Antique Drag Saw [Restoration] - Part 1: Problem Solving

welcome back to a very special episode of hand tool rescue. as you can notice I am talking, I am going to narrate to this video for you because there is so much to talk about so much to demonstrate that I couldn't possibly get it done without explaining a little bit verbally for everyone here this is an Ottawa manufacturing company drag saw or log so it is most likely made in the 1920s and I have it here for you and I to go through today this entire tool was purchased using the support from patreon so I'm going to narrate this video like I do on patreon as kind of a thank you to all of the patrons who supported this effort it is a massive tool this thing's about twelve feet long so the first step here is getting the piston unstuck there's nothing like a little bit of heat to help with anything that's stuck and in this case it actually worked as well the actual piston I don't remember being stuck when I got this and this was a few years ago if you actually watch the end of my anti flamethrower video you can see I say that this tool restoration is coming soon and that was about three years ago so I'm finally getting to it it just took you know a lot of a lot of time apparently so with the piston unstuck I can check to see if we have spark with the spark plug in the magneto in which we don't unfortunately so that's going to be an issue that are gonna have to tackle further on and there may be just something wrong with the points like usual but I will have to sort that out when I get there the muffler is just a straight pipe with holes drilled in it original muffler for this was essentially this exact same thing some people just didn't even put any mufflers on themself no need to worry about that design the gas tank is completely empty I just tried rating it there and nothing is coming out except rust and dust so I will obviously have to clean that later in starting to take this apart I'm just kind of going from the outside in in terms of the engine I don't want to mess around too much with the timing that we have here between the valves and piston and the gearing on the flywheel it's all set very specifically and because all this information is somewhat lost to time I don't want to get myself too deep into trouble here so I'm gonna take things apart but keep them kind of whole in the sense that every unit like the valves or the head of the cylinder is going to kind of stay together and I will clean around the parts while they are fully assembled in in some cases here I'm just taking off the valve springs they're not tight enough that I can't put them back on or take them off without using special tools all I need to say is my hand and it's very simple you can already start to see near the top of the cylinder head here there some repairs those were most likely done at some point previous to me of course I purchased this from someone in Ontario Canada and I am not sure if they were the ones that did the repairs or not but either way it is something you're gonna have to investigate and have a look at and see if the repairs are adequate or if they need to be redone the repairs look like they're due to frost damage this is where water would flow to keep the engine cool and if you didn't drain that in the winter the cast iron can't expand and therefore you get some cracking with the valves off I can test to see if they actually do seal which is incredibly important for the function of this type of engine which is a four-stroke and it seems like they do after a while of me leaving the gasoline there it didn't seep through at all the level didn't lower so I'm kind of confident and that's very happy I don't need to lap those but maybe we'll give them a little grind anyways this is the wiko magneto those are getting harder and harder to find I'm not really sure what I would do if this one cannot be repaired because a new one is about five or six hundred dollars they don't make them anymore so it's just people kind of assembling their own using parts found online now that things are moving I can start to try and take the whole flywheel and crank shaft mechanism off and I'm slowly discovering what parts need to be taken off first in order to get to what I need to get to to take all of this apart and it's really a puzzle that you have to solve very slowly by making mistakes you know I'm unscrewing this here and it doesn't come off because the larger gear is in the way and I thought it would just lift out anyways but it's not doing that so there's kind of a lot of guesswork being done and just kind of an investigative approach to taking apart a tool this complex I don't deal with four-stroke engines very frequently especially on this channel so this is kind of a first for video on this channel and these are the Babbitt bearings you've seen me pour Babbitt before in this in the saw filer episode but you can see the actual crankshaft is in fantastic condition beautiful condition nice and shiny still no rusting no scouring so very happy with that I hope that the rest of the crankshaft is in a similar condition the Babbitt bearings on the actual attached to where the piston is there's a lot of dirt and dust kind of around it but that also seems to be completely fine so Craig shaft is glorious very excited about that the counterweights on the crankshaft are a special feature of the Ottawa engine they apparently advertise this as something that helps the engine run smoother or less kind of rocking more balanced and I guess it does make sense it is a nice little addition these right here the cam gears that help with the timing of the valves and the magneto they're very important to time with the flywheel that's in red in the forefront very specifically I've marked them and stamped them just in case what is there is correct but I won't know until I put it all back together I'm trying to get this off and not really understanding why it isn't coming off and then I discover there's a shaft and a piece that kind of encapsulates that shaft attached to the clutch here so in order to get that off it looks like I'm gonna have to take everything else apart that relates