# Burke #4 Restoration by RMack898



## rmack898 (Feb 26, 2014)

*[This is being posted with the permission of the author.]

*A while back I decided that a small horizontal mill had worked it's way up to the top of the list of new additions to the shop. After looking in all the usual places, my search netted me a Burke 126A#4 horizontal mill that was in pretty good shape. It has a 4"x16" table, power feed, and a small foot print. It basically has everything a small home/hobby shop could ask for in a horizontal mill.

I cruise craigslist several times a day and last week I saw an add for a Burke mill. It had no pictures or description, just a phone #. I wrote down the ph# and called it later in the afternoon. The guy with the mill was about an hour north of me and didn't know too much about it othe than it was a Burke horizontal mill. I told the guy that I would like to see it but that I wouldn't be able to get there until the following week, he said to give him a call when I was ready to come look at it. Days passed and I had forgotten all about it. 

Yesterday while looking at craigslist I see the mill is re-listed so I call the guy and make arrangements to look at it. I drove up to see it last night and after a brief negotiation it was loaded in my truck and I was on my way back home.

The mill is a Burke 126A with no #. It is the same as my Burke #4 but with one major difference, the horizontal table pivots 30* left or right in the horizontal axis and the table is 20" long instead of 16". I had never seen a small mill with this feature before. The mill also has the original drive motor that has a gear reduction built into the front of the motor, they are few and far between. It seems that the only modification to this machine is that the 3 speed belt drive has been replaced by a silent chain drive.

Since I have yet to do the re-hab on the #4, I will sell it and re-hab the new mill.

#1 the new mill
#2 the gear motor and shain drive
#3 the table pivot
#4 another pivot pic
#5 view from the front

















I'm getting more shop time now and I figured I better get moving on this mill because I'd like to start on the big lathe shortly after Chistmas.

It took me about 3 hours to completely disassemble the entire mill. Everything came apart with little difficulty and no broken fasteners. The table had alot of play in it but I found one of the gib screws was missing and the other one was loose so it's no big deal. The lead screw for the Y axis had quite a bit of backlash but an adjusting nut and a new bushing should fix that.

Since I bought this mill my intention was to restore this one and sell the other since this one was in running condition when I bought it. It does not have the original variable speed belt drive although it does have the original gear reduction motor so I will get rid of the silent chain drive and take the belt drive off the first mill.

1. The first Burke
2. The second Burke
3. A pile of parts
4. More of the pile


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## rmack898 (Feb 26, 2014)

*Re: Burke #4 Restoration by Robert Mac Cormack*

The first mill is a 1941 model and the second mill (the one I will be rebuilding) is a 1944 model.

After taking everything apart and giving it all a good looking over I decided that I will sandblast all the major castings. I had to fix my sandblaster first only to find out that I had no blast media. I went to Lowes to get some play sand and they had 3 50# bags that had broken open and they re-bagged them in paper sacks and I got them for $1 each. I got home and it started to rain so no sandblasting done yet.

The upper mill casting has a brass plate on it stating that the mill is equipped with Timkin roller bearings that id held on with drive screws. To remove the plate I used a dremmel tool with a thin cut-off wheel to put a slot in the head of the drive screw. Since drive screws a very course pitch, it does not take alot to back them out of iron castings. A screw driver with moderate downward pressure is all that is usually needed. Sometimes a thin putty knife put behind the plate applying a little outward pressure will help move a stubborn drive screw.

With any luck I will be able to get the castings blasted tomorrow and not drag this job out forever.

1. The brass placard
2. The blurry dremmel pic
3. The placard half off
4. The pacard and removed drive screw














A vertical mill with R-8 tooling is the most versitile and economical mill for a home shop to have.

I bought the small horizontal mainly for making gears. With a dividing head the set-up is pretty easy. I don't really know what kind of gears I'm ever going to need to make but having the capability to make them is just something I wanted to add to the shop.

I fixed the sandblaster yesterday and started to blast the base casting but there is no way my compressor is going to live through that kind of abuse. This weekend I will see about running a bunch of hose from my neighbor's big Gardner-Denver diesel powered rotary screw compressor as long as the weather is cooperative.

