Egg Beater Drill Restoration

I came across a dirty old Stanley Egg Beater drill a little while back and since it was dirt cheap I bought it. I've fixed a few of these up in the past but wanted to fully restore this one.

It came out exceptionally well and it very smooth running, I'm so happy with it I'll probably do the same on a few other drills I have.

• Old Egg Beater Drill
• Paint Stripper
• Paint Stripper
• Nickle Plating Solution
• Wire Brush
• Oil
• Sandpaper
• Varnish
• Stainless Steel Bolt
• Grinder
• Drill
• Safety Pin
• Black Paint
• Orange Paint
• Hammer

Dissemble all the parts of the drill, while most of the parts simply unscrew you will need to use a pin-punch to drive the pin at each end out you can remove the round shafts.

Wash everything down to remove any oil or grease, this is important as the grime will protect the paint from the paint stripper. Now apply a coat of paint stripper and allow it to melt the paint. Scrap the old varnish off the handles and sit them aside. Use a wire brush or wire wheel on a grinder to remove the old paint from the metal parts. You can use the wire wheel to clean up all the other metal parts as well.

The Chrome plating on this drill was flaking and falling off in places, the only way I've found to remove this is to sand it off. For the round parts use a bolt as a shaft to secure these in the drill and some sandpaper to remove the old plating. You can't use sandpaper on the part of the chuck that has been knurled, but I used a small wire wheel on an angle grinder to remove the old chrome.

I had to use some tape around the bolt to bring it up to the correct diameter to keep some of the parts centred.

I used a magnet to hold the handle lever and sandpaper on a flat board to clean that part up.

I used a very similar method for cleaning the wooden handles, use a bolt through the centre to hold them in the drill. This will allow you to get a great finish on the wood and it's really fast.

I won't cover how to Nickle plate items, I just used this method. I used some Vaseline on a small paintbrush to cover the thread and other areas where I didn't want Nickle plating. I then wired up the parts and gave them a medium coating of Nickle.

The first step is to clean the parts with some methylated spirits or acetone. It is critical to remove any Vaseline from the previous step. Now you can give the parts a coat of metal primer.

I started the process by giving all the wooden parts a coat of linseed oil. Once this had dried off I gave the parts severe coats of polyurethane until I got to the colour I wanted

I then used a small amount of epoxy glue to fix the metal caps back onto the handles.

Finally, I glued the handle shaft back into the main handle, it was a good fit and probably didn't need any glue, but I didn't want it to work loose later on.

I bought an M6 bolt that was long enough to be able to cut the thread off and have a 6mm shaft that would still be longer than the old shaft.

The easiest way to make the new shaft is to stick it into an electric drill and spin it against a bench grinder until you get a nice dome shape. I then repeated the process on a buffing wheel to get the dome to a perfect finish.

I then cut the bolt off to a little longer than it needed to be so I still had enough length to hold it into a drill press. I then used a Dremel to grind the step into the shaft. It needs to be able to fit snugly onto the crank shaft but still have enough length so the handle can turn freely.

I then trimmed off the part of the shaft that was in the drill.

I was missing the springs for the chuck, and after a quick search online I found a good photo of some next to a part of the chuck. I downloaded the photo and after measuring the same part of my chuck I made a template to the correct scale and printed it out. I've attached the template so you can use it.

I cut up a few safety pins for the spring steel, then using a small pair of pliers bent them into the correct shape as the template.

These chucks can be a little fiddly to reassemble, I found an easy way is to hang the three springs on the circular part and then connect the three jaws. Then you can drop it into the chuck body and screw in the last part.

To assemble the crank you will need to use a ball-peen hammer to peen over the part of the shaft that pokes through the crankshaft. You will need to sit the dome of the shaft onto something solid while you peen it over.

As a bonus using a stainless steel bolt will prevent it from rusting inside the wood and ceasing up.

Slide the main handle into the body of the drill and through the gear, then using a small hammer and pin punch drive the pin through the hole to lock everything in place.

Now apply some oil to the ball bearing and into the hole, then drop the ball bearing into the hole. Apply some oil to the drill shaft and slide it into the body of the drill and through the gear like the other end, the only difference is this time the pin goes through the gear and shaft, not the body.

The side handle and chuck can now be screwed onto the drill.

You need to apply a small amount of oil to the axle on the side and then slide the main drive gear onto it. You can drop the crankshaft on and slide it into the locked position, now just put in the screw and you're finished.

There is a small hole in the drill body that goes through to the spinning shaft just below the chuck, this is an oil hole and you should put a drop of oil in there periodically.