to the actual sign mechanism so I'm trying to take the actual saw blade off it's just two bolts attached to an ARB and the saw itself is five feet long so you could cut most likely just under a five foot log which is incredibly wide much wider than I've ever come across where I live now we can see the clutch moving and the bigger gearing moving getting excited as we break this down further because I really really want to take this entire flywheel off so I can see what's going on but the actual sign arm that transfers the motion to the saw rides along these two rails and you can kind of see on the right and then a wooden piece helps move that arm back and forth as the flywheel turns it's a smart and simple design meant to mimic men or women actually sawing it's it's crazy that it's just a piece of wood with oil holes and holes for the actual shafting and then that was it they didn't bother making a piece of casting for some reason for that specific part maybe it was breaking too often or couldn't handle certain twists I'm not exactly sure why that part would be wood but it is original as all the other ones I've seen have that exact same design okay now finally with the sign arm off I'm hoping I can get the red flywheel and crank shafts off here we have the clutch removed and then behind it is the safety clutch that stops the software moving but allows the engine to keep turning so in case the saw actually was to bind in a log the hole saw wouldn't explode and kill everyone it's just a nice feature a very nice feature you can also see where the crankshaft rides on where the Babbitt bearings are they're at a 45 degree angle to the piston and instead of just kind of perpendicular to it and that was a potentially advertised feature to help hena absorb that impact better than better than something that was perpendicular that's at least what they advertised so I'm just using a piece of wood to lightly tap out the massive six-inch piston this thing is bigger than anything I've dealt with before by far it's very it's very interesting but the top piston ring is actually stuck so that is a major issue that we'll need to address when we get to that point I'm hoping to remove the entire engine block at once here it's not crazy crazy heavy but it's heavy enough that I don't think I can lift it onto my workbench by myself without destroying my entire life so I'm not going to do that the gas tank or kerosene tank in some cases are it's just nailed on to the wooden frame hidden under the engine block extremely inconvenient location to fill the tank up especially if you have any tank issues but that's just the way it is once you ruin the nails just pops off it also rides on these little wooden slats for extra support I guess this part is near the front of the saw and it's the winch that you would use to hook on to a log and tighten it nice and tight so that the actual sawing tool here the drag saw is attached to the log in a more firm manner as to not create violent shaking and therefore danger now we move on to the special portion of the episode where it takes me everything single combination because it's just so stubborn so rusty that it just doesn't want to cooperate I'm trying you know everything I I know initially you got to kind of do a stepwise process you don't go straight out to you know liquefying the bullet because these are really massive square bolts and I love square bolts and nuts and I try to salvage them when I can and I really want to salvage these because these are some of the larger ones I've seen and apparently it requires to me to whip out the large wrench the big board this is the largest one I have currently and even that is helping but it's not solving the problem so I'm gonna have to remove this wheel because it's in my way I can't get a good leverage angle on it so this needs to go and I might as well just start taking apart everything else that evidence comes apart easily and compared to this set of nuts and bolts so the other wheel is here these turn so that you can position them either parallel or perpendicular to the log to stop but kind of rocking back and forth motion makes a little more stable but we do see something that needs to be repaired here one of the spokes is completely damaged looks like there's a previous repair on it but we'll have to investigate this part right here is the bottom of the wooden parts of the drag saw and these are holding on the little handle shelf that holds the saw up off the ground when not in use so obviously important we must get that off I am trying once again to salvage the nuts and bolts as much as I can because I do really like those square nuts and bolts even the modern square nuts and bolts are just not the same they don't have those nice sharp corner what I'm using here is an 8-point socket you can get a full set of these they still make them they're probably a little more expensive than normal ones but not out of anyone's crazy price range so it should be fine but these artists II aren't coming out because they've been pinned over and damaged over time so I'm just gonna probably grind them off I'm going back and forth along the wooden parts of the log saw just trying to wiggle this over here jiggle that loosen this just trying to get everything off that I can that isn't completely stuck and murdered but you know you're only so successful a lot of these are carriage bolts which are my arch-nemesis because I cannot absolutely stand carriage bolts only because there's really no way to grab the other end of the bolt it's rounded over so if the nut doesn't want to come off the only way to get it off is either cut it off or really damage the head of the carriage bolt which is not really the time so I'm not into that especially in wood it's horrendous especially a hundred-year-old wood here I'll Drive rusty the movies so at this point I'm beginning to think that I need to repair the wood as well and it's probably a full replace because there's so many cracks there's so much rot over the last hundred years that I'm thinking I need to replace this entire piece of wood and when I have that realization I can then just treat it more aggressively