So since this mill has been in pieces for a year, I figured I better get it done. I took all of the bigger castings down to bare metal, wiped them down with denatured alcohol, gave them 2 coats of primer, and 2 coats of color coat. I'm using Benjamin Moore Impervo alkyd enamal mixed with Valspar hardener applied with a foam trim roller.

I will be blasting the smaller casings in the blast cabinet. I want to protect the bore on the bracket that holds the center on the over arm, and I don't think tape will do it. I looked through my scrap bin and found a short length of aluminum that was the perfect diameter to press into the bore, but I needed to cut it in half to make a cap for each end of the bore. I bought this 3" chuck with a 5C mount off ebay figuring it might come in handy for something. I chucked up the short piece of 1.75" aluminum and put the chuck in the vise of the band saw to cut it in half, it worked out great. I'll drive the plugs into the over arm bracket bore and blast away.

Tomorrow I'll get the main mill casting and some smaller ones primed. I need to make a 3 step drive pulley for the motor and if I can find piece of steel the right diameter I'll get started on that while the paint is drying.

1 The parts on the bench for a year

2 Base is painted

3 The mill head ready for primer

4 The over arm bracket

5 Cutting the plugs


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## rmack898 (Feb 26, 2014)

*Re: Burke #4 Restoration by Robert Mac Cormack*

I made a little more progress today. I managed to get all the pieces that I had ready for paint coated with primer including the over arm support.

I had intended to get the knee cleaned up, disassembled, taped up with 2 layers of gorilla tape (thanks midmo), but after a half hour in the parts washer, it was still pretty caked up with crud and I'll have to clean it up a little more befor I can get it apart. The bevel gears are pinned to the shafts with tapered pins and I need to get it cleaned up good enough to be able to see which way to drive the pins out.

I might have to wait until saturday to resume as I have a full plate tomorrow.

1&2 Parts primed

3 The knee after the parts washer

4 The bevel gears that are pinned to the shafts















I got paint on everything I primed last night.

The knee however is kicking my butt. Even after scrubbing in the parts washer, it was still pretty nasty looking. I had to use a scraper on the gear hubs to find the taper pins and with my eyes it was hard to tell the big end from the small end. I finally get that all figured out and was able to drive the pins out and get the gears, thrust bearing, and shafts out of the knee.

The screws and bearings for the Z axis all look good and need nothing more that a good clean up.

The bearing for the Y axis is wiped out and will have to be replaced. That's where the trouble starts. It looked like a simple oiled bronze bearing held in by a set screw. I took the set screw out, put the right size bushing driver on it and gave it a whack, it didn't move. The whacks got progressivly harder and the hammer got bigger, still no joy. I knew something wasn't right, so I got a scraper and a flashlight out to see why it wouldn't come out. After a little cleaning up and under good light I saw that the bushing was threaded into the casting.

After 6 failed attempts to get the bushing out, it so badly mangled up that I will have to cut it out but I'll wait until tomorrow because the way my luck is running tonight I know I'll break something.

1 One of the taper pins

2 Pressing the crank handle off the shaft

4 All the parts out of the knee (except the Y bushing)

3 The wiped Y axis bushing

5 Y axis bushing threaded into casting (before I mangled it to ****)





















I got revenge on the Y axis bearing that kick my butt last night. 

The bearing is treaded into the knee casting, and since it was wiped out, I used a 3/8"NPT tap and tapped the bore of the bearing. I screwed a 3/8 x 1/4 reducer bushing into the bearing intending to use the hex of the bushing to turn the bearing out of the housing. The first time I tried it I sheared the bushing off, so I used an EZ out and removed the broken piece of bushing. Thinking it was still a good idea, I got another pipe bushing and tried it again, only this time I heated the knee casting. I rounded off the hex on the bushing even though I was turning it with a 6 point socket. I used an EZ out again and removed the rounded off bushing and quit for the night.

