recognize this old camelback?

[metalmagpie]

So last year I restored a Canedy Otto 20" model 36 drill press, as some of you may remember. I got a call from a friend who volunteers at a semi-private place which has a yard full of industrial items mostly related to woodworking. They have a Champion 20" drill press they are going to scrap unless they find someone like me who wants it. Here are a couple of pictures:

You can't really see everything. The table, as usual, is badly overdrilled. But I know how to fix that. Here's the last badly overdrilled camelback table I restored:

It has a 4 MT spindle and power downfeed. Everything turned and moved albeit with some effort. I looked at all the gears I could see and I couldn't see any broken teeth or repaired teeth. It does have a motor which is of the same period as the machine. I think it's 3/4hp because the nameplate on the motor says 3 amps at 230V. The motor turns very freely and I'm confident I can make it run again. All of the wiring and motor controls are there. The machine has 3 flat belts - from the motor down to the jackshaft, from the jackshaft up to the top shaft, and from the top shaft down to the powerfeed mechanism. None of the belts are usable.

I'm looking for sources of information about this machine. Like most of these, mine is missing the powerfeed trip collar. But nearly everything else is there.

I'm also trying to decide whether I should take on another resto job so like the one I did recently. To this machine's credit, it has a larger taper and the gears appear to be in better condition. I don't know if there's a "cool factor" difference.

What do you think?

metalmagpie

 

[Harold Mulder]

Oh to be 3000 miles closer.

Go for it

Harold

 

[dundeeshopnut]

The drill minus the casting holding the motor looks like a Royerford Excelsior. Does the casting out the back holding the motor look factory?

 

[Andy FitzGibbon]

Champion and Royersford drills are the same machine. I'm not sure who built for who, but the castings are identical besides the name plates. The only difference I've been able to find is that Royersfords had a t-slotted table, while Champion tables had plain thru-slots.

Vintage Machinery has a 1926 Champion catalog that shows the 20" drill. You could also look for information under their Royersford listing.

The motor drive bracet was a factory option for a time. I've seen one or two others. The base-mounted motor is more common.

Like the Canedy-Otto, these were a general blacksmith/maintenance shop machine.


Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

 

[metalmagpie]

This belt-driven drill press appears at the lower right of this page:

http://nwnative.us/Grant/images/temp/catalogPage1926.pdf

As you can see, the motor mount is indeed factory.

Andy FitzGibbon, the Champion/Royersford parallelism is an interesting concept. I will review The Metal Butcher's good 5-part series on rebuilding a Royersford Excelsior. Thank you.

metalmagpie

 

[Joe Michaels]

It would make sense for Champion Blower & Forge (their full name) and Royersford Foundry to have a 'business relationship'. Both were Pennsylvania firms, not too far apart geographically. Setting up to produce camelback drills would require significant investment in machine tools, aside from foundry capability. Champion had some machining and foundry capability, but setting up for producing camelback drills "in house" was likely determined to be a bad business decision. Having the drills made by Royersford with Champion's name on the castings had to have made more sense business-wise.

I've seen a number of camelback drills over the years. What always intrigues me is the design similarities between the different manufacturers. The method of driving the power quill feed on the drill in this posting is very similar to the design used on my Cincinnati=Bickford 25" camelback drill. I joke that very nearly any type of basic gearing (bevel, spur, helical, and worm) is used on my C-B camelback drill.

A friend gave me a smaller Barnes camelback drill which is now sitting in the framing of my blacksmith shop shed (framing is modified timber framing with fabricated steel bolted connections). The shop is awaiting metal roofing and board-and-batten siding. The Barnes drill is a small one, 20". It still has the tight and loose pulleys and foot-operated belt shifter. I decided if the drill, including the belt shifter survived intact with no damage for over a century, I would keep the tight/loose pulleys and shifter in use. My plan is to mount the drill on a wood skid (the smith shed has a floor made of compacted number 1 crushed stone + crusher dust). I will then built a support frame out of steel angle and plate for a motor and countershaft with a wide flat belt pulley. This support frame will be bolted to the skid with the drill.

