Last week my lathe wouldn't fire up anymore, it just groaned and I couldn't jump start it by spinning the sanding disk I had mounted on it. I've been using it mainly for sanding these days. I remembered from the instruction book that you need to blow the motor clean every now and then so I borrowed my neighbour's compressor and gave a a few good blasts. Nothing doing, durn... It's only a Canadian Tire jobbie, the one with the ugly yellow tailstock tightener (brain's taken a nap, forgot the proper lingo). Phoned around as they often have these lathes on sale this time of year. Turned out this model is discontinued but I managed to find one small town store that still had one left. Waddaya know, on clearance for $99 - cool, probably cheaper than a replacement motor. "I'll be right there, make sure you put my name on it." Hopped in the car and went to pick it up. Before removing the old headstock I figured I'd give it one more try by jumpstarting it. Waddaya know, it fired up :))) Borrowed the neighbour's compressor again and by this time the bench was clean so I could see all kind of openings, that I hadn't seen before, where I could blast the air through. Ran the motor and started blasting. Five minutes, and one huge cloud of dust later, I had me a lathe that started up properly again. Meaning of course too, that now I have a spare lathe (nope, not for sale) with 2 spare face plates. The moral of the story for this model, and probably others: it pays to do what the instruction book says - who knew... By the way, the product number for this 5 speed 37" spindle lathe is
55-4507 and there's still the odd store (as of today, Dec. 13) that has one left in stock. For 99 bucks you can't beat the price :))) Cheers and a Merry Christmas to all, Bart. - **botox treatments: taxidermy on the living**Check my most up to date email address at: