Quote Originally Posted by youngnstudly View Post
Your repaired areas turned out very nice, especially considering that you started with a piece of junk!

You should really use a self etching primer on that bare metal (you can get it at your local auto parts store in spray cans for around $5 or $6). Probably not what you want to hear, but it does a nice job of getting the paint to adhere to bare metal, and can usually be scuffed off the next day as it is fast drying. Plus it hides the imperfections nicely and creates less transparency when applying the top coat of paint.

My feeling exactly! I rebuilt a 1950's Atlas lathe this year for the same reason, and I'm getting ready to repair/rebuild a few other vintage tools that are missing parts or are damaged! It's bad enough that tools are so expensive to begin with, but even the quality on tools today from high-end manufactures isn't what it was 30 or 40 years ago! I can hardly afford to buy stuff once, let alone 2 or 3 times over!

I use the Milwaukee brand blades for my Milwaukee portable bandsaw, but I might look for the Lennox ones next time. I always had good luck with them in my portable (read:HAND) hacksaw-LOL. The local hardware store only carries one brand of blades for portable (power) saws, so I'm limited on options locally.
Don't remember what blades I bought, but that's what started this. I borrowed his other saw a year or so ago, bought a three pack of blades, gave him one as a thank you, left the one I used on the saw and hung one on my wall in case I needed to borrow it again (this guy is hell on tools, no counting on a usable blade). He knew I had one and borrowed it, then gave me that blade and the saw back, as well as a used other blade (will save for the metal, blade is shot). I picked them up at Lowes and they sure do cut nice, was about $20 for 3 if I recall.

As far as the paint, I'm not sold on the cheapie self etching primers, if I went PPG or something, yeah, but I'd rather follow my process. Degrease, rinse, etch, rinse, paint. The can must have been a bad can, or wouldn't mix right, but it ran on wood, I chucked it. The other paint I used turned out fine. The goal of this is to not spend anything, thus the two pieces of filler instead of just buying a 1"x1/8"...

Rebuilding the banjo on my Atlas/Craftsman (though it's being replaced with hopefully a Monarch this summer) rebuilding a 40's Van Norman mill, etc. Those are easy to see the value. I hadn't really thought about refurbing smaller tools, but this one really turned my thoughts around. I am pretty happy with the new Milwaukee 14" abrasive saw I bought last year, even though it's Taiwanese.