Slightly a bit off topic. "A Shaper story"

I have had a shaper in a corner of my shop for more than 20 years and not had a job for it for all that time, but I made a terrible error. I bought a drill press sight unseen because the photo looked ok and the price was right. Once the drill press arrived it was total junk. I should have scrapped it and written of the loss, but I didn't and I elected to restore it.

The cast iron machine table had more holes it than emmentaler (Swiss) cheese. So, I elected to braze and fill all the holes, which was no simple task. Now I needed to completely machine the table surface. Holding it in the shaper was very difficult, so I made a fixture. I then had to clean and lube my old English 18" Elliot shaper. All that took 2 days before I could plane the table, but it worked our perfectly. My point here is that it was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed getting the old girl going again. Shapers are unique machines and with a bit of ingenuity, can do amazing things. I don't use it much, but they are worth while keeping around if you can afford the space they consume.

they are extremely handy to do internal keyways of various sizes, when i did my trade that was just about all it did and it was a 18 inch invicta.

I machined some parts for it as well as someone had lowered the quill too far and on the return stroke broke the casting, i fixed that up and it was back to normal.

I welded my table on my "Excelsior" drill press and found the same "shrinkage" issues.

Ed Battison (Founder and Past Director of the American Precision Museum) on hearing my tale of woe said I should have used silver solder to fill the holes. A "similar" but less invasive repair to the parent metal.

Others have said put a square 1/4" inch plate over the entire surface drilled & tapped from underneath. Then use the drill itself to put a center hole in it. If you bevel the edges of the plate and then fill the interstice thus formed with auto body compound and then paint, the repair is difficult to see.

Joe in NH

I did a lot of shaping in my early days. I always found it very soothing. There's something hypnotic about it, it's the same with planing. I never felt the same about surface grinding.

Regards Tyrone.

Joe in NH said:

I welded my table on my "Excelsior" drill press and found the same "shrinkage" issues.

Ed Battison (Founder and Past Director of the American Precision Museum) on hearing my tale of woe said I should have used silver solder to fill the holes. A "similar" but less invasive repair to the parent metal.

Others have said put a square 1/4" inch plate over the entire surface drilled & tapped from underneath. Then use the drill itself to put a center hole in it. If you bevel the edges of the plate and then fill the interstice thus formed with auto body compound and then paint, the repair is difficult to see.

Joe in NH

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Joe,
I thought about the issue a lot and ended up blocking the bottom of the table with a graphite plate. Then sticking the whole table in my barbecue preheating the whole casting to about 250C. I then got out my rosebud to generate enough heat and then brazed all the holes full. I used more than a pound of bronze filler and succeeded to fry the coating on my reading glasses from the infra-red radiation. In the end, it worked out well with perfect bonds between the bronze and the cast iron of the table without iron distortion or cracking.

Always enjoyed shaper work. The shop I served out in, had two big shapers facing each other. A 24" Cincinnati hydraulic and a 36" G&E.I could actually get sleepy just listening to them. The G&E had a hole thru the casting that allowed one to cut keyways in a line shaft. Those were the days.

JH

James H Clark said:

Always enjoyed shaper work. The shop I served out in, had two big shapers facing each other. A 24" Cincinnati hydraulic and a 36" G&E.I could actually get sleepy just listening to them. The G&E had a hole thru the casting that allowed one to cut keyways in a line shaft. Those were the days.

JH

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One shop I worked in the big " Butler " planer had been put through the wall between bays to save working space. The back end of the bed went through into the next bay. The operator had created a bit of a den next to the machine in an old blocked up passage through to the other bay. He had everything to hand including a big old leather arm chair. In the afternoon the sun moved around to shine through the glass roof right onto his den. On several occasions he was known to fall asleep in the arm chair with the planer swishing away, especially if he'd had a couple of pints at dinner time.

Regards Tyrone.

Shapers are great tools

Great to hear of Shapers used to restore other tools. If you took any photos of the work, please post them. Seeing photos and videos of how others are putting their Shapers to work are very satisfying to see. I have a 1956 24 in. G&E universal and love to see it making chips. Recently had to cut 5/8 x 1/2 x 2 in. long slots in the ends of four 2 x 2 x 5 in. long bars, just put them all in the vise ends up and cut them square, the slot and flipped them over and done. I could have done the job in the vertical mill, but wanted to see the the Shaper run instead.
Stay well
Stay safe
wear a mask

A shaper was in a batch of the first few machine tools I bought at auction for my new machine shop. Every job shop where I worked had one as a regularly used production tool. Tooling is cheap and they need less watching. Once I showed others how easy if was to square up torch cut blocks they were sold on using it.

I used mine as a time saver often when I first went into business as I was often running several machines at once. Both the old power hacksaw and the shaper could run unattended.

Later I put it to use when we had a contract to make agricultural cutting blades. It was slow enough to cut the required edge angle in tough steel without generating heat. I only wish I had a planer so I could make the larger blades.

I'm retired now and gave my business to my daughter. The old shaper is just collecting dust.

Walter A.

Funny thing about shapers is that in many shops they seldom pay enough money for their floor space. But I told my employee the other day about tools like that. Some tools are not used every day or even every month! But when they are needed one gets a good feeling knowing it's there.