A while ago I was asking about early bevel geared hand drills because I'd bought two of them cheaply on eBay.
I've finished cleaning up the second one now, so thought I'd share my approach to restoration.
This is it as received - a little bit rusty, quite dirty, missing a side handle and with a split in the top handle:
Under that dirt there is some pretty knurling and some finely filed chamfers.
I thought the drill could look better. I did practically all the cleaning with Abraflex blocks:
They have some abrasive embedded in a rubbery block, and wear down into crumbs in use, just like a pencil eraser. You can get them from engineering suppliers. The fine grade is used by model railway people to clean up track.
I just used the finest grade I could, occasionally swapping to a coarser one if it seemed too slow. Other than that, I oiled the moving parts and wiped some linseed oil onto the handles.
For the split, I smoothed out the sides of the split with a very thin chisel, glued in slips of wood and carved it back to shape with a knife.
Dyed with Van Dyke crystals, it blends in well enough.
For the missing side handle, I drilled a hole through a piece of dry holly branch and turned it on the lathe:
then tapered the inside hole, using a handy Marples reamer which happened to be the right taper:
I then stained and oiled it as close as I could get to the colour and finish of the non-missing handle on the other drill. I didn't have a suitable washer to hold it on, so had to custom make one from a bit of scrap steel. After repeated dunkings in salt water it was rusty enough to use and I could peen over the end of the spike, having greased the inside.
So here is the finished result:
and some of its nice details:
I hope you will agree that it still looks old, but not neglected.
I don't quite have a drill for each bit, but sometimes it feels that way! :lol:
Btw, it's marked "F.W. ST" as was another one I saw on eBay - if anyone knows who that was, I'd love to know:
I've finished cleaning up the second one now, so thought I'd share my approach to restoration.
This is it as received - a little bit rusty, quite dirty, missing a side handle and with a split in the top handle:
Under that dirt there is some pretty knurling and some finely filed chamfers.
I thought the drill could look better. I did practically all the cleaning with Abraflex blocks:
They have some abrasive embedded in a rubbery block, and wear down into crumbs in use, just like a pencil eraser. You can get them from engineering suppliers. The fine grade is used by model railway people to clean up track.
I just used the finest grade I could, occasionally swapping to a coarser one if it seemed too slow. Other than that, I oiled the moving parts and wiped some linseed oil onto the handles.
For the split, I smoothed out the sides of the split with a very thin chisel, glued in slips of wood and carved it back to shape with a knife.
Dyed with Van Dyke crystals, it blends in well enough.
For the missing side handle, I drilled a hole through a piece of dry holly branch and turned it on the lathe:
then tapered the inside hole, using a handy Marples reamer which happened to be the right taper:
I then stained and oiled it as close as I could get to the colour and finish of the non-missing handle on the other drill. I didn't have a suitable washer to hold it on, so had to custom make one from a bit of scrap steel. After repeated dunkings in salt water it was rusty enough to use and I could peen over the end of the spike, having greased the inside.
So here is the finished result:
and some of its nice details:
I hope you will agree that it still looks old, but not neglected.
I don't quite have a drill for each bit, but sometimes it feels that way! :lol:
Btw, it's marked "F.W. ST" as was another one I saw on eBay - if anyone knows who that was, I'd love to know:
