Zeeko Salvage

Salvaging an old Delta Rockwell Drill Press

I went to the metal scrap yard last month looking for some steel to use in a project.

I really should never go there unless I take a chaperone. Didn't find the steel that I was looking for, but bought a broken drill press and a bandsaw too.

This is a Rockwell Model 20-421 20" drill press. Made in about 1959. This is about the biggest common drill press size, a common factory tool, with a large 'production table' on it. There are some great online resources for finding out about old tools. Lots of other people share a passion for fixing up old beautifully-made tools, and I am always delighted how eager people are to share what they know.

I didn't have a truck with me, so I went home and looked it up, though I already knew that I wanted it. I knew that as long as the column was straight and the main head casting was solid, that everything else could be restored. Bought it for 20 cents a pound.

It came with a brand new USA-made Baldor 1.5hp electric motor. Problem was, the whole machine had tipped over (probably right after they moved it to put on this new $400 motor), and the shaft on the motor had snapped right outside of the casing.

They forklifted it into my truck and I borrowed a chain hoist to unload it - it weighs about 500 lbs.

Unlike our older (1937) Delta drill press, this one has a fiberglass belt guard, which - though cracked - I was able repair with some epoxy.

The biggest problem right off of the bat was that the motor mount assembly was badly damaged. Luckily the broken parts were on the pallet with everything else.

I used a torch to braze the broken ears back on.

Also had to braze a few of these cracks.

Not pretty, but... Notice the broken tab on the left - this part was missing the broken-off piece.

Brazed on a washer and ground out a notch.

Here is the repaired assembly, ready for the motor.

I was able to pull the motor apart and weld a 7/8" bolt onto the broken shaft to extend it back to its original length. I had an ancient machinist in town turn the shaft down to 3/4" on his lathe, and this ensured that the new shaft would be centered with the rest of the motor. He also keyed the shaft for me so it would take a standard pulley.

I had to replace both the motor and quill pulley - found both on Ebay - and replaced a couple of the bearings in the quill. One is impossible to find, so I was able to repack it and keep using it.

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Here it is all back together.

It was missing the levers that feed the quill downward. I made a new assembly by drilling a standard pulley, brazing on 3/8" concrete anchor bolts with the tips of some 3/8" lag screws welded onto them, and threading on knobs carved from a yard sale baseball bat.

I rough cut the knobs with a hatchet, and then finished them with sandpaper using my other drill press as a lathe.

I had been using a newer/lighter drill press from Craigslist in our warehouse, and its last deed was to drill the holes in the pulley that makes up this new mechanism, then back onto Craigslist/Facebook, where an old friend snapped it up in about 10 minutes. Call it 'upcycling'.

Found this vise at a yard sale this weekend for $10, and made a mount for it to finish off the job.

With a little oil and any luck at all, this tool will run well for another 50 years.

Filed under // the shop toolmaking

Posted May 2, 2012

Wofchuck's Cattail Cojongo Case

Our friend Mike Wofchuck is a professional percussionist. He brought us a Cojongo (wooden box drum) and asked us to make a traveling case for it. This bag is made from a whole bunch of different materials.

Lid in progress - brown hemp from German Army duffel bag, yellow fire hose, scrap leather, grommets in lid/handle are from duffel bag.

Upholstery scrap, fire hose, old cordura from camo duck hunting bag.

Hemp base, army surplus brass D-ring padded with scrap leather to keep lid clips from gouging drum. Fire hose cattails, and Japanese crane motif inkjet printed on raw canvas.

Cattails - Old waxed cotton tarp, fire hose, scrap leather, and ripstop poly/cotton from old cargo pants/uniform at my last job.

Binding the lid with army surplus webbing.

Finished product - front view.

Lid and side - olive strip on the right made from waxed cotton tarps that were the roof of Lauren Kennedy's family cabin for several decades.

Front view.

My aunt runs a business in Kansas City 'Asiatica' that repurposes vintage Japanese textiles. The crane is from a digital photo that I took of one of her old fabrics. We inkjet printed it onto some raw canvas and then steamed it to fix the dye.

