One of our neighbors is retiring and moving to the coast, so he had a shop garage sale this weekend. I picked up a little of this and a little of that. Included in my haul were two old push drills. One is a Goodell-Pratt and the other a Millers Falls. Both are model 188A as Millers Falls merged with Goodell-Pratt in the early 1930s. There’s a comprehensive set of pages on the Millers Falls company here, with detail on the push drills here.
The two drills.
Ok, bear with me, this is a little boring…follow the text around the handle…
Pulling down on the catch allows the cap to rotate, exposing the drill storage compartments by size…
The other one…
I know, exciting!
End on, with another earlier Greenlee drill I have. The caps on the 188As Seem to be riveted to the handle, where the earlier one uses a screw.
To disassemble I pushed down on the drill slightly to take up some tension.
And unscrewed the barrel.
It’s stopped by the chuck…
The chuck. Notice the pin.
The chuck cap unscrews, although that wire ring acts as a spring detent so you have to wiggle and pull to get it all the way off.
I clamped the knurled ring in the plastic jaws of a vise.
And unscrewed the nut from the handle.
The spring has a wooden guide – which is interesting, if you think about it.
The other 188A has a screw instead of a pin retaining the jaws. I was unable to punch or press the pin on the other one out, so I gave up…
With the screw removed the jaw assembly comes out. Notice how dirty it is.
Two pieces and a spring for tension.
The drill shanks are cruciform in cross section.
They engage the jaws thusly.
The screw and nut are a fast helix.
An 8 start thread.
When the drill is pushed down, 1-1/2” of travel turns it one revolution.
A little cleaning and oiling and the drills are almost nearly as good as new. And every now and then I’m sure I’ll use one.
