Well we worked for about 90 minutes heating and pounding to make the very deep well socket "tool" to remove my 1.5" nut from the top of my quill that held my top spindle bearing in place. Once that was out we were able to gently tap the spindle out of the bottom of the quill through the top spindle bearing and then the bottom 2 bearings. The spindle was put between good centers and it measured .0115" runout at the part where it went into the two lower bearings. Folks that's 115 tenths!!!! That's a Lot of deflection. I was hoping we could improve things to perhaps under .002" but wasn't sure if we'd simply trash the spindle entirely. So after getting the spindle out we went to my buddy's shop where he has a hydraulic press. On his press he has a hand pump and a pneumatic operated pump.

We started with marking (mapping) the high spots. Luckily it looked like only 1 bad high spot. OK so that's good. I was worried it was bent in multiple places, but it looked like just 1 spot. We started with the press by going .005" then back to the centers to re-check, then back to the press to repeat the process. Each press took us 5 - 10 minutes to repeat the full cycle. We slowly worked our way up to .025" deflection (down) while pressing on the spindle. We had done this by moving up through at least 6 separate press/check sessions. Each time no change in the spindle. Wow. OK Now we were at the limit of what the hand pump could do.

Then we switched things up slightly. We did the math taking the thick part of the spindle we were trying to bend (1.5") and multiplied that by 6 as the one guy said to do in a video or post I saw. So we moved our V blocks out a bit more from about 6 inches between them to closer to 8. Hoping the added space would help let us unbend the spindle. Still nothing at .025" deflection. Now we hooked up the air and tried. This was a lot harder as his foot pedal would not fully disengage sometimes so when you reached the limit you had to quick UNPLUG the air line or yank hard on the foot pedal. My buddy had it mounted on the side of his press so you could use your hand to do it. It might have been better on the floor to use our feet ...thinking back on that? -Anyway, we pressed again and again, each time checking in between every cycle. Finally around .035" deflection (down) we got some correction in the spindle. We were scared we were going to shatter the spindle or something. Keep in mind up to this point we'd probably done 20 consecutive presses. Each with little to no effect. We were getting very frustrated.

But finally when we hit the .035" deflection mark, we started getting correction that we could read between centers. Pressed a few more times ...I think we went as high as .038" deflection. Twice the high spot moved a little because I don't think we had the V blocks perfectly centered with the hydraulic piston. That was pretty scary when it moved. You get a VERY bad feeling at that point that you're only going to make things worse....

But we kept at it and probably pressed another 20 times again AFTER we got that first noticeable movement. I won't go into all of the boring details but it was long hard and highly focused work. We were joking that we were using "CAVE Man" procedures because we had little other choice available to us. I certainly didn't have $2,500 lying around to buy a new spindle from a supplier or to have one custom made. This was my last best hope.

More to come. GF just got home... stay tuned!