Yates American J-120 Band Saw – Table and Trunnions

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Progress continues with getting the table cleaned up to be rust free and matching the rest of the saw. In its brief bout of outdoor storage, I think the table had gotten wet at some point. There was some rust on it that needed to be cleaned up, and everything just generally needed to be gone through. Not a big deal, as there wasn’t anything broken, so time to get to work.


This effort actually started early in the process, when my son wanted to help me with it. He rode along to go pick it up (and supervised), and was pretty excited to help in the shop. We had a shop day where we ended up doing quite a few things, one of which was he wanted to help me work on the saw. He helped me remove the trunions and blade guide from the lower casting of the saw.


After my son’s help, the lower trunions sat for a while, so I could focus on all the tasks I wanted to get done before we righted the saw a few posts back. When I came back to it, I wanted to start with cleaning the table. This meant I’d have to remove the trunnions from the table. This is the front, where there is a stop block to always return to perpendicular to the blade. Just taking notice of layouts.


When we were removing the table for transportation, Doug had remarked that the table trunnion was shimmed. Sure enough, shimmed it is.


I made sure to be careful removing the trunnion so I wouldn’t disturb the shims. I wanted to make sure I could get a picture so they went back where they came from on reassembly. I’m not sure why they’re shimmed at this point.


In that last picture, the trunnion was sitting just out of frame, when I saw the arrangement of the shims and the bolt holes. I couldn’t unsee it at that point, so now you can share in the smiley face as well 🙂


With the hardware all out of the way, the under side of the table got the same treatment as the rest of the saw. I went over it with a nylon cup wheel and some simple green.


For the most part the table cleaned up really well, but there were some spots of old rust. Some of it was almost like sand behind the paint (a casting that didn’t get cleaned, perhaps?). Regardless, I made sure to clean all of that up the best I could, and then painted on some rust converter to be safe. It’s the under side of the table, so much like the inside of the base, I wasn’t overly concerned with repainting any of it.


My favorite method of cleaning up flat machine tables is to start with a razor blade scraper before anything else. This removes a surprising amount of surface rust in a hurry.


I started at the front edge, and it uncovered the serial number stamping. Nothing fancy, as it appears it was hand stamped, but mine shows as #1115; neat. You can also see the effectiveness of the scraper approach.


About 15 minutes with the razor scraper had it looking like this. There was no heavy pitting of any kind, which was good. There were just a few scratches from prior use, but that was it.


Once I’ve gone over it with the razor blade, I make a couple passes with some WD40 and red scotchbrite pad under a quarter sheet sander. It’s far from perfectly polished, but it’s good enough for what I like. I feel as though you hit a point of diminishing return pretty quickly, so rather than spending hours taking it to perfection, I stop here and don’t worry about it. To each their own, though, as I do enjoy seeing some of the work others do when they go further than this.


Turning my attention back to the trunions, a whole bunch of time at the wire wheel in the buffer got them to this point. I used some fluid film to help protect things from rust, and used some paste wax on the bearing surfaces that interface with each other.


I reinstalled the front trunnion with the scale, as well as the stop block for the 90/0 degree angle.


I did the same cleaning, rust prevention, and paste-waxing on the rear turnnion. I referenced my earlier pictures to make sure I put the shims back where they were before. Again, just in case. I’m still not 100% sure why they were added, or if they’re strictly necessary (it’s a bandsaw, after all), but they’re there none the less.


I reinstalled the lower trunions back on the saw so I could put the table on. I installed the front lower trunnion first, then installed the rear trunnion with the table in place. Since they’re dovetailed in opposite directions from each other I had to leave one off and install it in place. Not the lightest table, but with a friendly 2×4 to help support some weight, it was manageable by myself. I also picked up some adjustable 3/8″ handles in place of the missing originals (the bolts were non-original and one was broken).

I do have a missing clamp block, though. If anyone reading happened to have one, let me know! Otherwise that may be another CNC project in the future (or cut and file).


Now it’s starting to look like a band saw again!


We’re really getting close now. With the trunnions and table cleaned up and reinstalled, I put a layer of paste wax on the table to protect it and keep things sliding well. The next phase will be starting to focus on the blade guides, and figuring out what I’ll do about those and the tires.

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