Machinery made during Tsar Nicholas II

Call museums who might be interested...

Thos are interesting machines, and they were very common back then.

They're a good reflection on how industry has evolved in the US and in western countries in general. They were used for flat machining of long surfaces, obviously -- steam locomotive parts, mating surfaces for rolling-mill parts, marine-engine parts, and machine tool beds. Typically they machined flat mating surfaces or flat bearing surfaces.

A lot of them were converted to "planer-mills" in the '40s and '50s. The single-point tool was replaced by a milling head. But the number of jobs for those long travels has diminished, so most of them have been scrapped.

There are giant behemoths. Moving them to preserve their working condition (as opposed to scrapping) is difficult.

i

Museums have endowments and grants - deep pockets. Get good pics and shop it around before destroying.

Hobby guys buy planers like they were gold. Seriously. Do NOT scrap them! They will take a little while to roll over..but they WILL sell for far more than scrap price.

And there are a number of commercial businesses that use planers as well. Photograph very well..and put em on Ebay..AFTER looking on the net for pricing. Depending on the size..Ive got at least two clients that might be interested in owning a good operational planer

Gunner

The Henry Ford Museum has some amazing stuff on display.

Let's get real, guys, those museums do not have giant endowments, giant machinery moving budgets, or interest in oddball machinery that visitors cannot relate to.

If those clients of yours have actual money right now, I am interested, if not, they go to scrap yard. These are appx. 25-30 feet long.

i

Most museums aren't going to be interested unless those are historically important models -- one of the first (they're not) or one of the best or most innovative (who knows?).

I learned a lot when I tried to donate my 1917 Taylor & Fenn knee mill to the American Precision Museum in Vermont. I even offered to haul it up there.

We had a long talk. They were very nice about it but they made it clear that the machines they want are the ones with historic significance. Knee mills from that era are a dime a dozen, and there were dozens of companies making them.

There were a *lot* of planers around in those days. If you had one of the much rarer travelling-head planers, it would be more likely. But they were as big as a house.

I still have overhead shafting and wheels throughout the factory. Lots of people, organizations and museums wanted them but nobody offered to come and disassemble them and haul them away. It seems there is no cash available even for the legwork yet alone to pay scrap value. To me, the stuff isn't in the way so I forget it's there.

email me some photos, include closeups of ways, planer heads and drive mechanisms.

gunnerasch at gmail dot com

Also send them to my buddy Jim

qmachiningjim AT aol.com

And yes..they have real money

There are folks out there with actual uses for planners

Gunner

Sadly, I think you're 110% correct on that.

The H Ford does have some stuff ordinary visitors can't easily relate to (braiding machine, an entire multi-MW steam electrical generating plant), but I doubt they'd have any interest in unsolicited old stuff unless there was a REALLY interesting story behind it (and even then, maybe not).

Probably not unique or large enough for the Ford.

Their manufacturing section has a selection of remarkable old tools, including a monster planer converted to a planer mill for doing an entire bed full of Model T engine blocks at one time. They also have a large collection of watchmaking stuff from Waltham MA for the other end of the scale. The steam-dynamo plant is spectacular, as is the railroad section with the Allegheny loco.

Ig, if you can afford the time for a vacation, you owe it to yourself and your kids to drive around the lake and go to the Henry Ford and Greenfield Village (same location). Or better yet, take the coal fired steam ferry from Manitowoc. Try to arrange a visit to the engine room ahead of time. Wish I'd done that.

Pete Keillor

Here's a steam loco restorer:

They might know someone who needs a large planer, and can arrange shipping by rail. jsw

Hell, leave the overhead shafts up and make a side project of getting the steam engine and boiler back in operating shape. Run an air compressor off the shaft, and all the repair-shop machinery. And you might want a small steam turbine for the electric machines and the offices - or give up and use a diesel genset.

Wouldn't it be a kick in the ass if the power grid into Cleveland drops and you're back in business in hours? It happens, look at Auckland NZ for an example of Dumbth in action...

Auckland had 6 underground high-voltage feeder cables feeding into the city center, all 6 were 30 to 40+ years old, all were 5 to 15 years past their "Replace By" dates, all 6 were overloaded to 150% or more on most summer afternoons, gotta keep those air conditioners spinning no matter what...

And they all unzipped in sequence over the course of a few days (Cascade failure as they tried to put even more load on the survivors) and left the capital of a country running on gen-sets for several months.

Great story.

All of this is very obvious "after the fact". Usually much less obvious "before the fact". I have a bunch of equipment, like trucks etc. Quite a few troubles are "obvious after the fact". For example, I sold a "new rebuilt" alternator that would fit my dump truck, for $13. When the alternator failed on the truck, it became very obvious that I should not have sold it, we had to drive for a week without the alternator. It was very much not fun. The excuse is that I did not know that the alternator was for my dump truck, but it was easy to check.

i

We had a BIG one-cylinder natural gas engine that ran the whole shop. They had fan blades made from wooden boards to move air when it was hot. The shafts will still turn in their babbeted bearings with one finger.

I have a feeling that our fearless leaders will do even worse when (not if) our grid goes wonky.

My sister loaned me the Kindle book _Cyber Storm_, which is about hackers who dropped the world into darkness by seeding the Internet with viruses. Since everything was online and Internet-run, everything electrical died. A Prepper in NYC helps save his apartment building. I liked the part where everyone in high-rises was tossing their bedpans out the window every morning. Ick!

Well that would lower unemployment. Back to manual labor. Restoring essential services operated by humans might not be such a bad thing. I wonder if they have a either or option to run things if the control computers go nuts. Stuxnet should have tought those in charge something.

Best Regards Tom.