Reclaiming a Saw

I was recently gifted a nice little band saw that had been taken out of service because the work-holding vise had literally broken off during use. I immediately set out to restore it to rude health and put it to work! Here it is ready to rock:

Of course, it wasn't quite like this when I got it.

The vise was off the machine and in a pile of bits, and the feet were missing because it had been mounted on a stand. I received some rubber feet but no hardware to mount them. That was the first task, to use the lathe to make some custom-fit standoffs that the rubber feet would slip over:

Once done, I could mount them on the saw (fortunately I had the right M6 X 25mm bolts in stock) and slip the feet on. Job done, and it worked great - level, steady, non-slip.

Then for the harder part - fixing the vise. The part that sheared off was a post for the vise screw, and looking at the remainder, it was easy to see why - the cast iron was so porous it looked more like sand than metal!

I put the yoke in the mill and aligned the end mill by eye. A light test cut showed the alignment was good, but also highlighted just how bad that cheap Chinese junk was. Look how crumbly the metal is:

Another problem was that the original post only extended into the yoke for a short distance. I elected to drill it right through to 1/2" (my largest drill bit) and then mill through to the final 5/8" diameter:

I made a new post out of carbon steel, which ain't gonna snap. The rest of the vise will fall apart around that! I epoxied it in place with JB Weld, and left it overnight:

Today, I reassembled the screw mechanism, and was ready to test.

You can see the reassembled saw as the first picture in this post. After a successful first cut on a small piece of aluminum, I decided to give it a workout. This piece of steel rod, one inch in diameter, had a very crooked cut on the end:

It took less than a minute to slice through, and it looked pretty straight:

Better to be  sure - it's a great cut! I like this little saw! Many thanks to my benefactors who cast it aside in the first place. I already have some interesting ideas on how to improve it, including a much better vise in place of the one I  just fixed.