 8hr soak:
    IMG_20190122_114003.jpgIMG_20190122_161058.jpg Attachment 378129Attachment 378130

    A litany of prepared parts awaiting primer. Between the bath, wire cup wheels, needle scaler, it was filthy work -- thankfully the weather was good enough to take it all outside for cleaning. There were three coats of paint on this guy, the machine gray in the pictures, a chocolate brown beneath that, and then the original factory black...
    IMG_20190126_152821.jpg
    Attachment 378131

    The table was a rusty mess, AND all four of the oiler screws were rusted in place. Not sure if that was all from the fire, or if the previous owner just didn't oil the ways beneath the table....? Careful application of WD-40, heat and an impact driver got all four out without any real damage
    IMG_20190204_151706.jpg
    Attachment 378132

    Column and main body all prepped and primed:
    IMG_20190204_151658.jpg
    Attachment 378133

    A shop full of parts with final paint color on them -- Rustoleum oil-based enamel -- mixed 6pts flat black with 1.5pts flat white; it's an almost exact match for the c.1910 B&S #2 milling machine at the museum I volunteer with -- see this thread for that info if interested.
    IMG_20190206_173448.jpgIMG_20190206_173455.jpgIMG_20190206_173505.jpg
    Attachment 378134Attachment 378135Attachment 378136

    Finally on to some preliminary re-assembly! The head elevation works are all in nearly-perfect shape:
    IMG_20190210_135949.jpg
    Attachment 378137

    Main table housing ready for some test-fitting too:
    IMG_20190211_071039.jpg
    Attachment 378138

    Did a test painting of the raised lettering too. All I had was a silver paint pen for the proof of concept, final color will be gold, which I'm 99% sure was how it came from the factory in 1928.
    Attachment 378139

    IMG_20190211_071100.jpg

    Now, on to the 83 (yes, 83!) wheels and Sopko adapters I got with the machine. Talk about some serious rust. After much soaking, heat, cursing, banging, prying, etc. I've wrested 12-15 free and got them cleaned up. LOTS more to go. I figure half of these guys will go up on ebay when cleaned up. I should be able to easily recoup the machine costs and then some.
    Attachment 378140
    IMG_20190211_071151.jpg

    This is about 3 weeks of on and off work so far. Left to do will be a new bronze bushing for the table feed input shaft and turning down said shaft to remove the buggered-up areas. Will need to make a new table-feed reversing rod and dog (rod is nearly squared-off).
    IMG_20190121_194128.jpg
    Attachment 378141

    I also have 6-8 Gits cups to repair/replace -- lots of missing caps and springs - surprisingly about 80% of the oil cups are in perfect shape. Once I'm all reassembled I'll need to make an evaluation of the ways and how/if the damaged areas are affecting performance. I'm hopeful because all of the damaged areas seem to be in the middle of the bearing surfaces -- hoping the intact scraped ways surrounding the damage will allow the mating surfaces to glide past/over the damage. We'll see. Stay tuned and thanks for reading if you've made it this far!

    Mike

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
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    Melbourne
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    54
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    G'day Mike,
    Very nice work and a great write up.
    Cheers,
    Greg.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Aug 2015
    Location
    Melbourne, Australia
    Posts
    843

    Default

    Hah! That doesn't look like a challenge at all! )

    Very very well done mate. Looks under control. And thanks for posting pics. Fantastic. How was the spindle?

    Re the 'bowed out' rocker arm. Mine was a fair bit worse than that and the rod it actuates was a total goner, but, I made a new rod of thicker material to cater for the rocker wear, plus you get some adjustability as well to take up more wear. I re-used the rocker even with the extreme wear.

    If I may ask a favour (or two). The 'plates' that go underneath the carriage. I have three but can only figure how two went in. If you have some pics of them in place as you disassembled?

    And also, the actuator clutch and friction plates that control the left / right table mechanism that are all in the front stuff. I believe I have all the bits but could not for the life of me figure out how to make it work. Like ... you have to loosen the clutch to engage it the auto-feed. What?!

    Any help would sure be appreciated.

    And well done again. Getting there.

    Greg.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Jan 2019
    Location
    Pennsylvania, USA
    Age
    54
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    12

    Default

    Hi Greg, I KNOW it's a far cry from the challenge you've been tackling on your machine! Thanks for the encouragement and kind words; I'm trying to do this machine some justice and hope I'm succeeding.

    The spindle was replaced by the previous owner in 2003 or 2004. Full sealed bearings, new sopko spindle, etc. The spindle head is the only filthy part of this beast I haven't tackled yet and strangely enough I have no pictures of it removed from the machine. Maybe I'm subconsciously avoiding it??? Before I disassembled, I threw an indicator on it and had 0.003'-0.004" of longitudinal play, and the spindle rotation seems nearly perfect fortunately, less than a thousandth of an inch total run-out on a spindle that could use a little gentle clean-up. There's a little bit of surface rust on it from the fire, so I'm hopeful all is good, at least for my purposes (I'm neither building Swiss watches nor making parts for satellites, so some slight inaccuracies will be tolerable I think).

    I did read how you handled the rocker arm and new rod; I like your approach, and maybe I'll just start off with the new beefier rod and see how things go. *IF* my rod and rocker arm are originals with that much wear, chances are I'll never wear them out in the remainder of my lifetime....

    As for the requests I'm happy to help with what I've got. For the dust cover plates, I do have three as well, and they were stacked large on the bottom, small on the top. My large plate has formed grooves on each long end that slide on a mating surface and two ears on the back ends that grab pins in the top of the bed top plate. This is the best picture of how it all looked when I got the carriage off:
    IMG_20190121_190519.jpg

    I haven't re-assembled the clutch/friction plates yet, but that may well be this coming week. As for that whole assembly, this is my dis-assembly picture of the stack of parts as they came off of the rack pinion shaft:
    IMG_20190127_122813.jpg

    Bottom of the picture is first onto the shaft during reassembly, so as I see it by the parts list I have, it's 754 friction plate, 760 friction feed disk washer (mine is a modern fiberous material), 758 pawl friction lever, the second 760 (but again mine is not leather and I had TWO disks here; maybe to increase effective stack height?), 755 outer friction washer, then 675 rack pinion shaft spring. I have two knurled disk/knobs in lieu of the original, guessing it was damaged/lost along the way.

    Hopefully that's how your bits all were reassembled! Like I said I'll be digging into this part this coming week (self-employment has its scheduling advantages!) and will photo-document it all in greater depth and let you know how mine operates. As per the manual you linked me to, I read it the same way: TIGHTEN the stack to disengage the power table feed. It does seem counter-intuitive.

    Oh, and in all of the gears in my machine, I found ONE missing ONE tooth. Guess which gear? That's right, the table hand wheel shaft gear:
    IMG_20190128_131758.jpg
    And the funny thing is, this gear already was repaired once before (different gear tooth) -- I think I see why B&S installed the shock-absorbing bits in newer machines....

    I'll keep you posted on my coming progress. Thanks!
    Mike

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Sep 2012
    Location
    York, North Yorkshire UK
    Posts
    6,439

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    Hi Mike,

    Looks like you had your work cut out for you, what a filthy mess you started with !
    You have done a grand job cleaning it up this far, now to get it running

    Thanks for the pictures ! We like pictures
    Best Regards:
    Baron J.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Aug 2011
    Location
    Melbourne
    Posts
    4,779

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    Nice work. Looks like you picked up a good machine.

    Machine cleaning has to be one of the most disgusting jobs invented. However, once the parts are clean and sitting on the bench, it's so sweet putting it back together!

    Simon
    Girl, I don't wanna know about your mild-mannered alter ego or anything like that." I mean, you tell me you're, uh, super-mega-ultra-lightning babe? That's all right with me. I'm good. I'm good.

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Aug 2015
    Location
    Melbourne, Australia
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    Thanks for the pics and the write-up Mike. Appreciated.

    Re the plates: I think I have three under there and still have one left over. Dunno. I'll have to have a look. But good pics. thanks.

    The clutch friction plate assembly looks just like mine with the same parts. As you noted, my clutch material is compressed leather. I think it likely you'll get to making that bit of yours work before I do .. so I am paying attention. I did go on a field trip to visit an old part disassembled BS #2 to look specifically at how that assembly fit together - but it was a later model and not quite the same.

