Restoration Process for a Vintage DeWalt Radial Arm Saw

Restoration Process for a Vintage DeWalt Radial Arm Saw

In doing some research on sliding compound miter saws in mid-2015 I stumbled upon a photograph of a beautifully restored radial arm saw by Shane Whitlock and the bug was born.

I have always loved rebuilding and fixing things and am bored when I have no project to interest me. That image above led me to begin my quest for some of these beautifully built machines to bring back to life; even better than they were before. Thank you Shane for pushing me in that direction with your work.

I began the process by scouring eBay and Craigslist in my local area for DeWalt’s for sale. I found three MBF’s within 20-30 minutes’ drive and bought them all for $100-125 each. Why three you ask? I wanted to end up with two perfectly restored saws and felt having three would give me a better chance of not having to scour for parts. Well, being my usual forward thinking self, while I was searching for the MBF’s I came across a GW-2 in great condition and I just had to buy a GE I found on eBay in reasonable condition, both those were had for $175 each.

I will be commencing the project of restoring the first MBF in the coming weeks as I assemble some of the tooling I will need to do the job properly. As a teaser, I picked this up on one trip to pick up an MBF, as I felt for the price, it was a great deal, although I felt sorry for the seller as I basically got an unused Grizzly sandblast cabinet for $200. I also bought the Puma compressor (back corner of image) from him for another $100. This way I can blast my own parts the way I want them.

Look for my next post on the tear-down process, sometime early next week. I'll post photos of all three MBF's then, when I have them all in my possession.