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I’ve been so busy finishing up project work that I simply didn’t have the time to journey up to New Hampshire to get the sliding table and associated components back from the machinist Rees. They took it upon themselves to deliver it last week, which I consider fantastic service.
After my last trip to site to install, I came back to the shop and decided the first order of business, after I had put stuff away, would be to put the sliding table back on the saw. I figured this might take half a day. Hah!
I laid out the various fasteners that would be going back in place:
The sliding table’s support beam, which is made so it can be slid out and away from the saw blade, is locked in place by a pair of handles. On my saw, one of the factory handles was missing and a handle from a Robinson machine had been fitted instead. It worked fine, but the mismatched nature of it bugged me a little, so I took the opportunity, which working on this phase of the saw rebuild, to rectify the situation.
First off, I looked to see what might be available in terms of a replacement handle. That was nothing available from suppliers of Wadkin parts, which was but little surprise. In the aftermarket realm, I found via a UK distributor only one style of locking handle which would fit – and I didn’t care for the style.
The complicating factor in what otherwise would be a simple matter of replacing the handles is that most of the fasteners on this saw are in British Standard Whitworth (BSW), not UNC. In many sizes, the number of threads per inch between BSW and UNC is the same, and a UNC fastener can often be simply screwed into a hole threaded for BSW thread, especially if the hole is slightly worn. However when you get to the 1/2″ bolt size, the TPI is different, Whitworth having 12 TPI and UNC having 13.
If the handles were UNC it would be a simple affair, but they were not. However, the handles attached to the casting by way of double-ended threaded studs, and I found a threaded stud manufacturer in Britain who would custom-make me some threaded studs which had BSW threads on one end, and UNC on the other. Cost me about $40 for four of them, plus shipping.
Here are the new studs, with an original on the far right:
The studs threaded right into the BSW threaded holes on the casting:
Then, with a pair of UNC 1/2″x13 nuts locked on, I could seat the studs into place:
These bearing surfaces had been given 4 scraping passes by Rees.
Done:
Note the large pit in the casting right on a bearing surface. More on that below.
Here’s a picture showing, from top to bottom, the Wadkin handle, below that the Robinson handle, and below, their replacements, nice cast zinc Kipp ‘classic’ handles:
While some have said on a particular forum that late model Wadkin machines had very fine casting quality. I would beg to differ. While pits and voids are not all that unusual in sand castings, it is unfortunate to find such craters as these right on a cast bearing surface:
Prior to fitting the sliding table, I decided to level up my main table. A little overkill perhaps, to use the Starrett Master Precision level for such a task, but I tend to prefer to reduce uncertainties where I can:
Once the machine frame and thereby the main table was leveled, I could take a look at how the angle brackets sit, relative to that. Note that the set screws which are used to adjust the angle brackets have never been touched since I removed the brackets, and the position they gave the angle brackets is that which was also factory pinned:
The main table, by the way, is simply a large casting resting directly upon the cast frames four mounting points – it is not shimmed or anything like that so the relationship between the main table and the frame should be much the same as it was when the machine left the factory, save for any movement which might have unfolded in the machine base casting over time. I was somewhat surprised to find it was not especially well aligned to the main table.
The other angle bracket is similarly out of plane with the main table:
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