The machine is badged "M.B.T., W. Thornley & Sons Pty. Ltd., St. Peters N.S.W. [Australia]".

April 2002. I'd stumbled across WoodCentral's Shop Shots. Amongst the pictures there were several large old industrial woodworking machines people had picked up for cheap. I was completely jealous and wanted one bad. The weekend after, I'm looking through the classifieds and I read an ad in the machinery section, "Woodworking, 1939 M.B.T. Offers over $200 (US$104)". Call up, seller doesn't really know what it is but he's just a couple of blocks away. Must be fate. I'm there in a flash and he tells me the story of how in 1939 his grandfather bought his "Triton". My heart sinks but upon seeing the machine I pleased to see its definitely no Triton. It wasn't the giant industrial machine I was coveting but it was old and I could see some charm under all the rust. It consisted of a 10" tilt top table saw, a 6" jointer and a third spindle with a two speed pulley. I was told the spindle had attachments for both a disk sander and a simple horizontal borer, but neither were with the machine.

I must have had my rose coloured glasses on that day. "Bit of rust, no problem, electrolysis will take care of that". "Broken trunions, should be able to sort something out". "No fence, hey just send it along if you find it in your grandfather's stuff". "Motor runs but trips the breaker? Probably just need to clean the sawdust out of it". I looked it over carefully, considered everything but all I could see was what it was going to look like after restoration. "Yeah, I'll give you your $200 (US$104)". The guy was obviously stunned, then shook my hand before I could come to my senses. During all of this my father is standing there with me and never once does he try and be the voice of reason. Should have taken someone else, he's liked old junk for a lot longer than I have.

Here she is. It came mostly assembled and I did take "before" pictures, but it seems there wasn't any film in the camera. These pictures are after disassembly and accurately show the state of the machine as received. From my wife's reaction when she first saw it you'd think I'd dragged home a random scoop of rusty steel from the scrap yard. Looking at the picture now, I can see why. I know I paid entirely too much for it but if I'd left some low offer and someone else had taken the machine it would have burned so bad.

The machine is of fairly light construction except for the very sturdy base. The castings are fairly thin, but of very good quality. The table surfaces all appear to be ground. (Update. They are in fact not ground, but finely machined). In fact the quality of manufacturing and components is high all round. All spindles have ball bearings, the spindles have grease nipples and hex grub screws (modern for the time) are used throughout.. While the machine has been made to last, the design is very simple in many places, presumably a cost cutting feature.

This was a poor choice for a first restoration/rebuild. Apart from the fact its about the saddest bastard of all time, the machine has many parts, the complex castings are difficult to clean and the baked enamel paint is difficult to strip. The cleanup is coming along but it still needs a lot of work and parts to get it going.  The original motor is very large and heavy (I know, I crushed a couple of fingers trying to get the motor assembly off the machine), rated at 0.8hp. Its an open air cooled design and was jam packed full of sawdust. Sadly, a winding is clearly burnt out. All bearings in the machine need replacing. Both table saw trunions are broken. The grandfather had the table propped up with an old car jack and had apparently used it like that. It has the fence rails, but no fence. Amazingly, it does still have the mitre gauge. One of the height raising pinion gears is stripped. The "throat plate" is broken in two. All but one of the pulleys were either damaged or got damaged in disassembly.

I've found a little company info from public company records. Apparently began in 1920, at some point changed their name (and presumably direction) to do with environmental systems, then deregistered in 1996.

October 2002. The restoration had been put aside for quite some time and I decided I wanted to make some progress. The jointer is the most complete part of the machine and I'd already cleaned much of it up so I decided to focus there.

Cleaning up the painted parts for this machine has proved to be very tedious. The right way would be to sandblast, however I have none of the necessary equipment and paying someone to do it would get expensive quickly. My technique for cleaning a part goes something like this.

• Scrape off as much of the "sawdust-mache'" as possible.
• Knock off as much paint, loose rust and dirt as possible with a wire wheel. A cup wheel in an angle grinder works best but its hard to get into all the nooks and crannies so I use a few different types chucked up on a drill as well.
• Electrolysis until most of the rust is gone. There is usually substantial paint buried under the rust. The paint is baked enamel and the electrolysis won't remove it. It will however make the old paint go all slimy, necessitating complete stripping.
• Strip with paint stripper. Baked enamel does not strip well - only a thin layer is affected and it just turns to gooey slime. The slime must be scrubbed off the castings with a wire brush. It gets flicked everywhere, always manages to find some skin and oh does it burn.
• Back in the electrolysis to remove the remaining (and any new) rust and hopefully any stripper that might be hanging around.
• Rinse with water, towel dry, then dry with hair dryer. A very thin layer of rust still manages to form in the time it takes to get a large casting dry.
• A final wire wheeling. This cleans the black oxide stuff off really well.
• A final wipe with mineral spirits to clean, mask off, then paint. I use 2 coats of rust-whatever-brand-name-you-like in a spray can.

