Parks' Wagon Shop Special

[Andy Dingley]

Anyone know anything about one of these ante-diluvian combination machines ?

It seems there's one nearby looking for a home, and there's a possibility of converting it for use in chairmaking. This means reworking the motor drive, rebuilding a few Babbitt bearings (which is why I've been aproached) and probably abandoning the planer and sawbench. This would leave a large bandsaw, a horizontal borer and a horizontal round tenoner. I'll need to meet modern safety standards for guarding, and quite probably a mechanical brake. I assume the planer and sawbench are simply beyond hope for achieving this.

Google and the OWWM site have shown nothing on one of these, and hardly anything on its cousin(?) the Planing Mill. Here in the UK they're _really_ rare.

I was hoping to finally see a square-head planer, but as these things were built in the '20s (?) I guess they're too late.

[My Old Tools]

I have seen a couple of them. The belts are all 2" canvas/leather and completely unguarded. They will be a real bear to guard to modern standards. The bandsaw may or maynot have some basic guards, but you can build them if missing. The shafts on the borer and tenoner are also unguarded. Just about any moving part is open to the world. I'd love to have one to play with, but not in a commercial shop. With any luck, some of the work may already be done for you. Good luck.

[Unisaw A100]

I've got a re-print in the archives on several Parks combos. Best I can figure is they were made towards the front end of the last century (teens/twenties) and up to at least the thirties.

UA100

[My Old Tools]

Do you ever sleep? 4:13am!

[Unisaw A100]

Sleep? I do that at work, of course.

UA100, early riser, late to bed, tired all the time...

[AAvK]

Sorry, off topic for this thread:

Hey Andy there's some free Alder, fresh cut, in Derby as announced in rec.crafts.woodturning. Thread is Is 'Alder good for turning?' Steve Bak. I imagine that is Derbyshire, long drive? If you go there you could visit Griffiths Engineering too!

Nothing could stop me from going there.

Alex

[Andy Dingley]

So, I got to see the beastie.

Until some time in the '60s, this machine was in regular use. But times change, and a not unreasonable trend towards guarding the whirling bits took it out of service. So it was placed in an old shed and left to moulder.

Fourty years later and I disturbed the cobwebs to dig it out.

As far as I can tell, the combination machine is really two machines on the same wooden frame. There's a lineshaft driven input shaft, then two separate belt-driven shafts at different speeds. The high speed shaft is the planer and sawbench, the low speed shaft the bandsaw, horizontal borer and tenoner. There's a steel angle subframe holding the tables up, but beneath that is a chunky timber frame and that's well rotten by now. The wooden runners for the old sliding tables (?) for bringing wheels and rims (?) up to the borer are just a memory.

All three shafts run on chunky Babbitt bearings. Which are wrecked. I wonder if these were ever used after the demise of the wooden frame ? By the looks of them, the shafts had had enormous runout when they were in use, as the bearings themselves look like the insides of a trumpet bell.

So, the plan is to reconstruct the bandsaw, borer and tenoner. Major rebuilding and guarding will be needed, but it's eminently practical. I don't think there's any hope of getting the sawbench / planer working to modern standards, but it looks as if these will simply unbolt ("bolting" being something of a vague notion in the current state anyway).

The bandsaw is large, although the frame is on the definitely skimpy side; narrow cast iron above, bolted steel and timber below, with some rather flexible joints. I think that old standby, the 2" x 1" box section steel will be in much demand.

[Larry Jaques]

On Fri, 22 Oct 2004 21:58:20 +0100, Andy Dingley calmly ranted:

Tres cool.

Will you rebabbit them or go to a new style, like pillow blocks or something?

Got it on your website yet? Please do so as it comes to life.

That should hold it. Hopefully, that pic I sent will help you figure out how it should actually look as a working unit.

[Andy Dingley]

Probably re-pour the Babbitt - so long as the shaft journals clean up well enough.

I haven't got any photos yet. Too small and dark a shed to get any. Hopefully there'll be some when it's all dragged out and moved to the new location.