Today I used a jewlers saw and cut the bearing into 3 pieces and it still fought me to the end but I did manage to get it out. I had a big enough piece of the bearing to check with a pitch gage and it was 18 TPI, the hole it came out of was 7/8".

I took an 1-1/4" piece of oil impregnated bronze round stock and turned it down to 7/8" and threaded the outside of it 18 TPI. I drilled it 1/2", bored it for a nice fit on the shaft, and parted it off for length.

My bead blaster has issues so I decided to strip the paint off the knee casting. It seems the only paint stripper you can find in the box stores is that safe green crap that doen't work worth a damn, but I found this Jasco stripper that works as good as the old Zip strip aviation paint remover without the smell. It's plenty strong, I got a tiny drop of it on my arm and it burned like hell.

I got a second coat of paint on everything that was painted yesterday and I started cleaning up the crank handles. I made good porgress today and I may have another week to go if I don't get distracted



1 The 3/8 bushing I rounded off

2 The Y axis bearing in pieces

3 Measured it at 7/8-18TPI

4 Bronze turned, threaded, and drilled

5 Bored to size


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## rmack898 (Feb 26, 2014)

*Re: Burke #4 Restoration by Robert Mac Cormack*

A few more pics.

1 Parting off new bearing

2 The new bearing

3 Stripping the knee casting














Thanks for the tips on the paint strippers guys, I only have one more piece to strip on this mill but my next project will take a bunch of stripper and I'll give them a try.

I'm still making progress but I'm moving on a slow bell because I think I comming down with the flu.

Most everything I have been working on for the last 2 days has been cleaning and painting. I keep looking ahead and I think I will have to make a new oil seal housing, and drive pulley for the main shaft. I don't have the material for the pulley yet and I don't want to start on the oil seal housing until I find out what modern oil seal I'm going to use. I need to take a trip to the bearing supply house and see waht they have.

A few pics of what I've got done.


















I just used a fine brush to just pass over the top of the raised letters in the casting, its not hard to do and took less than 5 minutes.

I chucked the hand wheel in the lathe and used #320 sand paper, jeweler's rouge with a scotch brite pad, followed by Flitz metal polish buffed with a paper towel at high speed.

The paint is Benjamin Moore Impervo alkyd enamel. I had the color custom made, its a greenish, blueish, gray. here's a pic of the formula if you want to have it made.





The last part I need to prep for paint is the arm that supports the power feed dirve pulley. When I went to take it apart it was quite obvious that the bearing was shot. Once I got it apart I found that not only was the bearing wipped out but so was the shaft.

The drive shaft is .750" but it has a 1.250" shoulder on it, and the only stock I had was 1-3/8" so there was alot of turning and waste. The bearing was 1" OD x .750" ID x 1-3/8" long. My small boring bar was not necked down far enough to bore the bearing the full length so I took it to the grinder and thinned it so that I could bore the bearing in one pass.

The shaft has a keyway in it for a woodruff key and I don't have the right size cutter so I will have to imprvise with what I have but it's been a long day and I'll cross that bridge tomorrow.

1 Power feed drive bearing wiped

2 Power feed drive shaft wiped

3 Power feed arm, bearing, and shaft

4 Reaming the bore on the new drive shaft

5 Rounding the edge on the shoulder with a file



















The new drive shaft and bearing, I still have to cut the keyway in the drive shaft.

The new drive shaft and bearing, I still have to cut the keyway in the drive shaft.


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## rmack898 (Feb 26, 2014)

*Re: Burke #4 Restoration by Robert Mac Cormack*

I'm still making progress but its going slow. Since I didn't have the right size woodruff cutter, I had to use the largest one I had. I took the dimentions for the keyway off the old shaft and marked the new shaft. I put the shaft in a vee block and clamped the vee block in the mill vise.

To get the keyway centered, I touched the cutter off on the top of the shaft, then raised the knee 1/2 the diameter of the shaft + 1.5 times the thickness of the cutter. Since the shaft is hollow, I plunged the cutter in full depth and ran it from start line to stop line. The keyway needed to be .066" wider than my cutter so I raised the knee .033" and made another pass, then dropped the knee .066" and took the final pass. I backed the cutter out and dropped the knee but the spindle was still running and I put a small nick in in the shaft. It's no big deal but it ****** me off because I know better than to leave the spindle runnning.