Lid clip and cattail detail

Lid detail

Handle is scrap leather wrapped around hemp rope that used to tie the German Army duffel bag shut (thru these same grommets).

Lining is recycled Chico Bags donated by Mr. Andy Keller himself, thanks, Andy!

Satisfied customer

Filed under // fabric fire hose bags leather luggage printing the shop

Posted January 22, 2012

The Estate of Robert Bruce. Auction Fever, and 'The Cyclone'.

We went to an auction yesterday on River Road, out in the almond orchards. I am an auction rookie, I feel the hooks of addiction already. All of that shouting, commotion, competition, posturing. It felt like poker tournament. Today, an auction hangover - we picked up the pieces.

It starts out innocently enough, a sign on Highway 32 on the way home from work, and a Craigslist ad. Then you notice the address - River Road. The Estate of Robert Bruce, (as in 'Bruce Road', and the family that owned the 1600 block of Park Ave, starting in 1860).

10 am, a respite from 4 days of North wind, and it is finally warm in the sun, but the action is inside of a cold metal building full of massive steel machines. A huge welder, ancient hoist, and V8 engines hang overhead from skinny chains. Someone next to me says "I have this same building, glad to know that I can hang 4 or 5 tons from the rafters". As we arrive - 10:00 on the dime - they start moving through the merchandise, quickly. A $1,500 air compressor sells for $65, a 1,000 pound drill press for $35. Lots of the auction-goers are regulars, and some won't run up the price if their buddy or neighbor is bidding.

Only a few familiar faces. 19 years in Chico, and I still don't understand - even as we enjoy the explosion of the 'local food movement' - how come there is so little crossover between us townies and the old school ag. community.

'You might not want to stand under that yellow welder, it weighs about 600 pounds'. My friend Jamie notices the two pairs of Chevy V8 headers and the bumper in the rafters and buys it all for $7.50.

We get there after the preview and it is hard to get in to see what was in each box, so there is an element of lottery to it all. For future reference, 'The Junker' is in dark glasses.

I'm not sure that I should buy anything heavy, but then I spot Dave Richer, and he tells me that he'll have a trailer here to pick things up on Sunday, that he'll help me load.

100 years of hoarding to sell in 4 hours. Wind-thrashed clattery tin outbuildings hide Model T Ford parts, pieces of a windmill (with motor, stand, blades, and a disassembled redwood tank), elegant 30's sedan fenders, and dusty bicycles. Out in the open, piles of rusty bed frames and galvanized barrels with sloshing mystery juices, minimart coke dispensers, orchard sprayers, piles of old tires, and conveyors sink under heavy orchard dust and moss. Dave buys a big log-sized stack of rough-cut walnut slabs and rat shit. The body of an old International Scout rots into a heap of grapevines. Someone buys it for $12.50. The auctioneer's kids are keeping track of each sale, they are busy.

Most of the stuff in the machine shop is custom - hacked together, and built with an awkward balance of extreme thrift, indestructability, and minimalism. This guy was a hell of a designer, and the things that I buy are lighter than I was afraid they might be. Mr. Bruce knew how to pick the right size materials for each job. I buy a gas welding cutting stand made from two truck brake drums for $12. The top drum still turns on bearings, so you can spin the piece that you are cutting with one hand.

I find a 4' welding table with 1/2" thick top. After the sale has moved on to another building, I discover that It has a tractor seat mounted on one of the legs that pivots out from underneath so you can sit and weld at the corner. Also couple of old bench grinders attached to a handmade stand of angle iron mounted on a 90 pound pump flange, a toolbox (hiding bonus prize of 10 blacksmiths tongs from Old Chico and a mess of lathe tooling and end mills), and a handmade steel-rolling machine (traded to Dave today for a handmade propane blacksmiths forge).

But by far the goofiest Auction Fever purchase is the Cyclone.

The Junker and his daughter - who have the scrapyard on 20th Street - buy everything heavy. Nobody else wants to try to move the 2,000 pound milling machines or piles of rusty metal. One of the lots of rusty metal and bedframes includes this sheetmetal 'Cyclone' - a dust collector from a nut dryer - The Junker buys it all 'same dollar' (one bid for all the items) for $15.

