Restoring an Highland park E10 combo unit

Hello Erich and welcome to the forum. How far south in Florida are ya? St. Pete here.

First off, I believe that you have the model E10. That is a great combo machine. Where the heck did you manage to find two of them in Florida (that I didn't find them!)? Nice score, should be fun restoration projects! I've done a couple similar machines myself. Can you post pictures?

I would go with a sintered blade. The head at the end is for a polishing pad, not really called a flat lap.
We'll get to that later as you can deal with it at any point in your restoration.

Here's one of mine, you can see they clean up nicely -

before


after


Are these two machines going to be the whole of your rock grinding shop?
What I'm asking is if you are going to have other machines.

Reason being, that two of these combo units aren't really what you need. One would be a fantastic base unit for working with rocks, but the second one is too redundant. What do you need two saw / grinder combos for?

I would suggest a second machine that is just wheels. Whether they are diamond/SiC wheels or expanding drums, is up to you. Something like this but with two expanding drums that you can change the belts out on would be perfect. Or there are many other type units that would do the same or similar job.



With expanding drums, you just change out the sanding belts to move to different grits.
Expanding drums shown on the close end in this photo.



Personally, I would restore the better of the two units, and list the other for sale on craigslist or somewhere and then get a second machine designed to do what you need. You could put two coarse grit wheels on your saw combo unit and figure out how you want to go from there as you are working on your restoration.
I would probably go with a 60 and 100 grit wheel combination, 100 and 220 would be my second choice. Lots of options!

Hope this helped a little. We'll be here for further questions and watching your restoration project with interest.
Figure out how to post pictures, we're a visual bunch and love pictures!

Again, welcome -
 

Another suggestion. Since the older HP machines are highly sought after, If you do a very nice restoration on both machines, you could sell both & get nearly enough for a new all diamond machine. There are many of us, myself included who love the old machines, and will pay top dollar for nice ones.

Don

"Grinding wheels can be changed and replaced in a matter of seconds."

That's funny!

The piece in your big lot auction? Saw that, nice! Wonder if you could take it to a local metal shop and have them make copies for not too much money?

Sorry about the hijack Erich. We tend to go off topic at the drop of a hat around here!

Thanks gentlemen for responding to my questions and I'll try to answer yours.
First off, I'm in Boca Raton, Fl - not noted as a hotbed of the Lapidary hobby as all we have in my area is sand and coral rock. Not even the agateized coral found up by the Tampa area...
One of my units works well but the other needs new wheels and blade. I've gotten the blade off the disassembled unit but I'm having difficulty getting one of the sealed bearings off to replace the wheels. Whoever had it last didn't maintain it properly so the arbor is rusted just enough to block my attempts to remove the bearing. I'll try the heat gun treatment after trying to fine sand the arbor.
As far as the extent of my tools for the hobby, I eventually want to get either a 14" or 16" slab saw.
While having two of the E10 HP units, my thought was I could get away cheap with cabbing by having 4 different grit wheels plus the 2 discs at the right side of the machine instead of buying an 8" cabbing unit like the "CabKing" unit I've been thinking about. Do you feel I should re think this plan and sell one unit and spring for something else? As I mentioned I am new at this and very open to ideas and don't plan on doing any impulse buying of a 15 hundred dollar or more machine.
I'm fast approaching retirement age and am just looking to have a fun hobby. I love rocks and always have, I get a kick out of cutting a new rock to see what's inside it.

Have you tried something like PB Blaster to soak the stuck bearing for a day or two? May be worth a try before going to heat.

I told you what I would do - go with an arbor of some type with a couple expanding drums. You can get different grit sanding belts to run the entire range that you could get in more expensive wheels.
I have belts from 100 (I'm sure they make even coarser, but I don't need them) to 25,000 diamond, From there you go to your polishing pad with diamond paste.

That just seems the least expensive way to do what you are wanting to do. There may be better options, like a fancy 6 or 8 wheel cabbing unit, but the price just went up.

Trying to wrangle a cabbing station out of two of those units you have just doesn't make sense. (to me)
Reckon where there is a will there is a way.
Maybe if you put an expanding drum on the end of one unit... (?) would take some MacGyvering.

Sell one and use the $$ to get the machine that would round out your set up with the kept unit you already have.

Never taken one apart, but if the shaft is 3/4" all the way through the saw, I don't see why a person couldn't put 2 expanding drums on the saw end. Should be room for 2. But you'd need to fabricate a hood extension & drip pan.

I'd change out the SC grinding wheels for a couple of diamond grinding wheels tho. It's a hassle to change those inside wheels, and diamond wouldn't need to be changed nearly as often as SC wheels.

Glad you were able to get everything apart.

Changing the belts actually does take seconds. If you have the drums doubled, like in the machine I posted on the last page, it takes a couple minutes to change the belt on the inside drum, because it has to be slid over the outside drum.

The water valves that you are missing are available at Home Depot. Not original, but they do the job.

Equipment hasn't arrived yet Bob. I'll take a pic of another unit in the HP catalog. It'll give him the idea.