old shaper, should I get it?

I've been offered a Steptoe shaper for the "free, come get it" price. It became surpus to the needs of a museum that acquired a bunch of machine tools from a company with a very historic plant that was relocating to a new plant. I've never heard of the brand. It's a flat belt driven machine.
The thing reportedly weighs about 1500 lbs, and would be a PITA to get into my shop, where it would keep company with my 13" SB lathe.
Don't know a thing about condition, or tooling..
Anyone have any thoughts?

Thanks

Rudd

dozens of folks here would be green with envy to get one at that price. Btw the only one thing that would be better would be to get it delivered for free too.

A 1500 lb. Shaper isn't really too big or heavy.

Heck with it! Get the Shaper now and ask questions later.

Steptoe is a rather well respected name in Shapers.

Would be a much better name for a Shoe Company or a Scok Knitter's Works.

Anyhow

Anyone with the Good Taste and Common Sense to have a 13 inch South Bend Lathe Deserves to have a Nice Shaper.

By the Way - What Historic Outfit gave their old tools to a Museum.

The lathe is a 13" South Bend built for the US Navy in 1942. It's a veteran, and is treated with the respect it deserves. Unfortunatly, it can't join my American Legion post, we can't come up with it's honorable discharge papers

In answer to the quistion you DID ask, it's a very sad story. Glover machine near Atlanta once built, among other things, steam locos - mostly small contractor's dinks and export lokes. I saw the plant about 7-8 years ago, the last loke was sitting uncompleted at the end of the assembly line. You could go into an office, pull a card on a loco model, see the patterns you needed for the castings, go over to the pattern sheds, and lay your hand on the patterns, left right there. The foundry was intact under a great deal of dust, everything was there. You could have started building steam lokes again by the next day if you wanted to. The place was like a museum.
So, Atlanta in it's infinite respect for the past, bulldozed it after giving what could be hauled away to a museum. A lot of very large machines were torched on site. Atlanta built an office for people to pay their water bills there. The museum evidently took more than they could handle.


&*^)&)(*&)(*& THEY COULD HAVE JUST STUCK AN ADMISSIONS BOOTH AT THE FRONT GATE AND CALLED IT A MUSEUM!!!!" ^%(&^%

They old building got one last jab in though - They were cleaning out the footings and came across buried drums of a black crystaline powdery substance. They called ATLanta EPD out there, the guy reportedly took one look, didn't know what it was, but told them to pour water on it. End result, three men dead, ambulance drivers treated for inhalation - it was carbide.

OK, I've talked myself into it. I'll get the fool thing, cause if I don't it gets cut up. What kind of tooling should I look for?

A Steptoe shaper is a good shaper. Coming from a lineshaft driven shop, you will need to rig up some sort of jackshaft with a step cone pulley (or some sort of geared transmission) to provide correct speeds. Shapers like to run nice and slow. You will want to check the gibs and adjust things before you get to running as shapers put a sudden load on things when they begin each cut. Shaper tooling is nothing more than some toolholders (similar to what is used in a lathe with a rocker-type toolpost. The difference is that shaper toolholders have the toolbit opening broached parallel to the top & bottom of the toolholder. Other than that, you grind HSS toolbits to suit your needs. ANother piece of shaper tooling is a "shaper bar". This is a heavy boring bar with a toolholder to fit the shaper's toolpost. The boring bar is used if you wanted to do internal shaping. Works quite well for heavy keyways as well as internal shaping/profiling. Most shapers come with a vise. It is a very heavy low-profile vise and sits low compared to a milling vise. Aside from that you will need assorted slotted links, dogs, tee nuts, bolts if you want to dog a job to the table. There were heavier duty index heads and rotary tables built years ago for shaper or planer service. The fact the tool rammed into the work at the start of each cut required heavier construction. People used shapers for index type jobs like shaping internal & external spines, internal gear teeth (with form tool bits), clutch dog teeth or simply making polygons of one sort or another. The beauty of a shaper was that it didn;t need a load of expensive milling cutters and arbors for them.

