Brent H
Ultra Member
So about a month ago @ryanthemillwright0919 posted that he had this little baby up for sale:
Well, Ryan is a good 3-1/2 hour drive each way so it took me a bit to get to Kingston to see him, but with the excuse of breaking in the new truck, my better half and I paid him a visit last Sunday. Great conversation and we loaded the patient into the back of the truck.
Vintage Machinery had the original manual from Covel and lots of pictures. Ryan explained that the stepper mechanism was missing and that he had been working on a replacement. Things are busy here but once I got things home I tore it all apart :
The original stepper basically works by ratcheting the cutting action so the saw cuts only on the draw stroke. It accomplishes this by a cam actuating a pivot arm that lifts and falls during a revolution on the drive shaft. A serrated “feed ratchet block” is engaged by sharpened teeth of the raising levers. (The raising levers are missing on mine). The originals look like this :
If you look at the above picture, the top of the raising levers are fitted with what should be hardened steel plates. These plates (2) should be sharpened to properly engage those fine teeth of the ratcheting block. The saw above would not have worked well - anyway - the picture was great for reference!
So using the picture and reference to Ryan’s work and the parts manual I took the torches out and burnt out some blanks of 1/2” steel. I did some fast work on the mill to get things roughed in:
The pin for the pivot is 0.375” and I had a hardened steel one just laying about from another machine so that is perfect.
I will try and update as things get built but running out of hone time!
thanks for the saw and the visit Ryan!
Well, Ryan is a good 3-1/2 hour drive each way so it took me a bit to get to Kingston to see him, but with the excuse of breaking in the new truck, my better half and I paid him a visit last Sunday. Great conversation and we loaded the patient into the back of the truck.
Vintage Machinery had the original manual from Covel and lots of pictures. Ryan explained that the stepper mechanism was missing and that he had been working on a replacement. Things are busy here but once I got things home I tore it all apart :
The original stepper basically works by ratcheting the cutting action so the saw cuts only on the draw stroke. It accomplishes this by a cam actuating a pivot arm that lifts and falls during a revolution on the drive shaft. A serrated “feed ratchet block” is engaged by sharpened teeth of the raising levers. (The raising levers are missing on mine). The originals look like this :
If you look at the above picture, the top of the raising levers are fitted with what should be hardened steel plates. These plates (2) should be sharpened to properly engage those fine teeth of the ratcheting block. The saw above would not have worked well - anyway - the picture was great for reference!
So using the picture and reference to Ryan’s work and the parts manual I took the torches out and burnt out some blanks of 1/2” steel. I did some fast work on the mill to get things roughed in:
The pin for the pivot is 0.375” and I had a hardened steel one just laying about from another machine so that is perfect.
I will try and update as things get built but running out of hone time!
thanks for the saw and the visit Ryan!
