Hi, Folks, Thanks for your encouragment to use JB Weld. It took a bit of practice but I finally got the mix right. The project needing mending is a 1916 stencil-cutting machine. It's a 40-pound castiron boatanchor, really shaped kinda like one, whose only purpose in life is to cut leters and numbers into card stock so that the finished stencil can be fed through another machine so as to print a short missive such as an address on envelopes or other stuff to be mass-distributed. I had to reattach the platform that holds the feedrollers that pull the cardboard strip used as backing for the cutting process. Now they work flawlessly. I also had to reattach a little handle and a fitting for a pulley. All this damage happened in shipping even though it was packed very well. Cast iron apparently doesn't improve with age. When it comes time for me to pass my typewriter collection on, I'm gonna disassemble this beast and pack all the parts separately.If that's all you care to know, stop reading, but for anyone who might be interested, here's a further description of the thing. The base is circular, about a foot in diameter. The front is flat, though, as there's a shallow drawer mounted underneath that contains a reel of thickish cardboard about a quarter-inch wide used as backing. It's fed out the right side, over a pulley and then through guides so it's positioned under the 5-inch wheel containing the letters and numbers. You turn the wheel to the desired character and pull down on this paper-cutter style handle and a plunger depresses the pawl containing the latter and punches the cardstock. That backing material's no good at that spot, so it's fed a bit to expose a new surface. There's a bunch of linkages to prevent two characters from being punched at once. All the hardward associated with that lever is affixed atop an arched frame bolted onto the base. The sides of that arched frame are about 2 inches across and a half inch thick with a square cross member about an inch in cross section. The cardstock is held in a clamp mounted to an inch-wide flat bail that is also moved along after a letter's punched. It can be moved back and forth so about 7 lines can be punched. Now you see why this thing weighs 40 pounds? It's painted all black. It's not at all pretty, but it's pretty impressive. Jay
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