[ddmckee54]

Blender - Almost 50 years ago my first job was in maintenance in a plant that made plastic laminates of various types and thicknesses. I got some of the reject pieces before I left. I'm using a piece about 1-1/8" thick for the base. It's straight, heavy, and resistant to oil. The base for the Unimat is similar, but its' core is canvas instead of kraft paper.

Zabco - While I was looking on the Sherline web-site for repair parts last night I did see a calculator/spreadsheet that will give you the gears to use. I couldn't get it to work, it gives me a lot of #REF errors, but that could be because I'm running Open Office on this PC and not Excel.

After doing a couple of last minute outdoor jobs, like making sure the snow blower actually runs before I REALLY need it, I decided to take another look at the carnage from last night.

I've still got the one casualty, but it's not a fatality like I originally feared. I was able to thread a screw into one of the parts that were jammed together, and then clamped the head of the screw into my vise. A piece of wood, a smallish BFH, and a little judicious tapping later and they were apart. There were several non-factory burrs and dings that needed to be dealt with. The only downer now is that the drive pin that keys the gear to the shaft driving the lead screw is MIA. But that looks to be a piece of 3/32" rod, so replacing it is no biggie.

I'm still not quite back to where I was last night, pre-fall, but everything is moving much better than before.

I know Sherline says to use light oil to lube things, but right now all I've got other than 5W-30 is 3-in-1 oil - what do you guys use?

Don