Refurbishing Atwater Kent Pot Metal Pulleys

[Winky Dink]

I started working on an Atwater Kent 30, and the first thing I noticed was that one drive belt was broken and all three pulleys were cracked and distorted. I did some research and found that these early pot metal pulleys usually needed to be replaced and saw some methods of producing new pulleys. However, the easiest route would be to pull some brass pulleys from a later AK model.





Easiest? I'll never fall into that trap! That's for normal people. Instead, I decided to refurbish the original pulleys by reinforcing them with epoxy resin.

Also, the bronze belts were in rough shape. A previous owner had even tried to solder the belts to the pulleys.



I let 3-in-One oil soak in for a few hours and removed each pulley in one piece--unlike the ones in the top photo.



To get good adhesion of the epoxy, I thoroughly prepared the metal: First, a degreaser cleaning in the ultrasonic to penetrate the cracks; then a water rinse followed by distilled water in the ultrasonic; then an alcohol bath to get the water out of the nooks and crannies; and finally overnight drying.



I brushed on the epoxy, trying to flow it into the cracks. When that was done, the pulleys were almost entirely coated with epoxy.



After 24 hours I sanded the epoxy back get roughly flat surfaces with particular attention to smoothing and properly shaping the perimeter surface that contacts the belt.



I cleaned the unbroken belt and burnished out most of the wrinkles. The pulleys got a quick coat of paint, and after it was reassembled the mechanism worked smoothly.



Well, this was all just for fun. I ordered new belts (adamsradio.com) and I picked up the cheapest possible AK 42 on ebay to get brass pulleys for the AK 30 and some power unit parts for my unfinished AK 42. Plus, now I'll have an extra set of pulleys, which is really good because you never know when you might get shipwrecked on a desert island...