Last week my lathe wouldn't fire up anymore, it just groaned and I
couldn't jump start it by spinning the sanding disk I had mounted on
it. I've been using it mainly for sanding these days.
I remembered from the instruction book that you need to blow the motor
clean every now and then so I borrowed my neighbour's compressor and
gave a a few good blasts. Nothing doing, durn...
It's only a Canadian Tire jobbie, the one with the ugly yellow
tailstock tightener (brain's taken a nap, forgot the proper lingo).
Phoned around as they often have these lathes on sale this time of
year. Turned out this model is discontinued but I managed to find one
small town store that still had one left. Waddaya know, on clearance
for $99 - cool, probably cheaper than a replacement motor. "I'll be
right there, make sure you put my name on it." Hopped in the car and
went to pick it up.
Before removing the old headstock I figured I'd give it one more try
by jumpstarting it. Waddaya know, it fired up )) Borrowed the
neighbour's compressor again and by this time the bench was clean so I
could see all kind of openings, that I hadn't seen before, where I
could blast the air through. Ran the motor and started blasting. Five
minutes, and one huge cloud of dust later, I had me a lathe that
started up properly again. Meaning of course too, that now I have a
spare lathe (nope, not for sale) with 2 spare face plates.
The moral of the story for this model, and probably others: it pays to
do what the instruction book says - who knew...
By the way, the product number for this 5 speed 37" spindle lathe is
55-4507 and there's still the odd store (as of today, Dec. 13) that
has one left in stock. For 99 bucks you can't beat the price ))
Cheers and a Merry Christmas to all,
Bart.
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**botox treatments: taxidermy on the living**

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