I’m very pleased with the circular saw bench I managed to save from a journey to the dump, but I spoke a little bit too soon. Having figured out how to cut a useable (if not pretty) bowl blank on it the saw suddenly started to screetch loadly and run rough. Typical. I don’t really have the room for it anyway and the last thing I need is another heap of scrap iron in the shed! So it’s either fix it or it continues an interrupted journey to the dump.
With help from Richard but no manual we waded into the saw. I now know an awful lot more than I need to about it. It turns out to be an Elektra Beckum HS315 saw bench (now known I think as Metabo). In typical German fashion it’s simple, overengineered and painted that green colour. No not that Landrover green colour, but that German machinery green colour that just reeks of the right tool for the job.
Either the motor will be made to be dismantled or it will be throw it away time. Can you guess which one it was? Despite my misgivings the motor came apart really easily and the problem became clear.
Sitting in it’s previous shed the roof had leaked onto the table and then dripped down onto the spindle and the front motor bearing was Kaput – I think thats the correct technical term for this saw? The bearing was labelled and a couple of minutes on the internet secured me a replacement in the first class post for only £2.50 (a few dollars) much to my amazement. Thankyou the eponymously named www.budgetbearings.co.uk you do what it says on the tin!
Luckily Richard has a hydraulic press which made extraction and replacement of the bearings an almost pleasant job and replaced a lot of swearwords and grazed knuckles.
None of those annoying brushes on this motor. The armature is a serious piece of engineering, I think it must have been designed for use on a railway engine or maybe its a spare from a Tiger tank! I can’t help thinking that if this saw bench had been designed and manufactured in England it would have been a different story. It would be mainly plastic, too complicated, impossible to take apart with all the bolts in hard to reach places and even worse to reassemble, and of course none of the spare parts would still be available (Landrovers being the exception that prove the rule) as it would have been replaced by one thats even more complicated and sealed for life.
Taking it apart gave me the opportunity to clean and grease it all up so now the adjustments are all working as well. So there is no such thing as a free saw, but at a total cost so far of under a fiver (excluding mine and Richard’s time of course ). I’m more than happy with the beast and there is an immense sense of satisfaction in returning a well made tool to service as its manufacturer intended, rather than throwing it away and more than a hint of rebellion against a society which regards it as desirable to waste so much. Not sure I’m upto darning my socks yet though – we’ll see!
As someone who is currently exiled in Germany, I back your absolutely spot on analysis – especially about the green paint.
Hopefully you have many years happy use now ahead of you, whilst largely retaining most of your fingers.
yeah! Hang on to those fingers! In the absence of any guard, make sure to use a push stick.
That motor does indeed look a beast, like to see a rechargeable battery come anywhere near that one. I notice amongst your collection of saws hanging forlornly on the wall, a blue plastic-handled one, just like the one I’m about to make into cabinet scrapers.
I have a $20 table saw, works fine after I put on some angle brackets to replace the broken joints to fix the table-top to the cabinet again. A new $30 blade on it made it even better, and I made a sliding top for it (a bit of melamine-coated chipboard and two strips of hardwood). That really makes it a pleasure to use, much straighter cuts and safer.
By the way, I really would have expected you to use your hydraulic cider press to deal with the bearings.
A good job well done. There’s video on youtube somewhere of a jig for cutting bowl blanks on a table saw. It involves a pin on which the blank is rotated and you repeatedly cut the corners off. I can’t remember where it is, but a search may reveal it.
So when are you converting it to treadle power? Or maybe the PTO of the tractor would be better 🙂