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Help ID big old cutters

NathanJK

Plastic
Joined
Apr 23, 2009
Location
Texas, USA
I have probably 60 of these in various sizes, all with just two brazed carbide cutters on them. A lot of them say Prop Air Force or US Prop. Some say 1 of 2 etc. on them. Most are 6-10” diameter, I measured and it looks like most fit a 1.75” arbor.

what were they used for? I assume they went on a horizontal mill but does anyone know more info? Thanks!
 

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"What were they used for?" Slotting. Slotting something big. Presumably some military production. Arbor size is beefy, so probably used on machine with more than 10 honest continuous-duty HP. Four keyways is very unusual. The hub and four mounting holes suggest these were not used on a conventional horizontal, but maybe a dedicated-purpose machine with stub arbors. Does the hub extend on both sides of the disk?

The serrated cutting inserts held by wedges remind me strongly of Goddard & Goddard ("Go and go") milling cutters. The inserts were generally of HSS, but brazed carbide was not unheard of. After sharpening the cutter a couple of times, you could advance the inserts by one serration to resharpen again without continually reducing the cutter diameter. I've got a G&G catalog in a pile somewhere, I can have a look when time permits. G&G was not the only maker of this style of cutter, of course, but this feature would help to roughly date it.
 
8" cutter with just two teeth?
In steel, just amazing!
That’s what I thought! Surely they were milling slots in a different material with them.

Could it have been aluminum?

These all seem to be carbide, at least judging by the way some of them are chipped.

johnoder nailed it on a different cutter I have though. It’s a Goddard and Goddard 8” slotting cutter with the staggered hss steel teeth with the serrations on the back. A Waf-810 from basically the same product line as the pic posted. I’ll attach a pic of it too. The sharpening thing makes good sense, I assumed it was just increasing surface area and a more secure hold on the teeth, good to know it serves another purpose too.

sfriedberg, yes the hub extends a bit on both sides. I want to say it’s even with the cutter width, but I’m not home to verify that. I hadn’t thought of the stub arbor/bolt thing but that makes sense. Thanks for the good information!
 

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Look like a woodworking cutter to me. Maybe a shaper cutter, rabbiting.
That was what I thought I was buying when I bid on the lot! There’s a huge roundover cutter in with the mix, so I guess that counts for something. I don’t have a shaper to run something even close to it’s size though. It’s all a lot bigger than it looked in the pictures, and there was a lot more of them than I thought too.
 
Aircraft work involved a lot of finishing grooves and slots in forged fittings, so that might explain it.

While some woodworking tools can be used in aluminum, I think the fittings would be the tougher alloys, and I don't think I'd want to use a 2 tooth at higher speed that way.

If they are quite old, they may date to the time of wood construction for aircraft. There would have been a good deal of slotting done for parts of the structure.
 
Given that the cutters in the O.P. were marked U.S.Prop .I got wondering if they might have been used on special machinery for machining aircraft propellers .
This modern creation uses a narrow saw to profile a relatively small propeller .
This older machine looks like it may have a wider cutter on it but it's hard to tell for sure.
This type of machine has been around for a long time so perhaps some used wider cutters on larger props for roughing operations .
I didn't find any of these machines on Vintage machinery but you can see some of the other similar type machines built by Mattison here ,
and the tooling they made here
Wisconsin Knife is one company I am familiar with that still supply this type of corrugated knife stock in high speed steel and still have some similar brazed carbide knives , see Page 40 for the Carbide knives and Page 57 for the cutter heads .
Most cutter heads have more than 2 blades
The wider cutters in the OP might also have been used on a wood shaper of some kind that when stacked together may have been used to clean up the outside of the propeller hubs .
Perhaps there will be more information on prop making in other volumes of Areal Age or similar magazines
I'm not sure if U.S. Prop made similar forged aluminum props or how they were machined .
Butterfield / Union Twist Drill in Derby Line VT/ Rock Island Quebec also made the inserted tooth milling cutters similar to the G&G ones shown in John Oder's post.
Jim
P.S. I've added some pictures from my Butterfield Catalogue #29 that dates from 1959
 

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Shear cut and hook suggest wood, especially with only 2 teeth.
OTOH, the spline drive suggests something more resistant, maybe aluminum or plastic.

I bet they would run well in wood, the cutters on my Diehl lumber jointer are about that size, but wider.
OTOH, those might stack?
Diehl cutters are maybe a little more shear, 6 wing, and no spline, though.

Possibly an automatic lathe - but usually the shear on those trends toward the "ridiculous" compared to cutters on other woodworking machines.

If stackable, a linear profiler might use them. Or one of the old car or auto factory shapers or automatic shapers (from when rail cars and auto bodies were wooden framed)

Also, the tenon heads on single or double end tenoners.

None of the listed machines have key or spline drive, though; except sometimes the automatic lathes.

smt
 
I have seen some stacked cutter heads that were put on a separate shoulder bushing with a bore lager than the usual size of the machine spindle that may have been 1-1/4" with a key set in the bushing to allow the cutters to be indexed with their key way on the bushing so they tips didn't come into contact if the spun together under load when overlapped .
The set of cutters would be held on the bushing with a lock washer and nut and then bushing with the complete set of cutters would be slid onto the smaller machine as one unit.
The newer types of bushings may instead of keys use a hydraulic pressure from grease to effectively hold the cutters tight to the bushing and the shaft at the same time as shown on page 51 and beyond in this catalogue link.
Scrolling down you can see the wide variety of cutters that can be found now days.
Jim
 
In it's day, a great idea. Wear out the teeth of the cutter with repeated sharpening, reuse the expensive body and just re-tooth it.

Corrugated heads are still current state of the art in the wood industry for moulder and some shaper cutter bodies. See pgs 25 - 29 of the catalog Jim linked. But as he also posted, usually hydro-loc. Older ones were sometimes taperlock. splines were not common for woodwhacking. But as Jim notes for stacked cutters (or automatic lathe cutters) the key could keep them from slipping into each other and causing a wreck.

smt
 
Back around the late 1970's I used to spend time in a machine tool rebuilders shop in the Dallas area. The guy that ran the business would go to the government auctions at the military aircraft plants, buying machine tools to resale, in the DFW metroplex. In the lots of machines, he would buy there would be pallets by the dozen of tooling that came with the machines. I recall seeing stacks of these type of cutters with diameters up to 24". Some still in the cosmoline, some still had aluminum shavings embedded in them. They were of the "Go & Go" brand. Ken
 








 
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