The jointer all spruced up. For cosmetic reasons only the tables could handle being ground. They have some pitting and a few small anvil dings. It would also allow filling the small chips around the mouth with weld. I'm calling it "a fine patina proudly displaying the history of the machine" and leaving it at that.

From behind, showing the fence adjustment mechanism. Certainly not the most advanced design around.

Shot of the base casting showing the table height adjustment mechanism. To adjust table height the table retaining nut underneath must be loosened off, then tightened after adjustment. I've seen a similar setup used on old 4" jointers, only more user friendly - a locking knob instead of a nut or sometimes with a lever actuated cam.

Detail of the 90 degree ways.

November 2002. I now have the stand done, giving me a platform to assemble the rest of the rebuild upon. Some time back I took the stand to a sandblaster who said it would cost $60 (US$33) to blast. Being cheap, I decided I'd do it myself. From now on I'm factoring my time into expenses. Even using minimum wage, sandblasting would have been better and I wouldn't have had to do any work. I ended up using electrolysis, then knocking off the thick black residue with a wire cup brush in the angle grinder.

Here's the stand bubbling away in the electrolysis "tank" I made with scrap wood, nails and a tarp. Lots of fun. Now, lets see, what did all this cost me:  phosphoric acid de-ruster (which I tried first but was too slow), tarp, water, power, washing soda, one and a half wire cup brushes. Oh yeah, and a new battery charger to replace my father's which died. Yep, good savings there Einstein. I should have taken a picture of myself after the wire brushing - I looked like I worked in a coal mine.

The painted stand with some components mounted on it. I even splurged for new mounting bolts. The old ones were very rusted, some were mismatched replacements and some broke during disassembly.

A close up of one of the feet. They are very heavily pitted. It would seem the machine had been sitting outside on wet ground for some time. I had though up all sorts of fancy solutions for getting the stand on wheels but in the end I just attached some old TV castors through the existing holes in the base. I finally did something the easy way - its all I need for this machine.

I'd also been working on the sanding/boring spindle assembly which is now mounted on the stand. It still needs a new 2-step pulley, the spindle attachments, auxiliary table and lock knob for the table height adjustment. My metal lathe has been getting mostly used for shining stuff up. I just chuck a round thing up and go through the grits of wet and dry paper. You can see the end of the spindle has come up all bright and shiny, with the exception of any deep pitting or dents. The jointer pulley shown earlier was also done this way.

December 2002. I've reached a point where I have to put this machine aside for a while and attend to some of the others in the queue. It needs many parts, some I'll try to buy, other's I'll have to fabricate.

Here is how it stands at the moment. I have most of the saw painted and assembled on the stand, along with the jointer chute and motor mounting plate. The saw table is propped up, resting on its broken trunions. The original switch was missing but I "borrowed" a nice cast iron one off another old machine I sold. I found some some larger castors in a recent auction lot so I fitted them and now it rolls much easier.

After my previous update I gave up on the paint stripper approach and went out and purchased a siphon feed blasting gun, some garnet media and made up a small cabinet. I borrowed my fathers "2HP" hardware store special compressor and got stuck in. Its slow going but is good for parts that can be held in the hand. It was too tedious for the saw base and table castings so I just took them off to my local blasting place. It cost me about $13 (US$7) per piece which isn't too bad, although his sand is course and the resulting finish quite rough.

Here's what it still needs:

• Table saw
• A pipe rail fence. It does have the 1/8" pipe rails which I haven't cleaned up as yet in case the fence I get is a different size.
• Mitre gauge stop. Based on my interpretation of the sellers version of his grandfathers description, its supposed to have one of those cut off stops consisting of two pieces of rod, one with short right angle bend at one end.
• Throat plate insert. The original is broken in two. Its cast iron and was no doubt machined in place at the same time as the rest of the table. I'm thinking a piece of aluminium will have to do.
• Both trunion pieces that attach to the table are broken. They are identical and I have the pieces for a complete one so all I have to do is make a pattern, have them cast and then machine them. Right. A bit beyond my current machining skills and lathe tooling at the moment.
• The height raising setup needs a new shaft, one new pinion gear and a hand wheel. I have a hand wheel that is a fairly close match for the machine however it may be a little small.
• Height and tilt indicator rods.
• A new pulley, in this case its a generic item.
• Jointer
• Guard spring.
• Auxiliary spindle
• A locking knob for the table.
• Auxiliary table surface.
• A sanding disc.
• A new pulley. This one is a two-step, one with a large diameter for sanding and the other small diameter for boring.
• Other
• Motor and wiring. The original motor was, what's the correct term, two pole? Half the RPM of most newer motors. I want to use the original 3 step drive pulley so I'll hang out for the right speed motor, preferably of the correct vintage.