Another nice score

[eleventeen]

Judging by the date code on the bad starting capacitor, LOL, it's a 1938 Cincinnati drill press. Have to spin the motor to get it started (how appropriate!)

Free. I have no place to put it, but I just couldn't let it go. So it is an outdoor drill press for the moment.

[SILVERGUN]

Are there any houses available on your street? 

[rafe]

that's a keeper ...keep it oiled and out of the weather......oh and it definately not a floor model it should be on a bench....I feel your pain(knee) ... :)

[PRR]

At least it has a motor.

My neighbor has a taller one where the belt goes down to a big flat pulley. Intended to be powered by a flat leather belt to a pulley overhead in the rafters, a "line shaft" which powered all the tools in the factory. He stared at it a while. Not hard to run a V-belt on the flat pulley from a regular motor. In the end he got a drill press at Tractor Supply.

[eleventeen]

You really have to wonder about those old factory scenes you see in photos with the overhead shafts running everything. They must have made the entire building hum. There were probably about 17 ways to lose your arm in a typical day.

I had to grab this drill press, it's like a pre-war herringbone drill press. Other tools from this (an estate I am handling) decent Sears tools: 10" table saw, 10" radial arm, belt sander, are just going to be given away. I can't get anybody to take these. I sold a nice jointer to my pal for $40 and a shaper to another pal for $75.

[eleventeen]

I expect to be able to find a repl cap...and, they are cheap, believe it or not. But I can't read the ufd value of the one on there. I can read a date code & 110 volts...I certainly know any cap on earth can vary +/-20%. Most likely, I am being over concerned as to getting a cap of correct value...as far as I know, all the cap does is to favor one winding over another and get the shaft turning one way in preference to the other...and then a cetrifugal switch inside the motor disconnects the cap. So most likely, and especially since we are talking Fred Flintstone electrics, I could throw almost any value >>AC rated<< non-polarized cap in there and it would work. There are $7 ones on ebay that look about right.

[PRR]

> made the entire building hum

Depends what turned the shaft.

Water-wheels early, big electric motor late, and steam dominated many decades.

But if you don't need steam for other purposes, by the early 1900s it was common to use an explosion engine. Kerosene and hot-bulb. There's a 50-horse in the next town. 9-foot flywheel. He fires it up a few days a year. At idle it sounds like half-sticks in a cast-iron trash can, 2 per second. Don't think I'd hang around when opened up to power dozens of lathes and drills.