Bowtie Finn:
I have a 25" Cincinnati Bickford camelback drill in my own shop. It was built with a factory motor drive, the motor having a rawhide (or phenolic, not sure) pinion driving a cast iron bull gear on the lower cone pulley shaft. It has a 3 HP repulsion-induction motor ( 1 ph, 220 volts, nice classic open frame). I believe this drill was built for use during WWI as the quill depth graduations are inch and metric. With its own motor drive, set up for 220 volts, it could have been intended for use overseas in field repair shops. No line shaft necessary.
I paid 200 bucks for my Cincinnati Bickford drill, and from all indications, it had seen little use. One thing I did do was to clean and identify each "oiling point" on that drill. Then, I made an oil can for the job. I had a Eagle pump oil can I fished out of the trash when I was in college. It was in the trash because the flex spout was destroyed. I made a new spout out of 1/4" diameter stainless steel tubing, with a 90 degree bend so the spout is horizontal when the oil can is set on a level surface. I made a smaller nozzle type tip and silver brazed it to the stainless tubing. I made the spout nice and long to get into the hard-to-access locations on the Cincinnati Bickford drill. Before each use, I take a small stepladder (I stand 5'-10" tall) and get up on it so I can oil the higher locations. I make sure to oil down into the crown gear on the spindle. There is a hole in the web of this gear to drop oil down to the phenolic thrust washer between the hub of the gear and the top of the frame/spindle bearing. I go over the drill with my oil can before I start it up. I also take off the leather flat belt when the drill is not being used. This lets the belt shrink or keep its original length (more or less). Leaving a flat belt under tension over time in muggy weather will cause the belt to take a permanent stretch and be too slack to really transmit the load.
I did replace the thrust bearings on the spindle. The original thrust bearing was a ball bearing assembly which had gone to pieces years before. A previous owner was running a thrust washer between the hardened thrust races. I took mike readings and got new ball thrust bearings from Kaman Industrial Technologies. Not much money at the time. I also replaced the motor brushes as they were worn down and arcing badly. 65 bucks for a set of new motor brushes from Helwig Carbon. Helwig is a great outfit and we used them at the powerplant to supply large generator and exciter brushes. Helwig asked the type of motor and determined the right carbon density, as well as having a stock size with correct pigtail based on my measurements.
Aside from oiling the drill before each use, never get too friendly or too familiar with your camelback drill. It is a vastly different machine than a round-column drill with vee belt drive. These old camelback drills develop a great deal more torque than a vee-belt driven light-duty drill press. Make sure to clamp your work or clamp your vise to the table of the drill when you use it. I call it "dogging things down". I keep a couple of old olive oil tins on the base of my Cincinnati Bickford drill with various tee-nuts, studs, pieces of all thread, pieces of structural steel and angle drilled for the studs, large flat washers, slotted links, etc. This "jewelry" is handy to dog jobs or vises to the table of the drill. Even if you had an emergency "off" switch, or were able to declutch the drill (as from a line shaft) in an emergency, the stored energy in the rotating parts will cause that drill to continue coasting down. If some part of your anatomy is being clamped and held by the drill because a job spun on the table when the drill grabbed it, you are either going to get wound up with it, or have some sort of crushing injury.
Take the extra few minutes up front to secure or dog down your work before you use the camelback drill. For small diameter drills, you can setup a stop bar on the table (a piece of angle iron with a couple of bolts) to buck the work against. This will take the torque reaction. For larger drills, use slotted links, stepped blocks, studs, tee nuts, and whatever else you have to use to make sure the work is held solidly.
I also keep a set of taper-reducing sleeves and drift keys for knocking tapered shanks and sleeves loose hanging off the belt guard on my camelback drill. Years earlier, someone had made a belt guard out of woven wire mesh and angle iron. Looking at the riveting and bolting done to make that guard, it probably goes back to the 20's, before people would have used oxyacetylene brazing to fasten the woven mesh to the framing of the guard.