After a few hours, I poop out. Before Erika goes home to rest, she tells me that she wants to get a box full of vintage fabric, but I am burning out, and need something more than a hotdog to keep going. She returns just in time to bid on the items herself. We grab the few lighter purchases and peel out.

Erika at 40 weeks pregnant, is bidding on a box of Indonesian sarongs from Mr. and Mrs. Robert Bruce's 1950s trip to Asia (according to memorabilia in the box).

Today we returned to survey the damage.

Dave had thought about buying the Cyclone yesterday to make a hood over the forge in his blacksmiths shop, but he didn't want all of the junk metal that came with it.

I thought about it last night and realized that I could use the super funky snorkel bottom to make a Dr. Seuss inspired exhaust hood over my welding table.

When we went to pick up our other items this morning, Dave asked The Junker about it, and he said 'Fifty Bucks'.

Is that a Cyclone you are towing?

"That's a lot of sheetmetal for not much money", says Dave.

Dave's daughter thought that this was pretty cool. She wanted her dad to cut a door in it for her.

My half. Stand by.

Filed under // inbox salvage adventure the shop toolmaking

Posted December 4, 2011

The Ishi Nation - map on canvas

I (zeke) studied cartography (mapmaking) at Chico State in the '90s, and pulled together a map show in Chico in 2008. Here is a piece from that show called 'The Ishi Nation' - that I just reprinted on raw canvas.

The original was 20x42 and drawn by hand over a digital shaded relief basemap. The area is from Lassen Peak to Chico, and the darker lines show the watershed boundaries. Shout out to Seamonster from the surreal shop-beauties in the background.

This piece is for sale. Let us know if you are interested in a custom printed map!

The Ishi Nation 26"x57" - Chico is in the bottom left, Deer Creek is in the center.

Detail.

Filed under // cartography maps printing the shop

Posted May 14, 2011

Making tools for toolmaking, a leatherworking press.

We are always on the lookout for old tools that we can repair or repurpose. We use our punch presses a lot, and I have been thinking that custom crafting tools like presses could be a good niche for us.

I found these 3 presses on a local auction last week. Two of them are for embossing paper, but I thought that the one on the right had potential to become a leather punching/rivet setting machine if I could make a new shaft to replace the paper punch that was in there.

Here is the workhorse of our shop - a 1937 Delta 17" drill press. I found it laying in pieces at the salvage yard at the 'Last Chance Mercantile' in Monterey County and got it for $20. It needed a chuck, motor, handles, and repair on the cast iron belt-guard, but I love the art deco 'helmet', and have been carting it around thru 3 moves. There are a lot of great old tool resources online, especially vintagemachinery.org (formerly OldWoodWorkingMachines.com). They have manuals for thousands of old tools, and some original parts are still available for these.

I measured up the existing shaft in the press and it was a hair under 7/16", so I got a 7/16" bolt at the Restore, cut it to length, chucked it up in the drill press, and used a mill bastard file to turn it down to the correct diameter. I tried to punch and center-drill it with the drill press, but it is really hard to center punch a starting point that is dead on, and the first try was off center and crooked. I want a metal lathe...

Well, no metal lathe is in the foreseeable future, but Erika's dad was a mechanical engineer, and we have some of his tools around. The small drill chuck on the bottom was in his old toolbox, so I bolted it to a piece of angle iron that I can clamp into the drill press vice. I chucked up the 7/16" bolt piece in the drill press, and put a sharp, broken bit in the bottomchuck. By moving the spinning shaft across the broken bit, I was able to scribe a divot in the center of the shaft. Then I chucked up my bit in the bottom, and spun the shaft in the drill press down onto it to drill it. It worked! Dead-center/straight hole.

I want to be able to use replaceable hole punch tubes in this press, so I tapped the shaft to the same thread that the punch tubes have (5/16" fine thread).

