Wadkin BGS10…The rarest table saw Wadkin made. Full Restoration

[Sideways]

In a nutshell, yes.
The shape of the underside of the casting dictates how the table can be clamped and consequently the edge to be cut overhangs on the inboard or outboard edge of the milling table. The table travel limits then don't leave room for a large cutter.
A second pragmatic reason is that Deema has a 10mm HSS cutter that lost it's tips in an unplanned skirmish with some weld hardened steel. The side flutes of the cutter are as new so it's the current goto cutter for edge milling thin work like this

 

[screwpainting]

Bloody excellent stuff guys, that is looking fantastic,

 

[Stokes&co]

It’s looking brilliant gents. Not sure if you have it but I just saw on Instagram that LHW machinery in Essex have a complete bgs 10 with all the bits that’s just come in from a university!

 

[deema]

The great thing about being retired is that time is no longer your mistress. It’s been a while, but we are back doing a bit on the saw again. Sideways has the best photos, and hopefully he will add to the thread.

Wadkin has a great reputation for its quality, but even they did not always make things to the best quality. On this saw, after assembling the trunion system and looking at aligning the riving knife to the blade we noticed the appalling machining of the riving knife mounts. For what ever reason it was clear that these had somehow managed to miss the machining operation, and they were at every angle apart from coplanar with the saw blade mounts. Who ever had been using this saw before could not have mounted the riving knife and had any success.

Hopefully you can see that the surfaces are, using a technical term, higeltypigelty! There was nothing for it, we had to disassemble the saw, mount it on the mill and machine these times be coplaner with the saw blade mounts. This was achieved by aligning the saw spindle and the 1.5mm had to be machined off before we needed up with a true surface. You just never know what you will find when you buy a machine.

After machining, the saw was reassembled and the motor was mounted with new belts and pulleys.

 

[Sideways]

And yes, these show how badly machined the mounting bossss for the splitter were ...

The entire spindle assembly was removed, shimmed and clamped on the end / edge of the mill table so that we could clock the spindle flange flat in both planes to 20-30 microns over 2 inches. That should be better than 0.2mm at the edge of the blade.

Then the bosses were milled to the same plane. Flat is essential so that the splitter is neither tilted nor twisted, but height isn't very important here as there is sideways adjustment in the spindle and a custom spacer for the splitter can be milled if necessary.

Once done, everything was cleaned up, regreased and reassembled.

I wonder what bodges the previous owner(s) of this saw had to use to get the splitter to line up with the blade. Or if they simply didn't bother... this wouldn't have been easy to fix without the mill.

Next on to the DOL starter. Neither of us are impressed by cabinets full of holes from poor electrical installations so all the original holes were welded up and dressed before painting and just two new mounting holes drilled and tapped M5 to suit a new box. The box can now be easily fitted and removed with just an allen key from the front.

One little trick learnt along the way. When knocking out the grommet holes, fit the cover onto the box tightly first. It strengthens the edge of the back box and helps prevent splitting if the knock outs are more solid than they should be. Of course you can't buy a back box on its own as spare..
These were fine but if in doubt, drill them out with a ground tooth holesaw. I keep a 20 and 25mm for plastic only so they are always razor sharp and make a clean hole.

 

[deema]

We use Bootlace and ring terminals on the wire ends when connecting them up. It’s important to use the correct crimping tools for each to ensure a good connection. A poor connection causes heating of the connection. Cheap crimping tools are IMO next to useless, they don’t create the correct level of pull out resistance. If you just terminate twisted wires into a screw terminal, the screw not only damages the induvidual wires, but causes them to harden and they will fatigue and break over time. Equally the bund,e of wires can move and create a loose connection / come out. A lose wire at best will cause the saw to stop.

We typically use SY cable to connect the motor to the starter and for the power cable which has a braided outer protective cable that encircles the cable under an insinuated sleeve. It’s a bit like armoured cable, but not as armoured and is very flexible. We ground the braided wire so that should anything penetrate the wire, which can occur in a workshop, it will be grounded by the braided sleeve and cause a trip in the circuit. A protective earth is also connected up which runs within the cable.

The motor starters we use include an over current relay which we set for the full load rated current of the motor. You can get starters without this relay, which have just a contactor. However, should the motor stall, say you get a piece of wood jammed in the slot, or start cutting before the motor has fully got going without the over current relay you will very quickly burn out the motor and in most cases have a fire.

 

[Sideways]

We've fitted this saw with a new TEC 2.2kW single phase motor. The terminal box has two separate capacitors for start and run. This type has higher starting torque than single "permanent split capacitor" motors.
The TEC models are easy to wire to spin in either direction, but are pre-configured to turn clockwise as viewed from the front end of the spindle. That's what we need so the wiring at the motor end is very easy.
The capacitors have a foam wrap to stop them from rattling about in the terminal box.

Old nail varnish makes a cheap and easy to remove threadlocker.

Here are the ground tooth holesaws I mentioned in the earlier post. Great for drilling out plastic boxes.

 

[wallace]

Smashing job. I prefer to see original buttons on machines but this would have probably had one of those square MEM horrible boxes.

 

[MilesH]

Very thorough work on this Deema & Sideways. Well done.

I've made some progress on my own one. Finished working on the sliding table and mounted that back on. Next task is to mill the rebate in the fixed table for my sawplate modifications....

