Plus a Mysterious Seductress From Taipei

Man, what a great afternoon I had.

My table saw, an old Powermatic 66 made in McMinnville, Tennessee, is on a mobile base. When I moved here, I hired people who were incompetent, and when they moved the saw, they dragged it sideways on the pavement, putting a very big flat spot on one of the wheels. The spot acted like a Denver boot. The saw was very hard to move, because the wheel didn’t turn at all.

Apart from the bad wheel, they broke a little doodad that holds the saw in place when you get it where you want it to be. Also, until last week, I had no 250V sockets to power the saw.

I bought some new wheels and a new doodad, and I got an outlet wired up. Today I finally crawled under the saw to install the new parts.

It was not a great deal of fun. The saw weighs something like 700 pounds, so I couldn’t just lay it on its side and go to work. I had to lift it with a pry bar and work on one side of the base at a time.

Anyway, after somewhere between two and three hours, I had two new wheels and one new doodad on my saw’s base.

With the saw freed from its prison, it was time to make sure the long cord I have on it would reach my outlet. No problem! I can probably move the saw 10 feet, plugged in. That will put me in the doorway of the shop, so I can blow the dust outside.

Final problem: rust. Like I keep saying, while I was caring for my dad, I crawled into a hole and let a lot of things go. I did not protect this saw’s beautiful cast iron table from rust. At first, it wasn’t completely my fault. I didn’t know how badly cold weather would make it rust. In Miami, which sits next to a big salty ocean and always has humid air, things do not rust much. I know that sounds crazy. I figured Ocala’s climate would be less rust-friendly than Miami’s. I was mistaken. When it gets cold, water condenses on steel, and you get rust. We have a lot of cool nights here every winter.

I knew the table was rusty, but I didn’t know how rusty because I kept averting my eyes. I didn’t want to look at it until I finally decided to confront the issue. Today was the day.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the rust was very superficial. It was a great relief. I was able to use my surefire saw-table rust remedy: grease and a paint scraper.

By “grease,” I really mean, “lubricant.” I invented this method a few years ago. You apply a light lubricant like WD-40 to your table, and you scrape it with a steel paint scraper. The rust comes off like magic. The scraper can’t hurt the cast iron, either. It took me about 20 minutes to get the table nice and clean.

Steel wool and sandpaper are pathetic compared to a paint scraper. You will waste hours, and sandpaper will damage the table.

I didn’t use WD-40. I used mineral spirits and lanolin. This is an old machinist’s recipe for rust prevention. Lanolin is an incredible rust preventative. It’s basically organic cosmoline. The difficulty with it is getting it onto your metal. Lanolin is like thick butter. If you dissolve it in mineral spirits, you can spray it onto things, and the solution will cover your metal completely. The mineral spirits evaporates quickly, and in a few days, all you have is a protective lanolin film.

A year or so ago, I bought myself a chunk of lanolin and a gallon of mineral spirits, and I put the lanolin in the can. I labeled it appropriately. I use it to refill a spray bottle.

The mineral spirits evaporates fast, so you really shouldn’t do what I did. I put about a quart of this stuff in a sprayer, and the sprayer started to collapse as the spirits vanished. Better to keep most of your solution in a metal can and take a little bit out when you need to use it.

I have two bottles of Corrosion-X, which is supposed to be the best rust preventative out there, but I don’t know how well it works, because I can’t use it. The first spray bottle I ordered didn’t work, so I got a refund. I ordered a second bottle. It didn’t work, either. Both bottles are sitting in the shop taking up space.

Once I had the table saw cleaned off fairly well, I did some work on my verticle band saw. Now they both shine. The table saw is not perfectly clean, but it won’t stain wood, and things slide on it easily. That’s good enough. You can also apply Johnson’s paste wax to cast iron tables, but I don’t plan to do that while the mineral spirits is wet.

I fired up the table saw just to hear it run. Glorious. I felt like I was putting down a big weight I had been carrying for two years.

But for the mill and lathe, I don’t lack any important tools now. I can get a lot done with what I have.

I plan to cut down a piece of plywood that came from a shelf in Miami. This will be my first table saw cut in Ocala. I’m going to put the wood on the Harbor Freight base my DeWalt planer sits on. It will provide a place for the dust bag to sit. Having that bag on the ground has been more aggravating than you would imagine.

It’s crazy how much I enjoy this stuff. And I wonder why I’m not lonely. I’m alone nearly all the time, but I don’t feel bad about it at all.

Something to wonder about, but definitely not something to complain about.