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info on Dvorak 10 shaper

D6Joe

Plastic
Joined
Aug 28, 2017
Location
North Dakota, USA
I bought a small old shaper at an auction. Cleaning it up and need to fix a couple small items. Does anyone have some info on this little shaper? Dvorak 10 IN shaper . SN 103. would like to know about what year it was made. Not getting much info from any sort of google search and could not find anything over at vintage machine. Thanks for any help.
 

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It's a long shot, but seeing as you are in North Dakota, possibly the Dvorak shaper was made in that part of the country. There is a firm called Dvorak which makes hydraulic ironworkers (machines for punching, shearing, notching of structural steel). I believe they are in either North or South Dakota. I'd contact Dvorak that makes the ironworkers and ask if they have any knowledge as to whether their firm ever made shapers in the past. I believe the Dvorak making the ironworkers is a fairly recent thing, but they may have knowledge of some ancestor who had a machine shop and made a few shapers. Dvorak is not an altogether uncommon name in the north-central states, so it is more likely I am grasping at straws with a possible connection between the Dvorak who made your shaper vs the Dvorak that is currently making hydraulic ironworkers.
 
Interesting. But I do not think much heavy casting work would have been done up here, Kind of a heavy industry desert. No stampings or tags on the outside of the machine to say where it was made. HHHMMM, I might have found an oddity, Kind of like the Gorton 0-18a vertical mill I have.
 
I believe the Dvorak ironworkers were originally built in South Dakota. Joe Dvorak was a machine shop owner, who, many years ago, came out with one of the first hydraulic ironworkers.

North Dakota may be a "heavy industry desert" as you say. However, in South Dakota, there was K.O. Lee at Aberdeen, SD- manufacturing a line of precision grinding machines. Also in Aberdeen (if I am not mistaken), was the Hub City Ironworks. This was a firm based around an iron foundry which produced a lot of gear reducers and driveline parts for the agricultural and construction machinery industry. The castings for your shaper may well have been jobbed to a foundry in some place other than where the Dvorak shop was that built (and put their name) on the shaper.

Prior to 1976 and the Clean Air Act, a lot of smaller iron foundries were in operation in the USA. These relied on coke-fired cupola furnaces to melt the iron. A combination of a move towards welded fabrication to make parts (aka "weldments") and the clean air act spelled the end of a great many of the iron foundries in the USA. Up into the '60's, a lot of towns had some localized heavy manufacturing and often had an iron foundry or drop forge shop. While North Dakota may appear to be a "heavy industry desert", and may well have always been one, Dvorak and the foundry that poured the castings may have been down in South Dakota or some other of the North Central States.
 
Prior to 1976 and the Clean Air Act, a lot of smaller iron foundries were in operation in the USA. These relied on coke-fired cupola furnaces to melt the iron. A combination of a move towards welded fabrication to make parts (aka "weldments") and the clean air act spelled the end of a great many of the iron foundries in the USA.

Yes, I believe there were many "one off" machines made by shops like that, if they needed a machine they designed it, made the patterns, machined it and used it. It's counter to how things are done now but that's not to our credit.
High schools made one or two machines from scratch the same way, what an education! No one does that level of comprehensive metal shop education any more I'm afraid, not in the US anyway.
 
It looks like I have a little project to research this winter when the farming slows down. The idea of bringing in short run castings or a small local foundry make sense. The machine is fairly simple and basic. No evidence of plating on the handles/dials etc. But does have dovetail ways. For a bit I was thinking it may have been a rebranded machine, but from the pics I have looked at of other small shapers, I have not seen a very similar one yet.
 
Some features look like a Lewis, including the table elevation.
The Lewis is also 10". How many other 10" shapers are there?
 

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Dvorak 10” shaper

I have a 10” shaper of my dad had.
It looks like yours, except the plate says Cosmos, MN on it. Haven’t seen a serial number on it.
Did you find any other info on it?
Thanks,
Dennis
 
I just picked up a Dvorak 10" Shaper myself this weekend, and was looking for information on it. Did you ever find out anything?

Mine is missing its motor and jackshaft pulleys, and I was counting on finding the specs I needed on VWWM. But they don't have Dvorak listed as a manufacturer. Would you be ahle to tell me the RPMs of your motor, and what the in-between pulley sizes are?

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I put a YouTube vid of mine working. Search for d6joe. My video I had the motor direction wrong so it was faster going into the cut than when retracting. I switch the wires after the video.
 
I already broke my New Year's resolution not to haul home any more junk and bought a 10" Dvorak shaper today.
Guess I have no will power.
 
The original Dvorak company is still in business, making iron workers, as Uni-Hydro. Might be worth checking with them. Scotchman Industries also manufactured what they referred to as the "Dvorak Iron Worker" (under a patent they bought from Joe Dvorak).



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I did a bit of digging here and contacted Uni-Hydro yesterday. Was talking to a fellow there, Dave? when Chuck Dvorak stopped by his office.
Got to have a nice half hour conversation with Chuck.
Chuck is the grandson of Joe Dvorak and is the president of Uni-Hydro.
Chuck said, Dvorak Co. did build these little shapers.
He wasn't sure of the exact history but Joe started them and Joe's sons Frank and Jim did the production and sales on them. Then both Frank and Jim got drafted for the Korean War and the shaper project kind of fell by the wayside.
Chuck said there were only 12, - yes Twelve - of these shapers built. There was one that stayed at the company headquarters for many years but was given to Chuck's cousin some years ago.
Chuck said he has a 1 page spec sheet somewhere in his files and will email me a scan of it. If I get it I will post it here.
Anyway, I'm just wanting to get this bit of history online so others might find it.
This little 10" Dvorak doesn't have all the bells and whistles of the big boy shapers but it appears to be a well thought out and nicely built machine that is quite capable for its size. And its size makes it attractive to a hobbiest like myself.
More to come...
Jerry
 








 
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