Here is the completed punch shaft with punch-tube in place - the hole on the side is for punched bits of leather to come out.

Here is the finished shaft assembly. There is a flat platform on the old press shaft that the handle of the press pushes down onto, and it sits on top of the spring that pushes the whole assembly back up after you pull it down. I folded a thin piece of flat stock over to get the thickness that I was after, and then brazed the tab onto the shaft.

Here is the finished product. The bottom anvil is another piece of 7/16" bolt. The press is pretty small - our main press (behind it) has a lot more leverage, but this one punches 2 layers of thick leather belt easily, and it will work great for punching and setting rivets.

Because the punch shaft is threaded, you can replace the punch tube with a normal bolt, and use it to set rivets.

Keep your eyes open for these old presses, and let us know if you see them around.

Future projects - got a lot in the same auction simply titled 'Heavy Stuff' = including 2 3' long wrenches, and these bad-ass old cast iron lockplate covers. Total lot weight was #130. Look for these in projects to come.

Filed under // inbox leather the shop toolmaking

Posted May 13, 2011

Large Format Printer + Canvas + Dragonboy = New Series

We have been wanting to do a collaboration with our friend Dragonboy56 for a long time, and finally have a chance. We are printing his art onto canvas and then turning the printed fabric into bags.

We acquired a large format printer when my last employer got out of the mapping business. In the past it has been used to print maps and posters on paper, but it is a pretty flexible machine, and we got it because it uses dyes instead of pigmented inks. We have been trying different media in it, with the goal of being able to print our own fabric. After some trial and error, we are getting there. We are now able to print onto uncoated raw canvas, and are working on building a steamer that we can use to fix the dyes after printing.

Our next big creative push is for the 'Prepare for the Playa' Bazaar in San Francisco in July and August. In the coming months, check back with us as we dive into Dragon-printed hip-belts, backpacks, and other desert survival gear.

Thanks, Dragon!

Filed under // fabric printing playa the shop

Posted May 6, 2011

Fabric printing

We bought some wide-format printers when my old employer got out of the mapmaking business. One of them is good for printing on banner material and textiles, so we have been experimenting with different media in it. So far we have used a lightweight polyester and an art canvas to print photos and some of my (Zeke's) digital art. Still looking into colorfastness and durability, but the material is great to collage, and I am working it into some of our bag designs. Pretty fun, and we are interested in custom printing fabric to order as well. Prices for custom printing are online at: http://deercreekgis.com/printing.php

Filed under // fabric printing the shop

Posted April 26, 2011

Harvester teeth to flowers, spring cleaning

Going to have some new sorts of goods for sale at the Bizarre Bazaar in 2 weeks. Spring cleaning! Gathering random metal for years and finally have time to recycle it. Rice harvester teeth and lug wrenches become flowers; metal rings and combine chain, yard bling. Old garden tools are new garden tools, and Erika is sewing leather and finishing bag projects that I've stalled on. If you have broken old garden tools that you want to recycle, hit us up: zeekobag@gmail.com

(download)

Filed under // the shop toolmaking

Posted April 13, 2011

Making tools - a hand press made from scrap metal

We use our hand press to set rivets and snaps, and punch holes in thick, tough materials. The problem - we only have one press, and have to change out the tooling on it everytime we want to punch a hole and then set a snap or rivet in it. We needed another press. I saw a simple press at at a leather shop in the Bay, and decided to make one out of scrap metal.

This is a worn-out towing hitch from a tractor. It will become the body for our rivet and snap-setting hand-press. The bandsaw is from a junk store down by Yuba City.

Trailer hitch marked for cutting with a torch

Rough-cut with a torch, and ready for grinding.

After grinding the edges of the body, I welded on a piece of pipe that will become the cylinder that the press shaft slides up and down in, and also, the pipe will hold the anvil at the bottom that carries the bottom half of two-part snap and rivet-setting dies. I needed the top and bottom shafts to be perfectly centered with eachother, so I used this single piece of pipe, and then cut the center section out once it was welded.

