I thought I'd document this repair here, since I don't have a blog or anything.

I found this lovely Remington Noiseless 8 at an Antique Mall in Springfield Ohio.  It's drawband was disconnected and it is missing a backspace and a margin release key.  Because of the issues, I took it to the counter and had them call an offer in for it.  While I was waiting for the offer to be accepted or rejected I examined it a little more and found a pretty disastrous problem. A cracked carriage race.





The crack goes all the way through and although the carriage would still roll, it had a pretty significant 'bump' when the bearings hit the crack.  I was afraid that without repair, it would eventually fall apart completely.

I decided to purchase it anyway, as I felt the price was worth the gamble.

Once home I devised a plan to try to repair it.  My first attempt was with JB Weld Steel Stik. This is two part epoxy putty.  This did not work.  It looked good, but rolling the carriage just once broke the bond and I was back to square 1.  I decided to try regular JB Weld two part epoxy and use some reinforcing strips across the break.

So... I cleaned off the Steel Stik as well as I could and washed all the parts down with acetone.  I pried up one edge of the carriage race and globbed some JB Weld in there, then I used two aluminum rods down in the carriage grooves along with some clamps to hold the whole thing straight.  I let that set up overnight with a lamp on it for some heat.




Once that was set, I needed to find a way to brace the break. Since the middle part of the metal part was curved, I decided to try some stainless steel mesh that I had laying around from another project. I'm hoping the mesh works something like rebar/remesh like what is used to reinforce concrete. I cut a small piece of that and tried to curve it a bit by hand, then spread JB Weld across the break and embedded the mesh into it.  I rigged up some elaborate clamping system with 4 clamps and some bamboo skewers (no pic, wish I'd taken one!).

This was the mesh I used, you can see the little rectangle I cut out to use as the brace. 


I again let that set up overnight and then ground it down a little with the dremel to clean it up.

The next step was to put another reinforcing bar on the carriage race.  Since this part was flat, I needed a flat strong piece of something to use.  My husband has a ton of stainless steel collar stays that he wears in his work shirts.  These seemed just about the right size, so I snagged on and cut it down with the dremel.

An unmodified collar stay:


First, I hot glued the collar stay on to the area I was going to 'weld' it and ran the carriage in to make sure it wasn't going to interfere with any internal parts.  It was good, so I went on with the plan. Again, I smeared JB Weld over the cracked area, and pressed the trimmed down collar stay into it.  I couldn't figure out a way to clamp this, so I just went back every hour or so and made sure it was pressed firmly down until the JB Weld started to solidify.

Here is a pic to show where the stainless steel was used:




The JB Weld cured again overnight, and I am very pleased to report that the repair seems very solid! The carriage runs without a bump now and glides smoothly all the way across.  I don't know how this would hold up to a big bump or something like that, but I do think it will hold up for normal use.

I then had to reattach the drawband, which was more of an ordeal than all the other stuff, lol.  Now, he is working well!