I've got this vintage piece as a present, a year or so ago.

To my surprise it worked. Fabulously.

The cuts were clean, the angles were reasonably true, and the upper table was stuck, together with the tilt angle...

If you look at this closely it's a piece of art, probably ~20 years old, almost no plastic in sight, over engineered aluminum parts, huge motor with no brake...

As much as I love it as is, I have some projects in line that need the upper table and some 45deg tilted cuts. So I decided to give it some love and make it great again, together with all its features. This instructable is this journey.

I hope you will find it informative and entertaining and it might even help you with your vintage machinery mending...

And if you find it really helpful, consider voting for me in the Repair and Reuse contest, thank you.

Also check this instructable in movie style.

Enjoy,

Dani

Turns out Compa is a well regarded company in the field of saws (www.compasaw.com). Unfortunately I couldn't find the specific model I have (Jet 250) and its origins, like when it was first introduced?

If you can shed some light on this, please add it in the comments.

Supplies

Nothing fancy, a socket set, several screwdrivers, allen set, soldering iron, and random stuff that we all hove around.

You might need some grease for the moving parts, thread locker, and several wooden pieces (more about this later)

Step 1: Take Apart

This step is self evident, you unscrew all the bolts and take apart the parts.

Then pile it up in one big mess, with hopes to put it back in the exact opposite order.

In my case everything was covered in wood dust, years of wood dust. Also, the bolts were untouched for years, so a significant amount of force, and WD-40, was needed to open stuff.

Step 2: Paint the Base

Once everything is one giant pile, the assembly begins.

The base is cast aluminum, and had large areas where the paint chipped off. I wanted to make it nicer, so scraped all the loose paint, masked the labels (I wanted to keep the heritage) and spray painted it with a black coat of bedliner.

This stuff is crazy taugh and gave the bare aluminum nice finish.

Step 3: Rotation and Tilt Angle Mechanism

Besides the challenging long 17mm socket (where the hell do you get one?), this was a straightforward thing.

When assembling it back, make sure you grease it extensively, all the interfaces. Don't forget to put the teflon ring back so it'll slide nicely.

Then turn it over and tighten the huge washer underneath.

Step 4: Put Back the Centering Pin

This pin is a whole assembly than locks the table at preset positions, and you can also make fine adjustments with it and use it to center the whole thing at 0.

Notice the pin is off center, so every rotation will rotate the table along with it.

So I've put it dead on 0 deg.

Also I was amazed about the amount of alignment possibilities of this saw! (this is a side note)

Step 5: New Cable

I had to open the handle.

Out of curiosity and also to make sure we don't have any hidden future problems.

To my surprise the insides were neat and simple w/o any issues. Well, besides the chewed up mains cable. So, this one had to go.

I bought a new cable and soldered the ends to the existing "end cable thingies", just because I didn't have these crimps and no crimp tool. All came out really nicely and with a shiny new cable it went back in.