I've begun the resurrection of my Gorton 8.5D mill.

[Senna]

With the arrival of above zero weather I've begun disassembling my Gorton 8.5D mill. Since I have no shop to work on the parts I've been bringing the parts into my basement for evaluation, cleaning, stripping, and painting.
This is the first time I've torn down the 8.5 and everything about is high quality and well engineered but thankfully much less massive than the corresponding parts on my Gorton 9J mill. This allows me to hand carry individual parts to my basement. I should be able to get everything but the motor, the ram, the knee and the main body into the house. These are just too heavy to carry.

Anyway, here are some pictures of the mill and the parts I have off so far.

 

[chuckorlando]

Man thats a dang shame right there. At least you can clean it up verse scrapping it. Good luck and we look forward to watching

 

[toolman]

Best of luck on the refurb!

 

[drs23]

I'm all eyes and ears on this project. I know it's in very capable hands.

 

[Senna]

Thanks guys.

Should this be moved to the Machine Restoration forum instead of the Gorton forum?

If so how would that be done?

 

[stonehands]

Man what a terrible piece of bad luck! Your pictures made me check the charge on my fire extinguisher and put several propane bottles out in the storage shed. I hope this is not your second restoration of the Gorton. Looks like the fire stayed high, I saw the oxygen bottle on the floor that was still in one piece. Good luck with the project and the long list of other projects I'm sure you are facing. Just wondering if the building can be salvaged? I took the top off of one in Wyoming and we were able to use everything from the plate up. We re-wired and re-insulated and this time used steel siding inside for sheathing and the ceiling. Owner wanted to keep a small fire from becoming a big one next time.(he's a welder) Best of luck--David

 

[Senna]

Thanks David.

The building is a total loss and I'll be building a nice new 30x50ish building as soon as the weather allows.

The heat did stay high and all of the machine tools were on the far side away from the majority of the fire. On some of the machines even plastic labels stayed intact, The insurance adjuster didn't want to pay for an expert evaluation of the machines so he just totaled them all out. I bought my two Gorton mills and my B&S 13 back from them for next to nothing and will restore all three.
The machines look really bad but it's mostly just soot and melted blueboard foam on them. All motors and spindles still turn smoothly and all internal wiring is still perfectly fine. I likely could've saved all of my machinery but the prospect of restoring all of them was just too much for me to contemplate so I limited my buyback to just these three machines.
When my insurance settlement arrives I'll buy a nice surface grinder and probably a nice horizontal mill.
All of my tooling and fixtures suffered the same smoke and soot damage but I've already cleaned up much of these and will buy them back from the ins co too.

I did learn something that I should've known about the dry chemical fire extinguishers though. After these have been sitting for a while the chemicals clump up and the extinguisher won't work. A sharp bang on the floor will often loosen these chemicals and the extinguishers will then work. If I'd have known this I'd have been able to put the fire out easily with little to no damage to the structure or the contents.
The 20 or so minutes it took for the FD to get here seemed like an eternity and what was just a very small fire was raging through the roof by the time they arrived.

 

[xalky]

I think you're thread is fine in the Gorton section. It'll give Gorton re-builders an easy place to find your thread when they decide to take their own machines apart.

That's some good info about the fire extinguishers. A have 3 older fire extinguishers here that are fully charged, but never gave a thought to the fact that the dry chemical might be caked up in the bottom. hew: I'll rap them all on the floor a couple of times today....just in case.)

Marcel

 

[Senna]

I think you're thread is fine in the Gorton section. It'll give Gorton re-builders an easy place to find your thread when they decide to take their own machines apart.

That's some good info about the fire extinguishers. A have 3 older fire extinguishers here that are fully charged, but never gave a thought to the fact that the dry chemical might be caked up in the bottom. hew: I'll rap them all on the floor a couple of times today....just in case.)

Marcel

I think that's a very good idea Marcel.

The ones in my new shop will be banged regularly!

 

[itsme_Bernie]

Such good advice Ken, thanks.

Reading loud and clear.



Bernie