24" American #1 Planer restoration - torque spec advice

[Bill_Cook]

By the age, I assume that the blades are bolted on the outside of the cutter head. If so I'd be most worried about those bolts. I've heard ugly stories of blades and pieces of them being embedded in ceilings and who knows where else.

[robiche]

No, the blades fit into three trapezoidal grooves in the cutter head, with a matching shape steel bar that slides in from the side and locks each blade in. That bar is held by 10 set screws each. Once that locking piece is in, the blades can only come out or go in about 1/8" so that they can be adjusted for uniform thickness.

[robiche]

So I know it's been quite some time since my last post, but the planer is finished and fully adjusted. I want to thank everyone again for all the sage advice - about the shims, the torque specs, the proper oil, adjusting, etc.! It was quite an adventure restoring this thing. After all the work in early 2015, life happened. Add to that needing a place to put it and power it, and we've now fast-forwarded about a year and a half.

So from beginning to end, this has been a 3-1/2 year project, but it's done!

I've got a few galleries of photos, and a video of it working now, if anyone's interested..

Here's the pictures of it the day we picked it up, a snowy January 12 of 2013 -- mind you, we picked it up on a ranch in western MA, where it had been kept poorly covered inside a leaky barn:
https://goo.gl/photos/Wes1v8WbCppXaDaE8

Some pics of the teardown and de-rusting we began in earnest in Feb of 2013.. We used a citric acid powder solution to dissolve the rust without pitting all the steel. Worked a treat:
https://goo.gl/photos/DJYyzBN57a36LAP58

Then life happened, and we lost track of time for almost two years until March of 2015 when we were able to sandblast the cast base.
https://goo.gl/photos/yhkYqWMZUzVYRDuv7

Some painting shots. Since it's not original anyway (as I mentioned before, it was frankensteined circa 1930 by Moak in Port Huron), we went with a color to match our portable sawmill:
https://goo.gl/photos/rZzksojTnHD8XYne9

Assembled. This is in May of 2015 when we ran into the issue with the tight bearings and I posted on this forum. The rear shot has weird lighting and makes it look an orange color. It's actually the bright red that's in the other pics.
https://goo.gl/photos/8f6XRJHPtsdjcfw46

Fast-forward again to February 2016. It's at its new home at an industrial space we're renting. On the 3rd floor, though - so we had to lift all 2,100 lbs of it 40 feet with a chain hoist:
https://goo.gl/photos/1crcC91xTNpu4yGq7

In its new home sitting on its new base. Pics of the new 7.5 HP 3-phase motor for it, and the true-up of the belts and motor mounting:
https://goo.gl/photos/RwLmN25nvmZh7QmK9

Here's the first run of it. Note the sound at the end of the video - CRAZY snipe at the end of the planing. Turns out the blades are set to cut too deeply, and the rear takeoff roller couldn't keep pressure on the lumber as it exited. So at the end of the pass, it vibrated like crazy and gouged out some grooves about 3/32" deep - ouch!
https://goo.gl/photos/d8d7erUzLRudgnMt5

After FINAL adjustments (just completed last night). No snipe - and a beautiful surface to boot. It's been a long road, but I'm quite happy with the results!
https://goo.gl/photos/vb9RJoAK3Hrky7WK7

The only thing is that eventually it's going to need a new Babbitt poured on the power-side bearing. That bearing is worn down a bit and I've had to compensate with the blade adjustment to keep everything flat. Because of the worn bearing, that side goes through machine oil about 10x faster than the left side, and it runs quite warm (not hot enough to burn, but uncomfortably warm). The left side bearing stays completely cool, and the oil bubbles slowly down in the reservoir cup.

But for the amount of boardfeet this is going to see in the near future, I'm considering it done for now!

Again, thanks everyone for all the help and advice! I hope you enjoy the pics and videos!

-Rob

http://www.mcmaster.com/#standard-shims/=x3m6l3

McMasters has a variety of shim stock. Peel-able, slotted, or flat stock may serve you. The .001" stuff cuts easily with scissors and can be hole punched in a variety of ways. If you get flat brass a gasket punch will do.

lg
no neat sig line

Yup....I have done that often!

Rule of thumb for engines for main & rod bearing clearance, is +.00075" to +.001" per 1.00" of diameter of the journal.
So.... a 2" journal, you'd want .0015" to .002" clearance. Easy to check with PlastiGage.
I don't know why that wouldn't work with a planer, assuming you are using oil for lubrication, not grease.

Bill

[Glenn Brooks]

Another resource might be Keith Rucker on You tube. Keith works on antique machinery and has an email associated with his site (sorry, don't have it at my fingertips A).

Also, for proper shimming, McMasters Carr sells a brass shim kit that will work much better than the automotive compression rope/tape stuff. The shim kits have a variety of shim stock thicknesses you can cut and fit to size. With this, you can set absolute shim heights and shim down to a thou as necessary.

I recently rebuilt an old 1920 Dalton lathe having split Babbit bearings in the headstock. Torgue on the bolts holding the bearing caps indeed made a great deal of difference in whether the spindle turned freely or not. As the shims holding the bearing caps needed replacement, with new shims, it was necessary toscrape the babbits back in to establish the required movement of the spindle. It's pretty easy to do if you paint the bearing surfaces with dykum bluing compound. The high points on the bearings are very apparent with a few turns of the the shaft by hand.

All my scraping occurred near the two split edges of the babbits. They exhibited an elliptical wear pattern due to the original asymmetric shim heights on each side of the bearing. As I torqued the bolts down the edges of the upper and lower bearings compressed inwards, at roughly the 3 and 9 0clock positions and effectively stopped the spindle from turning. After scraping the high spots the spindle turned cleanly at the proper tension on the bolts holding the caps to the headstock.

You do need .001" clearance per inch of shaft diameter with babbit bearings clearance, as others have recommended.

The correct lubricating oil actually fills this .001" void to produce the necessary lubrication. You may want to look into using 90 weight Non hypoid gear oil. This is an early day machine oil formulation that has the optimal molecular size to lube Babbeted bearing surfaces. Modern hypoid lubes have a much smaller and more uniform molecule to withstand very high pressure of today's hypoid transmission gear geometry. As such they have significantly less adhesion characteristics than traditional machine oil. So These modern hypoid oils actually slip off and drain away from loosely fitting babbeted surfaces. They cause excess wear on antique machines because they are so 'thin'. Non hypoid 90 weight machine oil has similar viscosity to 30 weight engine oil, but is rated as 90 weight oil on a different rating system. It is more or less the original machine oil used for bearing surfaces on most all turn of the century machine tools. At least this is what I found out when researching lubrication for the Dalton and my Burke horizontal mill.

So It's very likely that non hypoid gear oil would be an optimal lubricant for your shaper. But it always pays to keep researching until you confirm your machine's original specs...


Sounds like a great restoration project!

Glenn

[warmstrong1955]

Beautiful job on the rebuild!


Bill

[robiche]

Thanks! It feels good to actually be *USING* it!

Beautiful job on the rebuild!


Bill

[spro]

Super cool planer, now!