I had a few spare minutes today so I finished cleaning up the lower thrust bearing and trunnion assembly. I also cleaned up the table and re-installed all of these things.
The lower thrust bearing assembly has a metal plate that slides into the trunnion support that was tricky to get out. I didn’t know it until I had already taken it apart, but there are little clips that can be pinched (presumably with pliers) that allows a little more room for this metal plate to slide out. I used a mallet and light taps to knock it loose. But I used the clips when reassembling.
As before, I cleaned up the parts with a little WD-40 and either wire brush/sand paper or scouring pad or some combination of these.
The result of the cleaning and reassembly is below:
Next was cleaning up the table. I had cleaned it a little bit with a razor blade and some 3 in 1 oil when I first got it. Now that the table was removed, I decided to give it some more attention. I hadn’t touched the narrow part of the table to the right of the miter slot. So it reflects how the entire table looked when I brought it home. The larger part of the table to the left of the miter slot has just been scraped with a razor blade and 3 in 1 oil.
I used WD-40 and the razor blade again. I also used a sanding block with 220 grit paper and kept WD-40 on it to keep it lubricated.
The slot for the blade had a fair bit of muck in it from this cleaning so I used some spare sand paper to scrape the slot out and then fed some paper towels in to clean it out. I used paper towels to clean up the mess as buff it out a bit as well. It isn’t shiny and new looking, but I don’t really have time to clean this up to like-new condition. I just want to get it less mucky and in good operating condition.
While on the subject of the table, I thought I’d include a photo of the taper pin. This was fortunately not lost with my saw, but when shopping for one, most of the advise I found said to be sure and make sure the taper pin wasn’t lost.
One of the issues was that I had no idea what the taper pin was when I was searching for an old Delta band saw so I didn’t know whether the pin was missing or not. So if you are asking, “What is a taper pin?” and “How do I know if the taper pin is missing?”. This is the taper pin and if it isn’t in this hole in the side of the table at the time of purchase, there’s a good chance you won’t find it.
If you are wondering what the taper pin is for, it is used to level the two sides of the table (on either side of the blade removal slot). You remove the pin to remove the blade, and replace it when the new blade is installed to ensure both sides of the table are level to each other.
If you search for it, you can find lots of handy ways to secure this pin to the table so you won’t lose it again. There are also threads on various woodworking forums on where to find suitable replacement pins if yours is missing.