The drive pictured in this post is neat arrangement, although it raises the center of gravity to the point I'd be taking the motor off before moving that drill.
Champion or Royersford followed the "K I S S" rule (Keep it simple, stupid !) in design. If an electric motor could be switched on and off with a simple switch, why add the complication of tight and loose pulleys and a belt shifter ? I know that the easiest and simplest retrofit for the Barnes drill in my smithy is to put a vee pulley on the bottom shaft of the drill instead of the tight/loose pulleys, and use a vee belt drive off the motor. But, having been given a camelback drill which is intact, very few stray holes in the table, and nothing broken/brazed or missing, I feel like keeping the old drill intact is the thing to do. I also have a Champion Blower and Forge grinder, which does have the tight and loose pulleys intact on it. I thought about a short line shaft, but the way the shop is laid out, I'd need a 90 degree drive in the lineshaft to run the camelback drill.

I am now up to two (2) camelback drills, and really appreciate these old drills. When I was a kid growing up in Brooklyn in the 50's, there was a neighborhood bicycle shop which repaired bicycles and sold them along with accessories. The shop was in a narrow storefront with an apartment above. A mechanic lived in the back of the shop, and I got to know him. He was named "Georgie", and used to send me to the corner candy store/luncheonette to fetch him coffee or a hamburger. In return, I got to hang out and look over the work and the tools. Georgie had an oxyacetylene outfit in a wood box in the small back yard, and did brazed repairs. He had a small air compressor, bench grinder, and a drill press. The drill press caught my eye back then. It was the first time I read the name "Buffalo Forge" on anything. It was a bench drill, but was a small-scale camelback drill. It had the original 1920's motor on a base cast integral with the frame, flat belts, and bevel gear drive as the bigger camelback drills had. It was my first exposure to camelback drills, and I thought that was the greatest drill press at that time (I was maybe 8 years old).

As an adult, I made sure to get a camelback drill for my own shop (the Cincinnati-Bickford), and over nearly thirty (30 ) years, have made good use of it. Now, a second little camelback drill has come my way in the form of the Barnes drill. Can't have enough of these drills, I guess.

 

[metalmagpie]

A big obstacle to bringing this machine home disappeared today when my old Canedy Otto drill press rolled out of my driveway on its way to a new home. Kid in engineering/machining school. I couldn't have hand-picked a better guy to sell it to.

Now to get the new one home.

metalmagpie

 

[dundeeshopnut]

Go get it! Going to be watching what you come up with for this one. I have dreams for restoring mine but it isn't worn and works flawlessly and heck, is even slowly paying for itself,,,,,,

 

[metalmagpie]

It's here in my shop. I will start a new post describing the restoration process. The first step is going to be to clean the badly overdrilled "moonscape" table in preparation to have it welded up. It ain't cheap ($150-200) but to me it's worth it.

metalmagpie

 

[dundeeshopnut]

I have another more productive sloution to your "unsightly" table. Invest the 150-200 clams in a big honkin' drill press vice and hoist it up on the table. No more visible holes and you can do work with it! Seriously though, while I am lucky my table is relatively unmarred, I rarely ever see the top. Vise is there most of the time and only gets removed when hoisting a plate or whatever that doesn't fit in the vise. Either way table is mostly blocked from view.

 

[metalmagpie]

I plan to fix the table AND buy a vise. Seriously, I don't mind spending the money to support my local cast iron welding whiz, whose name is Cast Iron Mike. I already cleaned the table.

Just wait - in a couple of weeks I'll post the as-repaired shot. Hoping it will be impressive.

metalmagpie

I have another more productive solution to your "unsightly" table. Invest the 150-200 clams in a big honkin' drill press vice and hoist it up on the table. No more visible holes and you can do work with it! Seriously though, while I am lucky my table is relatively unmarred, I rarely ever see the top. Vise is there most of the time and only gets removed when hoisting a plate or whatever that doesn't fit in the vise. Either way table is mostly blocked from view.