Grinding to Remove Rust: Craftsman King-Seeley 103.23141 Drill Press Restoration, Pt. 3

Work on the Sears Craftsman/King Seeley drill press continues.

Actually, work on other projects has continued too, I just haven't written about them. Yet.

You may recall from our last installment that we used electrolysis to remove the heavy rust from the base of the drill press. Looking back at the picture of the base before the start of the rust removal is scary. The base has come a long way. But there is more to go.

One thing I should have done as prep before the electrolysis dunk tank is removing the name plate on the base. The idea of removing the plate actually ran through my mind, but it ran so fast it was gone before I did it!

Along with most of the rust, the process also removed/loosened up some of the paint on the base. Now, that's not a bad thing, since I'm going to repaint the base, but some of the paint on the plate came off also. Dagnabbit.

So I'll need to restore the name plate too. I've actually started on that process and I think it will be successful.

Anyway, I drilled the plate rivets out before I got going on Phase 2 of rust removal. You can see that process in the picture above.

And here's the plate after removal.

Not to worry, I think I can restore the original label.

The electrolysis process removed the vast majority of the rust on the base. But it did leave what is called "black rust" on the machined table surface.

Since that surface started life as a nice smooth unfinished metal surface, the rust really attacked it.

The rust was transformed into solid black rust which needs to be removed.

I did some reading on the interwebs where a wire brush was suggested to remove this black rust.

So I procured a braided brush and mounted it in my grinder.

Long story short, some of the surface rust came off, but the heavier rust and pitted metal wasn't moving.

So I moved up to a metal grinding disc.

Made quite a few sparks (see some in the picture, they were hard to photograph) and started seeing bare metal.

If you do this, wear glove and eye protection! Bits of rust, metal, and sparks will fly.

I went through 2 discs in this process.

Here it's almost done - you can see just a few pits remaining.

I had to remove the rust, which actually went quickly, but then I had to grind the metal down until all of the pits were eliminated.

Finally I got all of the pits out. No more rust! Compare this to where I started before the electrolysis.

The surface is now reasonably level, but I'll need to do more grinding and then sanding to get it levelled and get it nice and shiny as it first was when it left the King-Seeley factory in 1953. More on that as it progresses.

The complete restoration saga

Part 1 - Beginning

Part 2 - Electrolysis to Remove Rust

Part 3 - Grinding to Remove Rust

Part 4 - Leveling Base Table

Part 5 - Recreating Model Number Label

Part 6 - Refinishing Base

Part 7 - Removing Motor

Part 8 - Motor Disassembly

Part 9 - Motor Bearing Replacement

Part 10 - Start Capacitor and Motor Reassembly

Part 11 - Removing Threaded Jacobs Chuck

Part 12 - Spindle Removal

Part 13 - Quill Disassembly

Part 14 - New Quill and Spindle Bearings

Part 15 - Engine Turned Aluminum Trim Proof of Concept

Part 16 - Engine Turned Aluminum Trim

Part 17 - Cleaning and Polishing Hardware

Part 18 - Jacobs 633C Drill Chuck Restoration

Part 19 - Cleaning and Polishing Column

Part 20 - Reassembly Begins

Part 21 - Restoration Completed