I got the power feed drive arm blasted and primed as well as the motor mount. I'll get color coat on those parts tomorrow and start on taking the table and paower feed apart.

1 the shaft marked and set up in the vee block

2 cutting the keyway

3 the shaft finished (notice the nick

)
















Originally Posted by *allthumbz* 


_*+ 1.5 times the thickness of the cutter*?_

That should have read .5 not 1.5 That was to put the center of the cutters kerf on the center line of the shaft.

I gave the paint a day to dry and re-assembled the knee. The hand crank and bevel gears for the knee lift work realy smooth. I didn't fully install and adjust the gib for the knee as the gib bolts are all buggered up and I don't have the right size to replace them with. I want to replace them with socket head screws instead of cap screws and I'll pick them up tomorrow. The knee casting had been broken at some time in the past and was repaired by brazing, you can see the previous repair in the pic.

I got the motor mount, cabinet door, and the timken bearing plate reinstalled. I used Never Dull to polish the Timken bearing plate and it took off the rest of the remaining paint on it. I used the smallest artists brush I could find to re-paint the red on the plate.

Next up is the table and power feed.

1 The knee reassembled

2 Motor mount installed

3 Timken bearing plate

4 Cabinet door

5 The bottom of the table






















I got the table and power feed all torn down. I knew the X axis had backlash, by looking at the crudded up dial on the handle it was about .050" on the dial. Before I completely took the lead screw out of the table, I checked the play of the nut on the lead screw. The nut is bronze and the screw is steel. In the center of the lead screw, the nut has .010" of axial play on the screw. At the extreme ends of the lead screw, the nut has .001" of play on the screw. The lead screw is 5/8-10 acme thread.

The screw is worn in the center where most of it's use was. The question is; should I spend $60 and order a length of acme lead screw and make a new lead screw, or should I just clean it up and put it back together. This is just a little horizontal mill from the 1940's, if it'll hold a thou or 3 I'd be happy.

I've never used a horizontal mill and I've never made a gear before, but I want to. Can I do that with .050" of backlash on X ?

1 Leadscrew with .010" slop in the middle

2 Leadscrew with .001" play at the ends

3 Leadscrew and nut

4 Bronze nut



















I got Y axis saddle all cleaned up and painted. The gib for the saddle had been just bolted and had no means to adjust it, so I have to make new gib screws with adjusting nuts. I found some nice 5/16-18 SS studs in my bolt bin and will cut them down and put screw slots in them for adjustments.

I decided to make a new lead screw. Enco had precision lead screw and that's where I got the $60 price from. I checked McMaster (thanks Dave) and they had a better quality precision lead screw for half the price of Enco. While I was waiting for the brown truck to show up with my screw, I got the table all cleaned up. The new lead screw showed up this afternoon. I threaded the nut on it and it is like night and day difference. I think I will have no appreciable back lash when it goes back together. It will probably take me a day or two to get the new screw done because we've been short handed at work and I taking all the OT I can get.

The power feed gear box is up next. Besides looking like hell I already know that there is a bad bearing in it as the input shaft wobbles all over the place.

1 and 2 Y axis saddle

3 The new lead screw

4 The table cleaned up

5 Nasty looking power feed gear box


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## rmack898 (Feb 26, 2014)

*Re: Burke #4 Restoration by Robert Mac Cormack*

Well I got the new lead screw finished tonight. When I discovered that the leadscrew was wipped out, all I did was measure the diameter and pitch and order a new 3' length of precision lead screw. It was after I got the new piece of screw that I realized that there were features on the leadscrew that were larger in diameter than the threaded section. I didn't have many choices here so I cut the end with the large diameter features off the old leadscrew. I put it in the bandsaw and just looked at it for a while wondering if I was doing the right thing, I finally said the hell with it and let it rip



I chucked the cut off end of the old leadscrew in the lathe and drilled it 1.750" deep with a letter "U" drill and finished it with a .375" reamer. I then took the new leadscrew and turned a 1.750" long section down to fit into the hole in the end of the old leadscrew. I wanted a nice tight fit so I tuned the screw to .3749". I had never worked to .0001" before and about soiled my shorts when I hit it dead nut on the first try.