    Re that tooth. Darn eh!! Yes, the later models had a shock absorber so maybe this gear was a weak link. Interesting.

    Well .. keep at it there. Great to see another old girl being brought back to life. Keep the pics coming as well.

    Any chance of a close up pic or two of the oiler units on the spindle head?

    PS. hopefully your spindle bearings are not toast after the fire.

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Jan 2019
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    Pennsylvania, USA
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    Apologies for the delay in responding; been a busy few weeks here between family and work obligations.

    I have two additional plates with no cut-outs in them; they're part of the column dust shielding -- they go on the front of the column like the following picture (it looks like there should be similar plates and mounting brackets for the back of the column, but mine are MIA)
    IMG_20190222_130343.jpg

    I was able to get the cross-feed mechanism working on the bench, and agree that the instruction to TIGHTEN the clutch to disengage makes no sense. Sorry for the not-so-great picture, but here's how I had it rigged up on the bench:
    1550864633335.jpg

    So the clutch pack (behind the two knurled locking 'wheels') only stops actuating the lobed wheel (to which the rack is connected that actuates the lead screw for cross-feed) when it's loosened (as you agree it SHOULD be). My only thought is maybe B&S changed that mechanic after ours were produced? We do know the manual we're referencing is newer than our machines and we've already found discrepancies.

    What I DID find is in the body of part #737 (there is a spring-loaded pin that is used to set the ratchet wheel pawl's (#660) position for cross-feed direction (towards column, none, away from column).
    IMG_20190228_132638_1.jpg

    The easiest way I see to disengage auto cross-feed is to make sure that pawl is in the neutral/center position AND back off the clutch pack. When I'm fully re-assembled I'll try and get some detailed pictures and maybe a video of everything working.

    As for the oilers, I'm assuming you meant the spindle head mechanism, and not the big iron box with the spindle through it? If the latter, let me know and I'll get a picture or two...
    IMG_20190228_132945.jpgIMG_20190228_132951.jpgIMG_20190228_133002.jpg

    And as to the spindle bearings, the front bearing is nice and smooth. The rear one is toast. The previous owner had a home-made aluminum dust cap over the back end of the spindle, but it wasn't sealed well enough to keep the grinding grit out. Also was using shielded bearing not sealed. It's a big sucker, #5206 (62mm OD, 30mm ID, 23.8mm wide) and I was able to find one with non-contact seals and the necessary snap ring for <$20 (new old stock). I'm lucky because a new Timken or the like is near $100. I'll also be either making some gaskets as needed to keep the dust covers as dust-covering as I'm able.

    Once the bearing shows up (tomorrow, FedEx tells me), I can get the head re-installed and have the machine ready for the carriage and table (which are both still awaiting stripping, painting, new oil cups, etc.)

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Aug 2015
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    Melbourne, Australia
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    Mike,

    My apologies - somehow I just totally missed your response here. I am very sorry - the email notification must have got missed in all the other stuff that hits the inbox. I cam back here to look at your pics and saw you had an additional post that I had not seen.

    Thanks for the pics - and also confirmation of the weirdness of the 'loosen to engage' clutch thing - have you got it back together now and is that really the case - it is actually 'tighten to engage'? It is the next thing for me to tackle now. Btw, mine has the little left/neutral/right pawl as well - it needed some love but works. )

    Apols again - if you've made progress or it is up and running please do post a pic or three.

    Greg.

  10. #10
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    I got some time on old Mrs Brown today. I can confirm that you do need to engage (tighten) the clutch to get the auto-cross feed gubbins to work. It was great to see it going. I had been thinking about your pics with the different clutch material. I had compressed leather and the problem was ... it had become too compressed. Some extra material in there and _tightening_ the assembly via the 'knurled knob' did the trick. All pretty wobbly so a shim or two needed, but all clankety-clank ratchety stuff and the auto-feed works. Very happy. Thanks for the pics and the advice.

    Greg.

