Finishing the Base: Craftsman King-Seeley 103.23141 Drill Press Restoration, Pt. 6

After painting the base, I brought it down to The Dungeon to unmask it.

Unmask, Dungeon...bwhahahha.

I figured I'd have some places where I didn't mask the edges fully. I'd rather have some paint to remove than try to get that rough edge covered exactly.

So had had to sand some of the paint off. Which led me to thinking - never a good thing.

Long story short. I still wasn't happy with the way the milled surface looked, so I went over it again, this time manually with my big sandpaper block (see the earlier post).

Started with 40 grit, then went up through 60, 80, 120, 220 and 320. It's better, but it will never be perfectly level unless it's milled again. At least it's presentable.

Then I coated it with Boeshield T-9 to keep it protected.

Now to reinstall the nameplate.

I wanted to match the look of the original rivets as closely as possible. I searched for something appropriate and didn't find rivets that would have the same nice rounded heads of the originals.

While searching on the incredible McMaster-Carr site, I discovered drive screws. They look like rivets, but are semi-threaded. You drive them into a hole and they fit tightly.

I matched up a drill bit for size with the shafts of the screws (3/32 of an inch) and ran it through the holes to clean up any paint that might be in there.

Set the nameplate into place, and lightly tapped the drive screws with a lightweight hammer to get them started.

Then I used a nail set to drive them in all the way.

Looks pretty good I think.

The drive screws look like rivets!

I had sprayed the decal with a clear paint to protect it. Unfortunately, it made the decal crack. Oh well, not losing any sleep over it. From 2 feet away it looks great.

Here's the finished base. Looks good.

Now I'll start rebuilding the motor and the head.

In case you don't remember, this is what the base looked like originally before restoration. Yikes. Came a long way, huh?

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