I put the leadscrew in the freezer for a while, I heated the end of the shaft with a propane torch and fit the two together with a few blows with a brass hammer. I then turned the other ind of the shaft down to .5" and cut a keyway for the woodruf kew for the power feed drive gear.

While the thought of cutting the original shaft had me sweating bullets at first, I'm happy with how it came out. Tomorrow I'll get the leadscrew intalled and the table back on the mill.

1 End of new leadscrew turned to .3749"

2 Hit it on the first try

3 End of old screw drilled

4 New screw with the cut off from the old screw

5 Completed new leadscrew next to the old one






















One more pic, a close up of the marriage between the old and new leadcrew.





According to machinery's handbook, a press fit for a shaft of this diameter is .0001" interferance, it also states that the longer the length of the fit, the less interferance needed. Since this press fit is 1.75" long, I actually allowed a clearance of .0001" and still had to press it together. I clamped it up and tried to turn it loose with a wrench and was unable to break it loose. I don't think it will be a problem but if it is, it will be easy to drill it for a taper pin.

These mills were made during the war and they cranked them out as fast and cheaply as possible. The bearing for the leadscrew is cast iron as is the thrust surface that the graduated dial runs against. When I took it apart, both the thrust bearing surface and the dial (made from CRS) were badly worn. Both pieces are about 2" in diameter and it looks as if they had a pocket machined in thier faces to reduce the bearing surface area in an effort to reduce friction without the need for a dedicated thrust bearing.

I cleaned up both pieces by facing them in the lathe. I took a piece of .035" brass shim stock and trepanned a washer to fit into the pocket of both pieces and cut the depth of pocket to allow a .001" clearance between the cast iron half and the CRS half and have the brass as the bearing surface. I don't know if this will be an improvement over the original design and if it turns out not to work, all I have to do is remove the brass washer and it will be as it was.

1 The bearing and the graduated dial

2 The dial on the left is CRS and the bearing on the right is CI

3 Both halves cleaned up

4 The brass washer

5 Both halves together with the brass washer and .001" clearance





















I went over that feed screw with a fine tooth comb and could not find a taper pin holding two pieces of shaft together. If I didn't already have that part back together I would dye pen it just to make sure but I think it was one piece.

The bevel gears on the knee elevation screw are 1:1 and the only problem with using an 8 TPI acme screw is that the graduations on the crank dial will no longer be accurate. With 10 TPI one crank revolution is .100" but if that's not an issue it should work just fine.

I have had to put my mill on hold for a few days as my son Trevor dropped the ball on one of his projects and it is tying up the rest of the shop so I am finishing it for him.

My mill has a Master Electric geared head motor and it is single phase and since I want to keep the geared head motor more than I want a 3-PH motor with a VFD, I'm stuck with the stepped pully for variable speeds.

When I am all done with this, I will have a second, almost complete burke #4 for sale as I don't need 2 of them. I hope to get back on this project sometime this comming weekend.


Progress on the mill has slowed to a crawl. Trevor had a project all over the floor that was never going to get done unless I jumped in and helped. 

That open floor space has now been filled with the new project "Thunder Bunny", a 1977 diesel Rabbit that will be my new daily driver, I'll start a thread on that once I get rolling on it.

Back to the mill. I did manage to get the stop trigger assembly for the power feed done and installed on the table.

The power feed gearbox is going to need a little bit of work. I spent a bunch of time just staring at it trying to figure out how it came apart. There was a taper pin that held the worm gear on it's shaft but there was no room in the gear box to drive it out but persistence paid off and I didn't break anything. The carrier for the worm shaft is bronze and the bore on one side of it is wiped out. I will have to bore it over size and press a bushing in it and bore it back to original size as the shaft that goes in it is in good shape.

1. Chewy in the Thunder bunny

2. Chewy falling asleep in the Rabbit

3. Power feed stop trigger assy mounted on table

4. Power feed gear box apart

5. Worm gear carrier wiped out





















I managed to get a bit more done on the powerfeed gearbox the last few days. The drive shaft was worn more than I thought and I wound up making a new one. The bronze carrier that the shaft runs in was really bad. I drilled the .5" bore out to .650" and turned 2 oiled bronze plugs to press in to the carrier. Even though I made the plugs to have a .001" interferance fit I also used some green loctite when I pressed them in. 

Before drilling the .5" hole in the plugs for the shaft, I drilled the oil holes through the sides of them. 

1 The worn shaft

2 The new shaft

3 Drilling out the carrier

4 The plugs pressed in

5 The oiling holes drilled in the side



















To make sure that I drilled the hole in the plugs parallel to the pivot shaft of the carrier, I used a piece of .5" drill rod in a collet and ran it down into the hole for the pivot shaft befor I clamped the carrier in the vise. Once I had it clamped up I used a wiggler to center the spindle on the plug for drilling. 

Since I needed the hole to be .5", I drilled it with a 31/64 drill and finished it with a .5" chucking reamer.

Now all I have to do is wait a day or to for the paint to cure on the gear box and I can re-assemble it and mount in on the mill.

1 Setting up the carrier with drill rod and a collet

2 Using a wiggler to find center

3 Reaming to finished size


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## rmack898 (Feb 26, 2014)

*Re: Burke #4 Restoration by Robert Mac Cormack*

A little more progress.

I have 2 of these mills and am only fixing one of them but I don't want to steal parts off the other mill to put on this mill. The older mill was built in 1941 and has aluminum bearing covers for the main spindle. The mill that I am working on was built in 1944 when I'm sure all aluminum went to the war effort and this mill has baklite or micarta bearing covers.

I started with a 5"X18" piece of aluminum round stock. I trued up a 3" section and cut it off, then turned it to the needed outside diameter. The old cover has 3 screws to hold it in place and it took me a little while to figure out the diameter of the bolt hole circle since the cover had no center. I measured the diameter of the bolt hole, the diameter of the cover, and the distance from the perimeter of the cover to the edge of the bolt hole. With the propper addition and division I came up with the diameter of the bolt hole circle, I divided it in half and had a radius to plug into the bolt hole program on the mill DRO. It took less time to clamp the piece in the vise, program the DRO, and drill the holes than it would have taken to get the rotary table bolted to the mill table.

The old baklite cover had no way to seal the bearing other than a felt washer. I decided to cut a groove in the inside bore of the cover and I will cut a srtip of felt to put in it like a felt O-ring of sorts, I think it will work alittle better than just a felt washer.

1 The 5X18 round stock I started with

2 The cut off piece turned to diameter

3 The DRO bolt hole feature

4 Drilled the bolt holes

5 Cut the groove for the felt O ring
























Now that I got the cover for the front bearing done, I have to make one for the rear bearing but it is a different size so I have to start from scratch. Maybe I'll start on it tomorrow.

Some more pics of the front cover.

1 The old baklite cover

2 The new cover finished

3 The new cover installed on the mill

4 A different view





















Tonight was a repeat of yesterday. This time I started with a piece of 4" round stock. The process was the same and I only have to cut the groove in the rear bearing cover but in order to chuck it up I have to change the jaws in the chuck and I'm just out of steam for tonight.

I'm going to look at a new addition for the shop tomorrow after work and if I get home early enough I'll finish the rear bearing cap then.

1 tonight's staring point

2 Almost complete

3 The aftermath

















Well I did finish up the rear bearing cap. Now that both caps were done it was time to install the spindle. I had been delaying the spindle because I knew it was not going to be simple. If you remember, this mill came with the original gear reduction motor but someone had changed it from a belt drive to a silent chain drive. I wanted to go with the original 3-step pully belt drive and the spindle pulley was the only part that I was going to rob off the other mill to put on this one.

