For want of a nail......

Sometimes it's the little things that get you. Like a set screw.

Sometime during the night it dawned on me that if the drive motor had quit the whole slab saw would shut down. So it had to be something else.

It also occurred to me that the drive motor is attached to the driveshaft with a single set screw.

So a while ago I pulled the housing for the drive motor off.

Bingo.

I was correct--it was the set screw.

I took the housing off and the bushing just fell off the end of the driveshaft and into the housing. I cleaned it up with Shooter's Choice degreaser, put it back together, and it's out there chewing on a really neat piece of agate that is dendritic on one side like Montana, and grades into a golden amber on the other side.

The one problem with all of this it that the thing is so old that a little oil seeps through on the driveshaft and lubricates everything, including the set screw. So it's not a question of "if" it happens again, it's a question of "when."

The distance between the motor and the cabinet of the saw is also so tight that you can't get a regular Allen wrench in there--it really needs one about 6 inches long.

I didn't have any Loc-tite, so next time I go to Home Depot I'll get some, and also look for a long Allen wrench in the right size so I can get some torque on it.

While I was at it, I took the tumbler apart. That one's easy. The motor is shot. No biggie--$14 at Graves. Cheaper than buying it from Lortone.

But that said, I surely do like my Lortone equipment.

Busted Again

Well, it looks like my old Lortone slab saw is down again. By the time I can afford a new one, I will have taken this one apart so many times I'll be able to build one!

This time it looks like the drive motor has gone bad. I have no idea what it will cost to replace it. I'm going to take it apart tomorrow in the daylight--I can think of one thing that might be wrong that I can fix--the Allen screw on the shaft may have worked loose. If that's not it, then it's a new motor.

It's a good thing I'm handy with tools!

In the beginning.........

OK, let's start with: I love rocks. I remember being about six or seven years old and reading a magazine article about mining opal in Australia. The idea of digging something so beautiful out of the ground, one small rock at a time, fascinated me. I wanted to go to Australia and own an opal mine!

When I went to college--Florida State University, class of 1975--I majored in biology but I had to take a few other courses in other sciences. I chose a geology course, thinking I would learn something about rocks.

NOT!

It was about planetary formation and plate tectonics and stuff like that, and after the first two weeks I was bored to tears.

Then real life intervened and I was busy making a living, and fast forward to four years ago. I happened to be in Michael's and saw a tumbler kit for sale and bought it on a whim to tumble some rocks. It was a miserable failure, but it whetted my appetite for rocks again.

So I got on eBay and bought a Lortone tumbler and some tumbling rough and got started. Now I have five Lortone double tumblers and ten tumbler loads going at any given time.

Then I found the local gem and mineral club--Tampa Bay Mineral and Science Club--and started learning wire wrapping. It wasn't long before I was cutting cabochons and learning silversmithing.

Then some equipment became available and I bought a very old Lortone 12-inch slab saw and a used Lortone combination saw/cabbing unit.

See how this thing kind of snowballed?