Hendey friction shaper 15" very old?

Hi there shaper lovers. It only took about 10 days or less of working with the nice Rhodes 7" with 1 HP DC drive to... can I say fall in love with this way of shaving metal?
So I happened to make a call to an old gunsmith friend and asked him if he might have a shaper vise and did he still that that larger shaper and was it for sale?

No vise but he'd like to sell the shaper. It's a Hendey 15". So I do a search, (wow I'm impressed by Hendey that's for sure) and see something from the 1940's and wow I'm, excited, really excited!
Then he sends me a pic of his Hendey shaper. Gulp, uh oh, ummm. Ok, now I'm shocked and thinking this old relic is probably out 20 or 25 thou, but ok, I'll go look at it. I asked if we could tram the table and he said "sure". Well it's a good thing he sent a link to that you tube vid of the friction shaper running, before I came up to look because this particular Hendey has not been turned on in 20 years and everything was stuck tight! Cutting to the chase I bought it, we unloaded into my shop two days back and yesterday started pulling apart for cleaning and measuring. I only find two issues. The two bevel table raising gears skip, am thinking a bush at the leadscrew end might cure this. The other, two teeth, the last two teeth of ram all the way forward are broken. Might remove and braze. Only clocked the four corners of the ram so far but the readings were only out .0015. Wow. So finally my question, does someone have an idea when serial number 696 was made?
This is my first post here and I'm not sure what might happen to this post if I try and insert a pic right now, so I won't.
Thanks for your help.
Larry in NH.

Larry in NH:

Production Records for the Friction Shapers produced prior to 1900 appear to have not survived. The 15 inch Friction Shapers were normally produced in lots of 30 machines at a time. This practice was continued until 1905, when a 50 machine lot was introduced. The 15 inch Friction Shaper was the most popular size produced and were the last ones made on June 15, 1920. Based on interpolation, 1888 would be an approximate circa for this Shaper. In 1884, design changes were made and in 1887, Wendell Norton and Constant Bouillon made further
changes to the machines. More changes were made in 1892-94. The only way to narrow down the circa, is by you posting pictures of the
Shaper showing the front and both sides. It may be necessary to post measurements of the various parts to match them to the surviving
drawings.

Hendeyman

Hi Hendeyman
I will try to get some pics posted, first I need to take a few decent ones. I measured the 2 racks under the ram and they are 20" long. I can't see the space between the jog stops adding up to more than 14 or 15 inches. So I'm not sure what they would have classified this machine as.
Did a few reading of the ram ways and only see less than .002 between the middle and ends of those ways in thickness. Width is pretty tight too. I wonder if they took a forging wack (for lack of the proper term) on the still hot ways after casting...?

eLarry3:

Depending on when a particular 15 inch Friction Shaper was built, the Ram Rack length varied from 19-3/4 inch to 20-5/8 inches. This
Shaper would be considered a 15 inch model. To increase the wearability of their cast iron, Hendey added a certain amount of steel scrap
to the melt. When you set up the Shaper, keep in mind that it has two forward speeds and one reverse with the standard Countershaft, an
old style No.1 model.

Hendeyman