I had to move the other mill out from where it lived between the lathe and the BP. No problem with a pallet jack and the pallet mount I made for the base of the mill. I put the 2 mills next to each other and then had to jack and block both mills in order to switch the pallet base I made from on mill to the other. These 2 mills were made 3 years apart and the bolt patern on the base casting was 1/2" different so that was another thing I had to deal with ( I knew this was going to be a pain in the ass). Then I has to make a wood base for the other mill so I wouldn't be stuck with it sitting in the middle of the shop floor. All of the obove took the better part of Saturday. 

I start to remove the spindle from the other mill only to discover that it had been broken at some point and someone did a rapppy job of brazing it back together, if I use it as is, it will eat a belt in a heart beat. I had already started making a pulley at work to match this one to go on the motor, but turning a 5" 3-step out of bar stock is alot of turning and I don't care for the thought of having to do it twice. If I try to heat the broken pulley to remove the botched repair and then re-braze it, I might not be able to do a better job after I grind out all of the old repair.

So I'm in a holding patern until I decide what to do. I don't want to go back to the silent chain drive so I'll continue to work on the motor pulley that I started at work tomorrow and see how long it actually takes to make the motor pulley.

1 The rear cover finished

2 The silent chian drive

3 The original gear reduction motor

4 The pallet base



























This is the pully that I have to either repair of re-make. You can see the previous bad repair.










That picture really doesn't do the pulley much justice, it's mangled up worse than it looks. I don't know what it's made of but I'm assuming that its CI by the way it broke and that it was braze repaired.

I'll take the pulley out of the mill and see what I can do with a torch tomorrow.

We got a brand new lathe at work, it's a Kent USA 1340 and I'm using it to make the motor end pulley (I'll do a full review of the lathe when I'm done with this project). It's a 3-step pulley at 5", 4", and 3". I started with a solid piece of 5.75" round stock and I have the steps turned and now I have to cut the grooves for the belt. I need to consult machinery's handbook first as I think the angles change depending on the diameter of the pully.

The brown truck dropped a box off from mama griz, I got 2 of those $23 remote reading DRO's. I'll be putting them on the Y and Z axis as soon as I figure out what I'm gong to do for brackets and whether or not I can cut the scales.


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## rmack898 (Feb 26, 2014)

*Re: Burke #4 Restoration by Robert Mac Cormack*

I don't have the cat # for the DRO but there is a link to it in one of Cutter's Mildred threads that I can't seem to find again.


I wound up grinding all of the old brazed repair out of the pulley. We discussed the options at work and decided to TIG it up. Pre heated the pulley and laid down several passes to build it up and wrapped it up for a slow (4 hour) cool, it didn't crack. 


I chucked it up in the lathe to turn it down but the repair is too hard for any of the tooling I have. I will be dressing a stone and rigging up a way to put the pulley in the spindex on the surface grinder. If that fails, I guess I will be making a second pulley.









For the 2 nights that I had the upiddy girl running I managed to almost finish the motor pulley. When I roughed out the blank for this, I turned a 1-1/4" section on one end to chuck it up with and center drilled the other end for a live center.

I found the center of each sheave and plunged the minor diameter of each sheave with a parting tool and then took a pass on each side of the center plunge to get me close to the finished width. Then I ground a HSS parting tool to the needed finished width and cut the grooves to the finished depth.

I then set the compound over 17* and cut half of the 34* angle for the belt on all 3 sheaves. Then I shifted over 17* on the other side of center and cut the other side of the pulley.

I ground a radius tool to finish off the edges of the pulley and when I had it all set up, the upiddy girl quit on me again. Tomorrow the defective transformer comes out and a replacement gets ordered.

1 The center plunge cuts
2 The center groove after 3 passes
3 Cutting the center grooves to finished width
4 One side of the sheaves cut
5 Both sides cut























I grabbed whatever was laying on the bench and have no idea what I grabbed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by *allthumbz* 


_I was wondering what metal you used for it- aluminum?_

It's steel, I think it is 1041.

Since I got my issues with the girl sorted out, I wanted to get this pulley for the motor done and move on.