BTW: The story of the Glover works and the carbide cans reminds me of an old joke. This is really an OLD joke, given the subject matter, but most people today haven;t a clue as to what calcium carbide is or what it is used for. I will try to realte it in the accent of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, as I heard it from an oldtimer around the LS& I railroad shops a good 27 years ago. Here goes: Seems in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (known as "da UP"), there were a couple of guys hired to work in a "bull gang" (a gang doing grunt work) around an iron mine. These two guys got told to go move the gang outhouse, fill the old pit and dig a new pit. They walked past the lamp house (this was years ago & miners wore carbide lamps on their caps) and saw some seemingly empty carbide drums laying outside. Carbide drums were made of corrugated steel and had close-fitting lids. This gave the guys the idea of getting some lumber and putting the gang outhouse on a raised platform over a row of empty carbide drums. "Boy... This is good, by golly!" "Shur... We'll never have to move the outhouse or dig another pit... just wheel out dem carbide drums when dey get full and put some more empty ones under dere..." With that, they proceeded to raise the outhouse on the platform and lined up a row of empty carbide drums. The next step was to try out their improved outhouse. Each guy picked a hole and got down to business. They were so pleased with their handiwork, one of the guys pulled out a stub of a cigar and lit it up. When the smoke and wreckage cleared, one guy hollered he was missing his eyebrows and asked his buddy if he was OK. The buddy hollered back: "Never mind yer eyebrows. Just find the hand with the ------ in it."

In short, "carbide" (actually calcium carbide) was commonly used in shops doing a lot of oxyacetylene burning or welding. The railroad shops all had a separate outbuilding known as "the generator house". This was where the acetylene gas "generator" was located. It was charged with calcium carbide (from the infamous drums) & water and adjusted to set the rate at which acetylene was needed. Acetylene generators had the habit of exploding due to lime paste (a byproduct) clogging things up & resulting overpressurization (acetylene goes unstable at about 29.9 psig). Sounds like the old Glover plant died hard due to the ignorance of the so-called "professionals".

The Steptoe shapers were built 12 miles south of me in Holland , Michigan. The building they were in was shut down about 40 years ago and the workers left there tools where they were the day they closed.
About 2 years ago they wanted to reuse the site because it was in a highly desireable area. They had a 5 day sale which included everything. Unfortunately in 40 years the roof leaked, so some areas of the floor colapsed because of the weight of castings.It was a buyers bonanza, tons of machinests tools, straight edges,some 5' long scrapers, taps, vices, cutting tools on and on.You could pick up or point out what you wanted and ask the price. Uninformed sellers would sell at giveaway prices. I hesitate to say what I bought ( stole) couse it would make you cry.
Steptoe shaper parts as castings and finished. No 9 B&S milling arbors new that fit my 12" Sheldon at giveaway price. Toward the end you could bid on any machine tool. I could have had a old complete not too big hobber for $100. Sorry I did not get it.
Somebody out there must have bought up all the castings and finished parts for the Steptoe shapers.
Walt

You can move some pretty heavy stuff across concrete with 3 lengths of pipe and a bar.

Walt, could you please contact me offline regarding parts? I'm hearing this thing is in worse shape and less complete than I was at first lead to believe.

I'm, at ruddATcogdellmendralaDOTcom

And Dave, I understand - I have a minor in Egyptian engineering from working in the park servie, no money, no equip., plenty of cheap labor - we moved 20,000 lb cannon tubes aound on the second floor of a civil war fort with a jack, plenty of cribbing, some machinery creepers, and come-alongs.

My shop is unfortunatley in a screwed up location that's hard to even back a pickup to, much less a trailer, and has a curb that's higher than the drive or the floor to get over. I'm thinking gin pole, or temp. track to run a heavy duty rail pushcar into the building, then engine hoist it down to rollers.