There is a Lee 16x48 planer (or planer mill, not clear) advertised locally at a price that seems attractive - but I don't really have any familiarity with planers or planer mills, just vertical and horizontal types. Is this likely to be at all useful for the home shop, or just absurd? Stairs are not involved ;-)
Id love one..but its not something that Id use much. But if I had to redo a lathe bed..or make new fingers for a finger brake from plate..that would be the tool to have.
And they are neat to watch run.
Shaper on super steroids
Gunner
"A prudent man foresees the difficulties ahead and prepares for them; the simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences."
Last planer I used was a 40 foot Mesta. I was making feet and swing gear sections for a 220 cubic yard bucket walking drag line at Bucycrus Erie's Pocatello plant. Feet were 75 feet long, 12 feet wide two inch thick abrasion resistant steel sole plates and the swing gears sections were 10 feet wide, 7 feet high, two feet thick and eight of them were lined up on the planer bed. The chips came off the size of truck coil springs, blue hot with razor edges and flew 20 feet through the air before hitting the roped off area of floor. Planers can be fun to operate. You should have seen the lathes there, eight foot diameter chucks, eighty feet between centers, with a seat on the cross slide. They were WWII leftovers used for turning 16 inch battle ship gun barrels and liners. Fun place to work if you don't mind 200 ton weldments and enormous gears going over your head on the traveling cranes. A good machinist can do an incredible amount of work on a planer. If you already have a lathe and a mill and you get a good buy on a planer or a shaper, go for it.
73 Gary
Gary Pewitt N9ZSV Sturgeon's Law "Ninety per cent of everything is crap"
It NEVER occured to me until a minute ago that thete had to be a lathe out there capable of boring and rifling barrelstthat bid and still work to tolerance
i w> Last planer I used was a 40 foot Mesta. I was making feet and swing
These were done in relatively short sections and bolted together using flanges and high strength bolts. I don't know if these were smooth bore or rifled, and if rifled, how they maintained the "index" from one section to the next. I don't think I would want to be any where near the gun when they fired it.
I've always been interested in a home shop-sized one but have never encountered one that wasn't built with battleships in mind. That's the size you usally see in the old books with guys standing on the tables with large wrenches doing setups. Probably after affordable mills were developed, the smaller planers were scrapped out. Have made do with a small shaper. How much does something that size weigh in at?
I have not gotten an answer to that question (weight, or the overall size of it) yet. It did seem like it was potentially "manageable", though I'm still probably looking at riggers to get it moved effectively.
Fine historical pieces both, looks like belt-shifting table reversing or fast and loose pulleys. Just the thing if you've got a high-ceilinged basement and overhead lineshafting... In either case, a looong way from where I'm at.
Oh man that's a keeper. I love the stories of how you built stuff from nothing. Just great to see it is still alive and fresh in the minds of those that made this country the genious that it is.
Probably about 2,500 lbs., just guessing on how my 3' one set down my truck. Their terrible and no good, where is it and how much?
Only main problem that I have faced is getting the "cross bar" dialed in less than .0005" over 1.5'. Was thinking of putting on a slab of aluminum and planing it true. Could do that with the original platten, but afraid to, cause it is so old and not sure how much wear the tool could take before it was finished.
PolyTech Forum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.