I cut the radius on the outside of the sheaves. Since I had it chucked up on the boss that I turned on the blank, I was able to do all operations in one set up. I removed the live center and step drilled the pulley 1/2", 5/8", and 15/16". Then I bored it to 1"

I then took it out of chuck and flipped it 180* and parted the boss off the back side of the pulley and gave it one last face cut to make it look nice.

1 Drilling the pulley
2 Boring it to 1"
3 The boss that I had it chucked on
4 Parting off the boss


















Next up was putting a 1/4" keyway in it. I used a DuMont broach but since the pulley almost 4" tall, the broach set up wouldn't fit in the arbor press so I had to do it in the hydraulic press. I don't like using a hydraulic press to broach as you get no feedback like you would in an arbor press and can easily put too much force on it and break the broach. I used plenty of the old, heavy sulfur type cutting oil on the broach (an old timer told me to always use it when broaching) and had no problems.

The last thing I need to do was drill and tap the pulley for a set screw. I carefully measured it out to drill the center sheave dead center on the keyway and drilled it with a #7 drill for a 1/4-20 screw. Since I had it in the mill all centered up I figured I might as well tap it in the mill. I used a brand new Greenfield tap soaked with Tap Magic and tapped it at 60 RPM. Half way through I heard that awful sound and I knew I was done for the night. I should have known better, the last operation to finish this stupid pulley and I screwed it up

Tomorrows another day.

1 The 1/4" broach
2 Broaching in the hyd press
3 The keyway cut
4 The *#%&ing broken tap

















Well it only took 4 years and 4 months but I'm calling this one done. I am the absolute King of Procrastinators. 

I seemed to have lost steam several times during this project and in the end I did not get everything done that I had set out to do (like putting the little DRO's on the mill), but it's done and makes chips.

I don't have much tooling for this mill (yet) but I have a few side milling cutters to try it out on some dumpster aluminum parts. I have 4 spindle speeds and 5 power feed speeds and everything works will including the power feed stops.

I need to find a good vise for this mill and all I had laying around was a Palmgren drill press vise so that will do until I find something better.

I have way too many projects going and want to start more but I figured I need to finish something before starting any more. I recently had a job that this mill would have been perfect for but I had to get the job out quick, it may be a repeat job so I thought I better finish the mill before I get the same job back again.


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## mattthemuppet2 (Feb 26, 2014)

wow, that was an epic read, thanks! Looks absolutely stunning and probably better than new


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## RandyM (Feb 27, 2014)

WHAT A FANTASTIC post! This was all worth logging on to the site this morning. Ohh, and you're doing a GREAT job on the machines. I just love these kind of threads.  :happyhappy: 


Thank you!

:goodjob:


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## David (Feb 27, 2014)

Excellent restoration!  Thanks so much for posting.

David


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## rmack898 (Mar 1, 2014)

Thanks for the kind words. That mill took way too long to get finished, it was almost 4 years start to finish but actual time spent was about 3-4 weeks.
If anyone ever needs to tear into one of these mills and has questions, I hope my pictures can answer them because my memory is not the greatest but I'll try to help the best I can.

I'm working on  restoring a lathe right now and have a SB shaper and bigger horizontal mill to do after that. Way too many projects and not enough time.


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## itsme_Bernie (Mar 1, 2014)

Man, this is great.  I learned so much from your pics and descriptions!
PLUS, beautiful job on the mill!  Man that looks pretty!  ...  And a fun machine to work on too


Bernie


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## woodtickgreg (Mar 16, 2014)

Don't know how I missed this, but wow, what a great build. I didn't have to do that to mine. The po fixed mine all up before I got it, just cleaned and oiled her up and put it to use. But yours sure looks great!


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## Gary Ayres (Jul 3, 2014)

Wonderful!


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## Arkie (Jan 26, 2016)

rmack898 said:


> *Re: Burke #4 Restoration by Robert Mac Cormack*
> 
> I don't have the cat # for the DRO but there is a link to it in one of Cutter's Mildred threads that I can't seem to find again.
> 
> ...


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