Saturday Night Chop & Weld Shop

This week we will do a re-build on a early 1950's DoAll vertical saw.

A little background of how I learned to build objects. I was 14 when I started using power tools because I wanted to be in autoracing. I was introduced to auto racing at the age of 9 in 1963. By the time I got out of high school in 1972, racecars were all I wanted to do. I met a driver my age that had a race car & a few weeks later it got wrecked & the car was junk. So a group of us built a new one. This was my start at learning how to start & finish a project. I went on to build many racecars trailers & support equipment.

Steve My boss @ the exhaust speciality shop found the first DoAll he has in 1993. He rebuilt it & it's still in use at the plant. Steve is the type of guy that wants everything the same.

Follow me over the jump to see what one looks like.

This is what one looks like after many abusive years of use. The work table is removed.

So over the years Steve keeps a look out for these saws. By 1999 he had 3 in use. I arrived on the scene in 6/2003 & Steve was deciding what to do to expand his business. He needed more space. So in 2/2004 he bought a building. I started helping get that building ready to move in. I worked for him a little here & there till June of 2004. Then I was there 55-60 hours a week. The new shop was ready 9/21/2004.

In this picture you can see a wheel the blade runs on

I ended up being put on the payroll to continue getting the shop up to speed. One of the first things I did was strip another of these saws down.
Steve had 3 in very rough shape. I could put all but 3 pieces of the saw in the bead blaster. The main frame, one side cover that the motor & oil tank are under & the work table. The main frame & side cover I use a sand paper dics & ground the layers of paint off. The work table I used paint remover.

(Here's the first saw waiting to be painted. It stood there 6 months waiting for Neil to have time to do his machine work to get the motor & shafts & mounting brackets made up.)

Steve had found a control panel that he could use to control the blade speed. These DoAll saws came with a 3 speed transmission. It also had a hydralic ram that could change the speed.

This is picture #4, here is of one of the original 3 Steve re-built.

Steve has a full time machinist working for him also. Neil machined a new way to hold the bottom wheel that the blade rides on. Neil used a hub they found that fits a trailer for the new shaft to ride in. I don't have pictures of this. This assembly adjust the wheel to get it squared up & keep the blade from coming off the wheel. It turned out excellent like all Neil's work does. Neil machines all the tooling needed for equipment around the shop. The first time they did this it was coupled directly to the motor. The problem with it that way was blade speed. So they ended up mounting the motor to the frame of the saw & using tooth drive belt & pulleys. Like used for timing belts on engines. With this set up they could slow the blade speed down so they could cut the stainless tubing.

In picture #4 you can see on the left center a box that has some arms on it. This is a blade welder. In the day these saws were made you couldn't buy blades to size like you can today. So in the new rebuild I did we mounted the electric control in place of this. Also in this picture you can see the shifter. It's the red circle with a black nob. Above that is on off switches. We replaced that panel with the new switches to control the machine.

You can see here that the frame is painted notice there are no hydralic lines. This is the first of the 5 rebuilds that the lines were removed. I cleaned all the lines with scotch brite before I put them back in. To remove this I had to take off the nobs on all the hydralic valves. What a project that was.

Here you can see that I'm starting to put the lines back in.

Here you can see the other side of the last picture.

Then here's a picture of me cutting up a piece too my trailer.
I did 2 of these saws so the pictures above are the second machine I rebuilt. This one I'm using is the first one I did.

We changed the control switches so the machines had 3 speeds selected with a control. I sorta wished I had pictures of the wheels the blades run on. I had them painted a purple color. On Steve's Business cards there's a purple logo. So I added a little color to the machine. The doors are closed so you can't see them.

I was trying to Figure out how to power up the machine. I went to my electrical supply guy & explained what I was doing. The main motor is 480 volts. The hydralic pump motor & light is 120 volts. So They sold me a contact that I could swith on with 120 volts that would power up the 480 volt motor.
Now I wanted only one cord hanging down to the machine. So I order a 6 conductor #12 cord to power the saw. You can see that cord in this picture. I sure wished I had more pictures of how it went together.
I welded up a lot of the old holes from other things people did to these machines over the years. Any of the bolts that were not tap into the frame & had nuts that needed 2 wrenches,I changed that. I welded a nut to the frame or cover. All the bolts that hold covers on have been replace with button head screws, these use Allen wreches for those that don't know what those are.

We also moved the hydralic ram that move the Work table. I don't have pictures of it !! Dammit !! The original ram stuck off the table 10 inches. In the last picture it would be sticking out in that walk way. If you look closely you can see a chair. A man sits in that chair & welds most of the day. It just made room to walk by that worker. It also made room to put saw 5 against the wall where it was to go.
A rough guess of what it cost to rebuild a saw would be over 6k.

I hope I didn't loose too many of you with this weeks diary.

Next week I'll do another project for the exhaust shop.
It will be an over head crane.