Rust Prevention

I think I trust the engineers at Albrecht when they designed their chucks NOT to use oil or any lubricant on the spindle threads.
This information is also in G.Lautards MBSR #2 in his great description on how to re build an Albrecht drill chuck AND Albrechts primer on how to rebuild their chucks.
I've disassembled all of my Albrechts, 6 to date, to lubricate the hood threads and jaw guides only, so that 10 years from now, rebuilding them
will be much easier. Like Mikey wrote, the Albrecht is a self tightening design and a greasy, oily spindle thread will make the chuck loose it's grip. Friction is your friend here. These are not high wear parts. They will last for a very long time with normal use and care. I've seen 15 year old Albrechts at the shop where I worked and they are like new! and no rust.

(See Mikey's great blog with photos with the use of DIY aluminum clamps). Albrechts are amazing works of engineering and manufacturing.
The workmanship is amazing; so it always sad to see an abused Albrecht. The Albrechts are built like tanks,.... but even tanks can get blown to bits.

Emilio, I'm not disagreeing. I'm just trying to understand the reason. I can't see the threads being oiled preventing the self tightening. I always want ot understand things.. Except electronics which I am brain dead on. But mechanical things , I have to understand, it will cause me to lose sleep if I don't

woochucker said:

I understand it is self tightening, what I can't wrap my mind around is the threads not having oil. Those threads are just pushing the jaw anvil (your exploded view on your rebuild page). So I would understand the anvil not having oil as that probably runs against the jaw guide and requires a no-slip fit. Its the threads that I can't understand not having oil, they need to be able to easily turn while self tightening. Wish I could understand. I guess I'll have to open one up to understand.. as the diagrams and description just aren't working for me.

Click to expand...

The way I see it is that the threaded spindle pushes the jaws up in the jaw guide, up against the hood, as we tighten the chuck. This clamps down on the drill bit solidly but this clamping action is dependent upon a consistent force. If the force lets up, even a little bit, the drill will slip. The friction caused between the unlubed spindle and spindle body is critical to the function of the chuck. Any oil in there and that friction is gone ... and the drill slips.

Have you ever wondered why there are so many Albrechts on ebay with gnarled up hoods and collars, or galled jaws? Oil in the spindle is the key culprit. When a drill slips, the user grabs two big pliers or monkey wrenches in an attempt to MAKE the chuck grab but it cannot, by design.

The other reason those chucks are so beat up is because when an Albrecht grabs correctly the chuck can get so tight you cannot get it to let go. This is especially so when using a big drill that grabs on exit. Then they have to muscle the chuck to get it to loosen.

We are taught to lube threads to ensure proper torque is applied as a bolt is stretched. However, in this instance, we are not stretching the spindle. We are maximizing flank contact and relying on the friction between the flanks of the threads to hold the parts in position. For what its worth, this seems to work rather well ... as long as we don't oil it.

What Mikey said.
Also, if a drill bit is placed too far up into the chuck body, touching to "top", there is no "room" for the chuck to let go.
It's all about fiction holding the keyless design. Look at a cross section of the Albrecht, the spindle/body are mated and matched
in the lapping process to close tolerances. They work very well and work "dry" to create friction to hold the jaws closed around a drill.
If the spindle were oily, this would cause slipping and the bit doesn't hold. These parts are well machined and don't rub or lock, they're smooth well made parts.
If you ever get a chance to look at a new disassembled Albrecht, you'll see what I mean.

About Molasses, the term, "Slower than Molasses" most likely got it's start from it's early use as deruster in the boating community. Old seized, locked up engines could be placed in a solution of 1:10 Molasses & Water then left to soak for a minimum of 3 months. Many old engines were able to be placed back in service this way. My experiments with this did yield grey scale & once the scale was removed the steel was a lighter grey. Best left to your cast iron parts (like boat engines). My test subjects were a drafting kit from the late 1800s & a speedometer shell from a 72 Dodge Charger. Both are better for their Molasses soak - but have a whole new character from 'as born'. Save this for your 'let's see if we can salvage utter junk' parts.

mikey said:

When a drill slips, the user grabs two big pliers or monkey wrenches in an attempt to MAKE the chuck grab but it cannot, by design.

Click to expand...

Don't let pliers or monkey or pipe wrenches anywhere near your machine tooling. Save them for working on water pipe and black iron gas pipe. Use a good quality strap wrench (or two, opposing) to do the job without tearing your tooling up. The one shown is a Ridgid. The newer ones are imports and not nearly as good as the older USA ones, but still about 100 times better than the Harbor Freight version (POS on all but very light work, has a rubber strap which fails). There may be better strap wrenches out there, I have no knowledge of them, but my old Ridgid ones always do the job for me...