Craftsman Power Hacksaw Rebuild

To cut the teeth on the gear blank, I decided to try out these indexing centers that came with my mill when I bought it. I don't think they've been used in many years because they were seized up and missing a couple of little parts. I got them freed up and working though:



The indexer is pretty simple. You simply mount a gear on the end and use it to index the teeth. I am making a 16 pitch, 14-tooth gear, so I mounted a 56-tooth gear on the indexer and used every fourth tooth when cutting the teeth in the blank. I bought a bunch of used gear cutters on ebay awhile back and as luck would have it, I had the cutter I needed on hand:



My little mill didn't seem to like it when I tried to cut the first tooth at full depth. So I backed off and cut the teeth in stages:







For my first attempt at gear cutting, I was pretty happy with how it turned out. I still need to cross drill the gear and shaft and ream the hole for a taper pin, but here it is alongside the original:

I made a little more progress this weekend. First I replaced the Oilite bushing in the main gear:



I noticed that the pin that the main gear rotates on had some wear. So I made a new replacement pin (it's in the photo below, alongside the old pin). There's a 60° taper on one end and the other end is drilled and tapped for a machine screw. I still need to tap the hole, just waiting on the tap. There's an oil groove milled along the length of the pin. I also still need to drill and ream a cross hole for the taper pin that secures it to the main body.



I finished painting all the parts that needed it:



And I cleaned up all the hardware:



I've still got one or two small parts to make, and then I should be ready to start reassembling things.

Coming along great Vince, can't wait to see it back together and in action. I have a somewhat bigger cousin of your saw - a Marvel Drawcut #2 and the same Craftsman bandsaw. Both are very useful.

I really like that Marvel saw. It looks big enough to do some serious cutting, but still compact enough to fit into a small shop. It kind of makes my Craftsman saw look like a toy.

It is pretty neat, but a bit overkill for my needs. It came with a 1725 rpm motor, but that ran waaay too fast. I installed an 825 rpm motor, now its runs as it should. But a small one like yours is really better suited to a home shop. It does cut very straight, more than I can say for the Craftsman band saw.