than I would otherwise here I'm finally getting some progress and taking off that nut off that bolt but now the entire bolt is spinning because it hates me so there's really the only next logical set is to get it red hot and then give it it should be fine rust is an insulator so the rust in the threads is enough to kind of insulate the heat from the bolt to the actual nut so there is a difference in temperature between the two and that difference is enough that it loosens off very easily and that's kind of how the heating works I know people get confused a little bit that oh you're heating up the inside of the bolt or the inside threads as well and that's just kind of gives you an explanation on how that works so we're finally off bolt is saved nuts are saved I'm happy but you know there's always another one to try and destroy everything and I do get this one off but I break the entire bolt in half trying to get the other one off even with lots of heat you can see I'm trying not trying to touch it with my hands it just didn't want to I I failed I guess that's unfortunate I do get it off eventually just for keeping it it's so large but I broke it so I'm gonna have to order new square bolts for that right here is one of the feet and that would stab on to the actual log and that also helps it and non move back and forth since a lot of these older engines like you really are not the most will balance things on earth here I'm takin off the quote-unquote carburetor which is really just a mixture so it just mixes air with gasoline obviously that's what a carburetor does but this is just a venturi system as it sucks air in through the front it also sucks in gasoline due to the flow of air and that's literally it there's no pump there's no diaphragm there's nothing like that so it's very very very simple design the left side where I just took that piece of sheet metal off is where you would put gasoline and run the motor off of gasoline for just a few minutes so that you can then transfer it over to kerosene because kerosene doesn't like lighting in low temperatures so the engine needs to really be hot in order to work off of kerosene so that's why there's that second half of this carburetor it's very odd but at the time kerosene was was cheaper than gasoline and that's kind of how it was this is the drain plug for that side that kerosene side if you wish to call it that and it's fine it doesn't seem to be leaking but I'll fix that and when needed this right here is the set screw for the needle valve I took out the actual needle portion earlier but this valve seat is all that regulates the inflow of the gasoline over the kerosene I'm thinking twice about messing with the throttle linkage here so I'm going to leave that attached that I want to mess with that right now I'm going to investigate the rest of the cylinder head here and these gaskets are new or they are the cork rubber hybrid which is unlikely to be original so there's nothing been some work done to this I don't exactly know when but someone touched this so I got to do some investigation here this black paint isn't original either and it comes off incredibly easily which exposes the brazing and the brazing definitely matches up with frost cracks in though in the water portion of the cooling system and it looks okay but there are parts that are showing cracks parts on the actual face of the cylinder head there that worried me so we might need to re braise some parts here I'm tackling the stuck piston ring now these piston rings are cast-iron and as you know cast iron doesn't really like the Flex a lot so this is pretty much the maximum amount of flex I'm gonna put on this I'm being extremely gentle finding piston rings for this is probably difficult and/or expensive so I'm just taking my time and pulsing and pumping the ring and using its own tension to help it break free from the carbon buildup or the rust and that was the reason why the piston was stuck so I'm just kind of stabbing little by little I'm not gonna pry like a psycho I'm just gonna go very lightly and pump this until it breaks free and just the motion will do the work and then it just pops and it's finally free I'm very happy about that I'll go in with a little screwdriver or a little pick and clean out all the carbon might even dump this whole thing in the ultrasonic cleaner just to see if it'll take off any more that but it really needs to to move freely the ring must spin freely even though it has a position that it locks into it can't be stuck we can't have air flowing by it so I'm dealing with the actual rest of the piston here and I noticed the chunks of Babbitt coming off so it looks like where the previous person that poured the Babbitt scored the oil holes they went too deep and actually cracked it so that is something gonna have to deal with obviously they may have used the wrong type of Babbitt and by that I mean tin based Babbitt instead of lead-based Babbitt is great for higher speed higher impact applications there is also a Babbitt with a little bit more copper in it and that can lead to an even higher impact resistant Babbitt so one of those two is probably optimal probably the Tim based one because of its ability to handle higher speeds better in which case this would be perfect so I'm gonna have to purchase some of that high-speed bag and it is quite expensive but you only need a little bit of it and I could definitely use it in future projects this arm here was interesting these bolts that I'm tapping out they really don't look original but I couldn't get a good shot of what was supposed to be there and you can see the kind of double holes drilled in to that casting there then I'm noticing that there's a massive repair over here as well someone just put like a motor electric motor coupling welded to this casting here and the bronze bushings and I think there are actually two are epoxy in place instead of press-fit which probably is another issue in itself so it's kind of interesting to see has been done over the years the function is probably completely fine which is all I need to focus on it at this point here you can see the bronze bush and it's incredibly