Anyone seen pawl...

One of the biggest challenges facing anyone who wants to restore vintage tools is the lack of availability of replacement parts.  Manufacturers of woodworking equipment from about 1950-1980 did a fairly good job of keeping replacement parts in stock, but those days are long since past - the victim of mass consumer loyalty to  "Walmart Nation" and the flood of cheap, disposable plastic crap from China that passes for "tools" these days.  Why repair old when you can buy new... again and again and again?

On the (thankfully) short list of "missing items" from my DeWalt Powershop 780 Radial Arm Saw were 1) the anti-kickback pawl, which, according to everyone who has an opinion on the subject, is a critical component in safe ripping operations on these saws and 2) the arm shroud that covers the radial arm and is essential in keeping sawdust from gumming up the works.  Needless to say, both of these parts have long since disappeared from the inventories of both the manufacturer and their associated service centers. 

So, what to do?

Ebay is always a good place to start when looking for anything that you can't find locally.  Sure enough, a search led me to a couple of anti-kickback pawls available at auction.  Although both of them were listed as being for Craftsman Radial Arm Saws, each looked sufficiently close to what I needed that I decided to take a chance.  After a bit of haggling over the Internet, my replacement part was on it's way!

Imagine my surprise when, several days later, I excitedly unwrapped my new prize only to find that the diameter of the shaft was about ⅛" shy of the original.  After a few minutes of cursing the tool gods with the appropriate expletives, I came to the inevitable conclusion that "Plan B" was now called for.  Sadly, as is the case in most situations, "Plan B" is not even on the drawing board until "Plan A" goes swirling down the johnny pot.

My dilemma was lessened by the fact that a slot was machined into the saw blade cover that ran parallel to the anti-kickback pawl.  Further, to my amazement, that slot was exactly ⅛" wide.  The purpose for the slot was to allow for the use of a kickback clamp bolt to run through the assembly and tighten down against the arm of the anti-kickback pawl to hold it in place.  The task at hand was to take up the gap in the slot such that the clamp bolt could be drawn down enough to do what it was intended to do.

Remembering that I had some ⅛" flat bar steel buried in the garage, I decided to make a "shim" that would slide into the slot to the right of the pawl.  My main concern was not to overstress the metal in the saw blade cover and wind up splitting it by forcing the shim into place.  Not wanting to go from "bad" to "worse", I lubed the flat bar with some white lithium grease and carefully tapped it into the slot. 

Once the flat bar was in place, I used a Sharpie permanent marker to trace the layout for my shim.  Using a hack saw and a grinder, I shaped the shim to the layout lines and then drilled a ⅜" hole into it to allow the clamp bolt to pass through.  I tapped the shim into position and attempted to fit the pawl arm into the housing only to find that now it was too snug.  More expletives ensued.

I then decided that I needed to machine an angled slot into the shim that would allow for a bit more clearance for the pawl arm to pass through the housing...somewhere in the neighborhood of 1/16".  Unfortunately, my "machining arsenal" consists of the aforementioned hacksaw, grinder and a drawer full of metal files.

After an hour or so of cutting and filing down a groove in the shim (and raising two sweet blisters in the process), it started to bend of its own accord in the vise, which told me that I had reached the end of the line in terms of final thickness. With a bit more lithium grease, I tapped the shim home, slid the arm in place and viola, a jury-rigged retrofit made good!

The final result looks pretty good at a distance and not terrible up close!  The bottom line is that when restoring vintage tools, ingenuity and persistence is often necessary to compensate for the lack of available parts.  Think it out, go slowly, be ready to revise your plan at a moment's notice and just be dogged as hell.  More often than not, that recipe will take you where you need to be.