Moses

I have had a similar problem. The first time it happened I was in the middle of a project so I flipped it upside down and did a quick cleaning of the plastic/nylon gears and the threaded rod that raises and lowers the blade. After it happened to me a second time I did a little more complete job. The first thing that I noticed was that the crank handle will fail before any real damage is done. The handle just spun on the shaft. Not sure if this is part of the design or just lucky. The gears and the threaded rod (58) were caked with saw dust and after I cleaned them both up along with the guide rods (56) I lubricated everything with a spray silicon lubricant. I will keep an eye on it to make sure that the silicon is sufficient to keep the gears in good shape. My hope is that the silicon lubricant works and it should keep saw dust from building up in the gears and the threaded rod.