1956 Craftsman Benchtop Drill Press Restoration

Introduction

For the past few weeks, my dad and I have been restoring a 1956 Craftsman Benchtop Drill Press. I will also be posting photos of the disassembly, cleaning/painting, motor disassembly and fixing, and rebuilding the general assembly.

Shoutout to user jtbinvalrico on Garage Journal for inspiring this restoration in the first place! His work is amazing.

Here is a video of the drill press before we restored it and after we finished (you can really hear the difference - before, all the bearings were shot and made a crunching sad noise):

Here are some photos of the drill press before the restoration:

Disassembly

As a part 2 to the Craftsman Benchtop Drillpress original post, here are some photos from the disassembly. My dad and I are restoring a 1956 Craftsman Benchtop Drill Press. We are taking it apart, cleaning/sanding/painting/repairing it, and putting it back together.

It is readily apparent how oily, grimy, and generally disgusting the drill press was on the inside.

The spindle assembly after being pulled out of the drill press. The bearings are still present, one is visible on the far right of the spindle. They barely turned.

A closeup of the spindle assembly.

The head casting without the spindle assembly and the spindle lock.

The spindle assembly with the sleeve pushed up. You can see one of the bearings, which barely moved at this point (we are going to replace them.)

Removing screws from the head casting. These screws lock the motor bracket to the drill press.

The headstock after a considerable amount of cleaning.

Taking the chuck off of the spindle.

Taking the lock out of the bed.

Soon I will be posting more photos of cleaning and painting the drill press. The work is almost halfway done at this point in the process!

Cleaning

One of the main reasons my dad and I decided to rebuild the drill press is because it was kinda disgustingly dirty. 60 years of negligence and oil buildup had not done it well, and it was covered in grime. Here are some photos of cleaning, sanding, and buffing the drill press:

Cleaning the inside of the headstock.

Buffing the spindle assembly base clamp.

Sanding the bed lock handle.

Sanding with a finer grit to get more of a polish.

Cleaning the decorative band. I am pressing it on a wide PVC tube so I can get a good grip while not messing up the bend.

Buffing the feed return hub. I have my hair up and in my hood for safety.

Cleaning the exterior motor cap nuts. It turns out they are actually shiny gold (when I found them, they were dark grey)!

The shiny top of one of the buffed cap nuts.

The clean and shiny chuck.

Up next, I will be posting photos of prepping and painting the headstock, base, and bed.

Painting

After cleaning, it was time to repaint. We bought Rust-oleum Hammered Gold spray paint/rattle cans and Rust-oleum Flat Grey Primer. The Hammered paint was the closest we could find to the original 1950’s paint.

First, we covered the machined metal surfaces with FrogTape painters tape. We plugged up the holes we couldn’t cover with cork plugs from the craft store.

Then, we put on the primer coat for the Hammered to stick to.

Putting primer on the head casting.

Putting primer on the bed and the base. We put the bed on an old milk crate so that the raised portion could hang off without leaning on the wet paint.

Then a second coat on everything to make sure we had covered all of the spots.

Starting to apply the Hammered coat. It is already looking great!

Finishing off the head casting with a coat of Hammered.

Then, a second coat of Hammered was applied, and it was finally the moment of truth (did the painter’s tape and cork plugs work?)

*drumroll*

And it worked!

The painted motor mount.

Removing tape from the bed.

Removing tape from the head casting.

The inside of the head casting.

The top of the base. You can see the exposed metal clearly not painted, and the plate that we had taken off for painting.

Motor Repair

Next up was the renovation of the motor.

There were a few reasons we decided to restore the motor. Mainly, the pulley on the motor’s shaft was secured with a set screw. Over time, this set screw just kept getting tightened and tightened, ruining the shaft of the motor. The motor had two shafts, but the other would be going in the wrong direction. To switch the direction, we planned to flip some wires around inside the motor. Also, the motor sounded horrible because the bearings in it were old and ruined. Finally, the motor was really dirty and dusty.

First, we took off the base. The screws were super tight and had obviously not been removed very much in the past 60 years.

Next, (after separately removing the pulley) we had to remove the end caps, or the front and back of the motor. The screws holding the bearings to the end caps, which needed to be removed, had worn away and it was impossible to fit a screwdriver in to take out the screws. So, I cut a slot with a Dremel into the tops to that I could fit in a screwdriver.

With the plate off, I then removed the screws sandwiching the end caps around the metal band. You can see the messed up shaft on the right side of the motor below the screw.

With these out, I could finally take off the end caps.

We replaced the bearings. While replacing the bearings, we learned a lot - apparently bearings can measure in crazy ways, such as having metric measurements on the inside and imperial measurements (inches) on the outside!

The motor was now (almost) completely disassembled!

Next, we went through the lengthy process of redoing some of the major wiring. We replaced the power cord, rewired the wiring in the base, and flipped the yellow leads in the box to switch the direction of the motor. We also got a new switch!

After all of this, we reassembled the whole motor, using our photos as a guide. Finally, we had a correctly spinning, clean, and rewired motor!

Reassembly

Finally, after disassembling, cleaning, sanding, cleaning some more, buffing, cleaning even more, and painting, it was finally time to reassemble the drill press.

First, we did some of the minor reassemblies.

Spindle Assembly -- Specifically, I am knocking a bearing down onto the spindle with a PVC pipe to apply equal pressure around the whole bearing.

Next, I seated the bearings on the top pulley, which drives the spindle assembly.

Then, I put the spindle lock, the motor lock, and the bed lock (not pictured) in place.

I attached the spindle handles and then I inserted the spindle assembly.

I attached the decorations (the logo and the ornamental band)...

and I attached the motor to the motor plate and slid it into the head casting. The drill press is now complete and ready for the next project!