Twelve foot planer up and running

Now that's funny!

I have a block of material in the vise on my shaper that I use just to watch it run. Pretty soothing, really.

Cheers Trevor Jones

I didn't think they made planers that small! Don't you bang your head on the tool holder as you are walking up and down the bed oiling the work?

Mark Rand RTFM

I'm sure. I have an 18 footer and I can't walk under *that* rail, either.

Mark, The 6' planer is starting to look like a toy. I've seen the planers you are talking about over at the Milacron auction. They had parking spaces marked out on them for employees cars. A little out of the hobby spectrum. I saved mine, at auction, from the junk man. By the time I had it moved home and levelled on the shop floor, I had three times what I paid for it in it, or about three times what it is worth. Paul

As for small planers, there's a cute little Hendy bench planer at Armington & Simms Machine shop in Greenfield Village. It's a hand cranked machine, with a table perhaps 10" X 20" in size. The whole machine is only about 4' long. Lots of big shapers could handle larger work. I've seen other similar sized ones, and many of these hand cranked ones were later adapted to motor and belt drive.

The only smaller one's I've heard of or seen were more like models or salesman's display samples. Some of these were functional, but too small for useful work.

The largest one I ever saw was at Lima Locomotive Works in Lima, OH. It was perhaps 80 ft. long, with an arch you could put a boxcar through. It was used to plane locomotive frames and water-bottom tender castings and such. IIRC, they used it plane tank hulls during W.W.-II also. Simply HUGE. Sadly, when I saw it perhaps 15 years ago it was all rusty and sinking slowly through the floor of the abandoned factory. There were a couple smaller, but still big, planers disassembled nearby. All the smaller machines were long gone, but apparently nobody wanted these 'dinosaurs'. I've heard the whole factory has now been demolished, so I suppose they all went for scrap.

Dan Mitchell ==========

Mark Rand wrote:

You're kidding? You actually *paid* for it???

Yeah, but just think what a nice job it could do re-finishing lathe beds, especially if you fitted a grinder head to it.

We are working on a grinding head for it. A neighbor in the building is in the grinding business. He sharpens slitter knives but has to refuse the work of sharpening shear blades because they are too long for anything he has. First we have to fit way covers and a coolant system. It will do an excellent job replaning non flame hardened lathe beds as is. We've done a couple on the 6' planer, including a bell bottom "Heavy Ten" SB. I had roger scrape in the saddle, cross-slide, and compound. All other parts are excellent. I haven't put it back together yet, but when I do it will be as new. They are, arguably, the prettiest little lathe ever built. The heavy ten was already in excellent shape, except it had been in cold storage where dew could form on the outside surfaces. It had a pronounced "patina" so it had to come apart anyway. The bed is now shiny bare castiron replaned rescraped and spotted, as are the cross-slide and compound. Everything else is as disassembled. I don't know when I'll ever get to it. Anybody interested in a heavy ten in "kit" form let me know. It will need a new motor and switch, elbow grease, and some skill in adjusting it back in. For example, the QC box and leadscrew mount must be shimmed down to register with the apron. I also have a 16" SB in something of the same situation. The main lathe is still together (headstock, bell bottom, legs) the bed has been reground and the saddle, cross-slide and compound rescraped. When I got it it had been reground and somebody painted it, badly, for storage. He painted everything, rack, screws everything. I took it apart, so far, to get all the paint off the machined surfaces, and found that the saddle had been "turcited", that is, rather than rescrape it after grinding they used a plastic product to straighten out the saddle. I had Roger rescrape the saddle, cross-slide, and compound, and that is where it stands. Anybody interested my real emailaddress is snipped-for-privacy@insightbb.com. Or call 859 760 3776. $900 each. You wouldn't believe how many half finished projects I have going right now. I tore out my driveway one day (six months ago), the asphalt was all broken up. I'm half finished with a new bathroom in the basement (needs drywall and floor). I still have four doors to hang in the rest of the basement, including two outside doors (today). House needs a roof and siding, Garage needs tore down, and I have machines from the last two auctions sitting out in the main bay because I haven't had time to put them away. Wait a minute, I'm preaching to the choir! Paul

Oddly, I have a 54"x54"x 10' Cincinnati planer that I have just declared surplus to our needs, can be seen under power about 50 miles from Cincinnati in Richmond,In. I have literally TONS of tooling for it, I have made several large dies with it but I don't have the time to do that stuff in house any more, and we need the space. Where do I go from here, folks. Ebay, auction, scrap,? Tom Robeson J.M.Hutton Stamping