Here is a tip I've used for years: I got hold of some large "blanket pins"- look like safety or diaper pins on steroids. I use these blanket pins to hold and organize sets of box wrenches in my toolboxes. On my first job out of school, I saw the pipefitters taking welding rod, beating the flux off it, and forming "diaper pins" to hold their "strikers" (spark lighters for oxyacetylene torches) off the hammer loops on their overalls. I've made quite a few of these "blanket pins out of 1/8" diameter E 7018 welding rod to hold various tools that need to be organized and kept in one spot. A "blanket pin" made from welding rod hands off the guard of my camelback drill with a full set of drift keys.
Other items I keep handy by the camelback drill are pieces of hardwood and plywood. These come in handy if I am drilling thru a job of no great precision (like blacksmith or structural steel work), and keep the drills from running into the table. A piece of hardwood or plywood under a rough job will also improve the "bite", letting the high points on a job's surface dig into the wood, and improving the overall contact with the table of the drill.
These old drills are great machines, but you have to work accordingly. dogging jobs to the table is probably the foremost safety rule I can think of. No matter how much time you spend restoring one of these old drills, getting a flawless enamel high gloss paint job on it, polishing the machined parts, taking up excess play in the babbitted bearings and much else, at the end of the day, the drill is still an inanimate hunk of iron with no feelings for you. If a drill grabs and takes the job and the vise for a ride, and you are hanging onto that vise, that drill will not hesitate to wind you up with the job and vise. No emergency stop button or similar is going to save you in this sort of situation. These things happen in the blink of an eye, and the coast-down of the driveline in these old drills has enough stored energy to keep winding you in and dislocating, crushing, lacerating or breaking any of your body parts caught in the works.
I make a rule never to reach in or around the drill (or counterbore or reamer) on my own camelback drill until it has completely stopped turning. I also do not handle the chips barehanded. A steel turning (chip) can cut your finger to the bone and slice tendons before you know it happened. Do not attempt to remove or clear chips when the machine is running. Use a hook, pliers, or stout work gloves to handle the chips.
I've run jobs on my camelback drill where I was taking chips out by the wheelbarrow load. Cutting oil (except when drilling cast iron) never hurt. I use sulphur/lard containing cutting oil which I buy in gallon jugs at the local plumbing supply. It is used on pipe threading machines, and does fine for drilling in carbon steel or steel alloys.
I use ISO 46 tractor hydraulic oil in the bearings on my camelback drill and in all my old machine tools. ISO 46 corresponds to roughly an SAE 20 weight oil. Tractor hydraulic oil goes under an old designation of "DTE medium". DTE is an oil classification pre-dating automobiles and means "dynamo, turbine, engine". DTE series oils are mineral based, straight viscosity, and tractor hydraulic fluid will have antifoaming and anticorrosion additives. Nothing that will hurt any "yellow metal parts" (brass or bronze) on older machine tools.
My other piece of advice is try to use taper shank drills whenever possible. Turned shank drills (also known as "Silver and Deming Drills" or "blacksmith shank" drills) are OK, but the shanks more often than not get easily bent and chewed up. The torque needed to run larger drills will cause the turned shanks to often slip in the chuck jaws. Tapered shank drills will run truer, and with the tang on the small end of the taper, will have a positive drive coupling with the spindle. Turned shank drill rely on friction between the chuck jaws and the drill shank. Some of the turned shank drills have flats milled on the shanks, but after hard use, there may be gouges in the shanks and the shanks will almost always have a bend to them.
Accumulating taper shank drills is easily done, as they often go for small money at flea markets and similar. I am old school, so sharpen these larger drills freehand. Being able to sharpen twist drills freehand was a skill taught to me when I was a kid in Brooklyn Technical HS in the 60's. It was expected I would have this skill when I worked in machine shops. Unless you are doing toolroom work, sharpening a larger diameter drill freehand will work fine. It's amazing how a little nick or damage to the cutting lips of a twist drill will mess up the work, and more amazing how a quick touch up of a twist drill on a grinder will get that drill cutting like a hot knife thru warmed butter.
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