I had a piece of hot-rolled steel from another project that is the the right size to fit inside of the pipe cylinder to act as the 'ram' for the press. I couldn't accurately drill a hole in the center of it with my drill press, so I took it to a small machine shop in North Chico called 'Machine Works' and they reamed out a 3/8" hole in the center of it for me. Most snap and rivet setting tools have 3/8" shafts - these tools slide into the 3/8" bored shaft.

Here I have cut away the un-needed sections of pipe, and cut a length of the steel rod to act as our bottom anvil, or tool-holder. Notice that the anvil fits loosely in the pipe.

This piece will become the mount for the handle - on top of the press body.

Cut out with a torch.

The pipe that I used for the cylinder was welded pipe, not seamless, and the bored shaft was about a 1/16 of an inch smaller than the pipe. I used some galvanized flashing to shim the pipe to just barely fit the bored shaft.

Shimmed cylinder with shaft in place. Threaded eyebolt on top of the shaft will attach to a linkage from the handle, pressing the shaft down when the handle is pulled. I welded a nut onto the top of the shaft which allows for adjustment to the length of the eyebolt - so you can adjust the clearance at the bottom of the shaft if you need to use larger tooling or punch thicker materials.

I needed to have two identical pieces for the linkages that connect the handle to the eyebolt on top of the shaft. Rather than trying to get the holes perfectly spaced on the drill press, I cut lengths from some commercial shelf brackets that had holes at 1.5" centers.

Here is a cut, ground, and stamped linkage piece.

Handle, linkages, and eyebolt on top of the shaft.

Tapping threads into the shaft for the setscrew that holds tools in place. I used the wrong sized tap and broke it off in the hole, thought that I had ruined the entire shaft, but was able to punch it out and retap it with the right size.

So here is the fully assembled press. The shaft, moves up and down in the cylinder, holding tooling (hole punch) which presses against the bottom anvil. In this case, the bottom anvil is a 3/8" bolt.

I thought about just welding the body of the press to a steel baseplate, but decided that I might want to attach it to something else in the future, so I drilled the press body, bolted on some angle iron, and then welded the angle to the baseplate.

Mounted on the table and ready for use.

Wrapped the handle with some old handlebar tape.

Punching holes and setting snaps.

Filed under // the shop toolmaking

Posted January 5, 2011

The [Inbox] - Found materials

We are adding a new feature to our website - the [inbox]. We'll be tagging any posts about our raw (salvaged) materials with the [inbox] tag - giving you a chance to see where our finished goods come from.

We finally found a reliable source for used fire hose. Fire hose has to be pressure-tested every year, and the lengths that don't pass are usually dumpstered or sold to construction companies. This stuff was salvaged from an old army base - most of it has never been used. We sorted through a couple hundred rolls and found some with a great weight and a black lining.

the new, dreamy, black-lined hose makes up 95% of our new totes.

this mad max miniskirt is made from a heavier-duty cotton-jacket hose. this hose is a little too stiff and heavy for most bags, but it works great for playawear, guitar and samba-drum straps.

samba drum strap - double wrap, and available in custom lengths. triangles are leftover when we cut for the mad max miniskirts. $40 - email us.

we find a huge variety of colors and materials in hose and in the different linings. this hose washes to a demin blue, and the clear lining takes on an almost watercolored look.

irrigation hose (dark blue) and the nylon hose (above) make up this duffel and makeup bag combo. the zippers are brand-new salvage, found in a lot of 200+ at our local salvation army.

score! we are committed to using only high-quality hardware in our goods. our zippers are either new (salvage), or pulled from used bags that have minimal wear.

Filed under // fire hose bags inbox the shop

Posted December 29, 2010

Salvaging an old Delta Rockwell Drill Press

Wofchuck's Cattail Cojongo Case

The Estate of Robert Bruce. Auction Fever, and 'The Cyclone'.

The Ishi Nation - map on canvas

Making tools for toolmaking, a leatherworking press.

Large Format Printer + Canvas + Dragonboy = New Series

Fabric printing

Harvester teeth to flowers, spring cleaning

Making tools - a hand press made from scrap metal

The [Inbox] - Found materials

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