 

[MilesH]

Smashing job. I prefer to see original buttons on machines but this would have probably had one of those square MEM horrible boxes.

I hate the MEM ones too! As Deema's machine is early 60's it could have been one like this though:

 

[Sideways]

That would have been nice ! Sadly as you can see looking back to the very first photo of the thread, the one we inherited was nothing worth keeping.
Where you have interesting, vintage controls as Miles has pictured above, it is nice to keep them. If they fall short of the safety standards of more modern controls, that can often be overcome through the use of a VFD so that only low voltage connections are needed to the original start and stop switches.

 

[MilesH]

Wadkin has a great reputation for its quality, but even they did not always make things to the best quality.

I haven't worked on Wadkin machines but I've never had a very high opinion of the workmanship on the Wadkin Bursgreen machines.....
The latest problem on my BGS is that the sliding table assembly is out by 15 minutes of arc with the saw spindle (1mm over 227mm)......... I need to find out what went wrong and how to fix it. The alignment of the table assembly is fixed by two dowels.

 

[Vann]

...I prefer to see original buttons on machines but this would have probably had one of those square MEM horrible boxes.

I hate the MEM ones too!...

While I agree those square tin box Memota DOL starters are quite boring, I have a soft spot for the earlier ones such as these Memota Series 4 boxes (these are two I was doing up last year). The RH box is cast-iron, while the LH box is die-cast.

Or better still the even older Series 1, 2 & 3 "Darth Vadar" models.

And their Memrex isolating switches such as this 315-A 15amp "Ironclad" switch - in a cast iron case.

Cheers, Vann.

 

[MilesH]

I haven't worked on Wadkin machines but I've never had a very high opinion of the workmanship on the Wadkin Bursgreen machines.....
The latest problem on my BGS is that the sliding table assembly is out by 15 minutes of arc with the saw spindle (1mm over 227mm)......... I need to find out what went wrong and how to fix it. The alignment of the table assembly is fixed by two dowels.

I swapped the rise and fall casting with the one on my AGS and the alignment of the saw spindle with the sliding table assembly is bang on. So, either there is an error in the boring of the BGS casting or, more likely, the casting has warped post machining. Ironically, I had decided against using the AGS casting on the BGS before because this itself had warped, making it almost impossible to set up the slide mechanism on the trunnion bracket properly. So, I need to get the AGS casting ground flat to take the twist out. The BGS casting can be used on the AGS because the alignment is not critical. The table on that is free to be set to the alignment of the saw spindle. So, if you find errors, check the castings.........

 

[deema]

A little more progress. The sliding table is now fully assembled.
The assembly consists of a carriage which has two hardened and ground bars attached to its sides upon which the main table runs via 4 bearings. In the picture below on the left is the sliding table, and on the right the carriage withe the bars attached.

On one side, the two bearings are fixed and locate on spindles that go through the sliding table. The spindles come out within the slot on the upper table surface and have a slot in them for a screw driver. This is used for tightening the nut that holds the bearings onto the spindle. The fixed spindle is shown below.

On the other side, the bearings are held by cap screws, and the bearings are offset to create a cam which allows the hex nut that is an integral part of the bearing to be used to adjust the bearings to grip the carriage ground rods.

The table with all of the bearings loosely in place. Practically, I secure the two fixed bearings, put the carriage oni top of it and then mount the two adjustable bearings. The stops, which are the red pieces of plastic shown mounted below stop the table being able to be removed from the carriage (pushed off when in use). Hence, you need to put the carriage in place and then adjust the bearings to grip it.

withe the carriage mounted and the bearings adjusted to facilitate a smooth travel with no play the rest of the parts can be added.

Two studs are added to the carriage, these hold the entire assembly to the saw. They fit into slots in the table saw and Bristol levers secure it in place. The Bristol levers allow the whole assembly to slide away from the blade.

Two cast iron bosses are a friction fit and just tap into the carriage. The square headed bolts are used to adjust the sliding table position to the blade. I will show how this is done when we get to that stage.

Finally the table stop of lock is bolted on, and the cover is added over two of the bearings. This has wipers attached to the clean the bars. The saw was missing them and I’m currently making new ones.

 

[deema]

The saw was missing the grib that takes out anybokay in the rise and fall of the blade. We made a replacement, the dimples locate into the bolts and prevent it dropping out.

The grib is adjusted using 3 square headed bolts that have locking nuts on them. I start with the blade wound to it’s highest setting, adjust the top square headed bolt such that the saw will rise and fall smoothly, just a fraction back from it gripping and making rise and fall difficult. I them work my way down each of the bolts until each is adjusted in the same way. The rise and fall will now have a little resistance when rising and falling the blade. If it’s ‘free and easy’ they aren’t tight enough. A good coating of standard white grease is used as a lubricant.

 

[deema]

The Bristol levers were taken apart, cleaned and made ready for paint. They will get an undercoat and a black top coat.

 

[baldkev]

Looking great

 

[Gremmy]

Did you guys manage to get this fully finished off?

 

[Sideways]

We've both had a lot of priority interrupts from the real world over the last few weeks. We squeeze a few hours in when we can. The saw is close to complete and we HAVE been taking photographs along the way. I won't promise a date or I'll jinx us, but we will finish the build log and show the saw cutting