loose like it's massively under sized I don't know if they just had this size only and just said okay whatever just put it in or they do that on purpose I'm also realizing that the rest of these the ones that aren't damaged are filled with Babbitt as well so I don't know if I need to repour those or not you don't want them too tight too tight and that safety clutch is gonna slip every single time and you're not gonna get any sign done so there's probably a balance there that I need to sort out the grease cups there's still grease cupping squeezing then to tell out both of them are working fine so I will clean those out as needed and replace it with fresh grease but the actual Babbitt material in these bearing caps are very nice so I don't need to worry too much about that the rest of the engine parts I'm just gonna take apart whole like I was talking about earlier this is the mount for the magneto and this is the governor that helps control the speed and it's attached to the throttle linkage you can set it on I believe four different speeds from two hundred to three hundred and fifty rpm using that lever there on the left and I'm keeping this completely assembled right now I don't know exactly how this works there's no literature on it so I need to be very careful I don't ruin this and get this completely apart before I know what I'm doing I don't like to do that it's not safe you could ruin something or put it back together incorrectly and either kill yourself or others or just damage the actual tool not what I'm into I am putting literally everything that is metal into this evapo rust bit so eventually and I don't show it here I put the entire engine block into this bin I had a friend come and help me load it in the entire thing with all the cracks with everything I just wanted to get all of the rust off everywhere there's no other way to do it here I'm working on the sauce so I just sprayed it with some penetrating oil and then I go over it with the orbital sander and this knocks off the majority of the surface rust it does a really good job it doesn't leave swirls and marks it it looks really good and I could have just left it as is but I have a rust problem so I'm gonna go with the gel for this it doesn't fit in my tub without half of it fitting and if you put something halfway in a back arrest it'll create an etch line I don't want to do that so I just hit it with the gel waited a few hours and then sanded the dry gel off and that gets the rest away from the pitted areas which is very important that saw will be pretty much kept oiled or waxed in use so I'm not too worried about it getting worse with rust if I can wheel it immediately I always find random things and there was an axe for some reason in the evapo rust bin I don't even remember putting it in there there was the Pistons coming out and the rest of the parts are coming out and I do this frequently but not always these parts are going in before paint has been stripped because I actually cannot see what color the paint is on these things because the photos online are obviously modern photos and any original the documents are all illustrations with different colors that made it just to bring what the printer had it it's weird so I'm discovering that some parts are green and some parts are red and that may or may not match up with what I found online so it's beginning to be a little confusing on here it just looks like there's absolutely nothing so I'm not entirely sure what these colors were but based on other Ottawa engines most likely the entire engine portion was green and the flywheel and some other parts were red it's almost a Christmas style drag stuff the muffler seems to be homemade but it's completely adequate so I'm totally fine with that I'm going to start repairing as many things as I can there is original bronze that was used here for brazing someone did that at some point but the Grays did not stick properly maybe they didn't get it hot enough for it just for some reason so I'm gonna get it as hot as I can Andrey braze that material the brazing is difficult here because I didn't fully remove the previous breeze I did sand it down and and all that to get to a fresh surface but it's difficult and here with the actual cylinder head you can see I've taken parts out with a die grinder and these were all pits and very little cracks that I didn't like I wanted a nice clean brass or bronze surface so I'm trying to braze bronze into bronze brazing that was previously great and it's incredibly difficult because the brazing is gonna melt at the exact same temperature as the brazing rod and it's incredibly difficult to do was one of the hardest brazing attempts I've ever done but after that was done I went with a file and made sure this surface was completely flat whereas flat as I could get it and then I noticed a a crack in the engine block and this is the bottom of the engine block kind of where the carburetor was sitting and it's a huge crack so that's not okay so what we're gonna do in this case is fix this which is much easier to fix then going into bronze itself and fill it in with brazing sand it down and then fill it over with clear epoxy you probably could use the steel reinforced epoxy as well but I like to use the clear for this application and then I take a bunch of cast iron dust that I ground on the belt grinder and sprinkle it on top as liberally as you possibly can to soak into the epoxy and to sit on top as well you have to cast iron Bay it and then once it is dry you can give it some texture and I'm using a needle scaler here to go crazy over this thing and that'll give it the texture of cast iron so you don't even at all that this is here and that's the goal this repair I don't want to show off might want to show off the big braised parts on the cylinder head so you can't even notice here completely fine so very happy with how that turned out I'll flatten this as well as as kind of quickly as I can I'm not gonna go crazy remove you know a quarter-inch of material but I just need to get it at least level enough that the gasket will seat well I'm going to hone this the actual cylinder very quickly very lightly just to get rid of any kind of residual stuff that has been left over from the piston being stuck or years of use the piston is fine but the cylinder is heavily pitted usually that would be a cause for concern but in these older engines the compression in the chamber that the piston and cylinder provide is two or three times the the amount of pressure that you have outside in the normal air so it really is not getting compressed a lot so having these pits in the cylinder wall is not really an issue you can run these engines on an incredibly low compression not to mention we're using a heavier weight oil a 30 weight oil goes into that so that'll help kind of fill in those pits and they may just be nice little oil I am now tackling that linkage arm for the saw and just stabbing around with the die grinder to clean up any holes or weird spots that might have rust or something I need to clean this whole area up because if it was repaired I don't need it any worse so I'm going to remove the bronze bushings in here remove all the old epoxy and put in new bronze bushings that fit new slides so everything is running smoothly I added metal epoxy here so I can shape and blend we repair in better than what was done previously I almost don't want you to notice that this was a repair you'll still be able to tell probably but if you just glance at it quickly it won't stick out at you and you're saying oh man that's brutal so you can see I'm much beefier bronze bushings are going in and that makes me very happy I'm not going to make the actual rods that that arm slides on with the metal lathe I like to do a skim pass just to remove the mill scale on the rods and then I'll go crazy and get down to size I need to reduce this to the size that an initially was I think it was initially 5/8 and then I need to thread about an inch of the end of this the metal lathe is doing a decent job it sounds a little like it wants to die but that's only because the belt on it is actually an original leather belt and the linkage between the belt is metal and it really sounds horrendous I'm gonna start the die on the lathe just one or two turns and then I'll finish it off by hand on the vise I really should be threading this on the lathe but I don't have the quick change box set up for this specific lathe unfortunately and change all the gears is a nightmare so I'm not going to do that there's the color going back on and you can see it's looking good very good I basically matched it exactly except for the length of the threading because I felt like that was unnecessary and having that extra surface area there would be helpful now in order to fix the connecting rod I need to drill a hole support that akin to because I want to use the other perfect babbitt bearing cap as a reference surface for the poor of this one otherwise I would have to remove both of them set up an elaborate setup to perfectly line up the crankshaft and and I just don't need to do that if I already have a service so I'm gonna have to do that a little bit here is the fantastic lis expensive three hundred fifty dollar piece of Babbitt you don't get a lot of it but you don't really need a lot of it so once it's molten you literally pour it in and there's the hole and I've packed it with almost like a putty around it a special made high temp putty around the entire crankshaft and bearing cap and then come back when it's a little bit cool and take off all of that and see how I've done and it looks to be good this should be solid you just absolutely salt there's no play basically at all what if you've done this right and that seems to be the case I'm trying to even get it to move and it's getting brutal doesn't move side to side it's glorious absolutely glorious so I'm happy with this it needs the actual shims removed and the area's cleaned up but the actual main pour of the Babbitt bearing seems to be fine and I'm very happy with that I'm gonna try to put the piston back in so it can line up everything as well as I can I did spend time lining up the connecting rod perfectly so that it's not going to be skewed in one way or the other that's the only thing I really need to pay attention to it at the time of flooring but I didn't actually have a way of getting these piston rings compressed because my piston ring compressor only goes to three inches so I just had a band clamp and use that it seems to be fine I had to do that because I wanted to line up the oil hole which I am grilling out right now and near the top is where the grease cup goes so I need to make sure that it goes through and I'm checking that with a little airgun and if air can get through then grease from the grease cup can get through and I'm happy with that I'm also going to score the Babbitt or the grease to flow in a specific pattern that doesn't really matter in this case I just don't want to go so deep that it's an absolute nightmare like the cracking that happened here I'm using a babbitt scraper it's a specially designed tool for scraping Babich bearings and I kind of remove any burrs or whatever it's not perfectly flush then when I removed the higher spots around the shims I can screw it all together and have a test and it seems to be totally fired next I need to make the wooden pipes completely using my massive 16 inch circular saw but that is going to have to wait until the next video this is a massive project so I really need the time to get things together but thank you for watching and I will see you all in the next one later

Channel: Hand Tool Rescue

Views: 727,900

Rating: 4.8882632 out of 5

Keywords: restoration, vintage, antique, asmr, diy, make, brass, my mechanics, tysy, diresta, tool restoration, machining, babbitt, bearing, cast iron, awesome restorations, cutting, drag, saw, log, ottawa, hit and miss

Id: SGGlaOozLPs

Length: 40min 46sec (2446 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 02 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/livinginahologram]

Another ISTP guy: https://youtu.be/ATFrUQCTY4U

(the humor on this channel is particularly off the charts 😂)

[u/Atzgee]

Been watching him for a while definitely recommend it, no useless fluff in his videos