    EDIT: I do have a very specific request if I may - the plate that sits behind the cross-feed handwheel has three bolts (or screws?) - mine are all missing and I can't figure what OD or TPI they are. The following pic shows where they should be ... bit ain't:

    IMG_20190414_141847.jpg

    Those little guys are the _last_ bolt/thread to figure out!

    Would you mind measuring the OD of one and also measuring what TPI it is? Maybe a pic also so I can see what the head looks like?

    Many thanks.

  11. #11
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    Jan 2019
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    Default Following up

    Hi Greg, glad to hear back from you! I figured you got busy on all manner of projects and would get back to me in time -- Glad I was partially right!

    I agree on the clutch pack 'build-up' -- turns out I had an extra flat washer in the stack which I'm guessing was to build up the over thickness of the stack. Weird part is, I removed it upon re-assembly out of curiosity more than anything, and it all works just fine without it. I'm thinking it was just to push the knurled jam nuts out further from the machine so they weren't as difficult to get to? Regardless, I'm working without, so at least for the time being it'll stay as-is.

    I just pulled the screws out of the cross-table feed wheel plate, and have some measurements for you. The two bottom screws (along the flat side of the plate) measure 0.1475" major diameter (3.76mm) and are 36tpi, as far as my old eyes can tell. Both of these screws have flat/undercut heads on them. which strikes me odd, since the sheet metal plate is so thin, the countersink is kind of irrelevant.

    The top screw up in the peak is an 8-32 UNC (0.160"/4.07mm) with a round head. I'm wondering if they were all three the same and one got lost and replaced somewhere along the way....

    Boy they look grungy under magnification, don't they???
    IMG_20190414_154054.jpg

    Anyway, hope that helps -- I'm pretty much fully under power here, just need to turn a new reversing lever stud and source 4 missing Gits oil cups. At the moment I've got the old shaft and a pair of vice-grips standing in so I can simulate the table reaching end of travel and tripping the table reversing rod. If you'd still like any detailed pictures/video please let me know, but it sounds like you're about even with me in terms of figuring this old girl out.

    Mike

  12. #12
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    Thanks Mike - really appreciate those dimensions. I suspect then they're all supposed to be a kind of 5/32-36. There are some weird sized in this beast! I think maybe the 8/32 you have might have been someone needing a screw and 'making' the 8/32 fit. )

    I had tried to measure the TPI using a thin strip of bluetack on a stick and putting it in the hole and pressing against the side - but my old eyes kept telling me it was 32 TPI ... but the 32 TPI taps I have looked more coarse - so I figured it must be 36 or 40 or something that I don't have a tap or die for. )

    Yes - the old girl is almost back to working again. Might all happen this Easter break.

    Thanks again for your help Mike.

    EDIT: I do have another request if I can push my luck: the 'knurled knob' that engages the clutch mechanism - mine is missing. Any chance of some rough dimensions and a pic or two? As your machine is pretty much the same as mine it'd be nice to remake it like the original if I can.

    Greg.

  13. #13
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    Aug 2015
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    Melbourne, Australia
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    Mike - yep 36 TPI - I did the world's worst single point thread cut on 0.147" at 36 TPI using a rounded-end 60deg tool on some unknown scrap box material .... just to see if it'd thread in. Done. Need more than that OD so I suspect is it closer to (or larger than) 5/32" OD.

    Very happy about that. I can make the screws, but man, threading on such a small OD is going to take some patience! .. and a very sharp and pointy tool.

    thanks again!

  14. #14
    Join Date
    Aug 2015
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    QLD
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    735

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    Quote Originally Posted by StrayAlien View Post
    ...I can make the screws, but man, threading on such a small OD is going to take some patience! .. and a very sharp and pointy tool.
    Stefan can do it..

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qQ_1ju9tfh0




    .

  15. #15
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    Aug 2015
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    Melbourne, Australia
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    Hey Mike, actually - looking at the engagement knob you have there (from the pics above) - I suspect your may also not be original. Unsure, but I've cooked up a mechanism using a valve spring (at least I think it is) rather than a star spring, so the build will be different to your anyways. The parts manual shows a quite thin looking knob - later ones are thicker.

    I'll just build something that works with the valve spring and (hopefully) works and looks okay - so no need to take pics etc .. )

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