New tool day... what will I ever do with it?

[Brian Evans]

So friend of mine is selling his family's wood mill, started in the 1950's down the street from where I live. Most of the equipment is long gone, but up to 5 years ago a tenant was running a finishing mill operation. They had a resaw with 48" wheels that stands 15 feet high, a four-side planer/shaper that is around 10 feet long and weighs around 10,000 lbs, and what I bought - a 1920's era Fay & Egan No. 156 Lightning 30" surfacer/planer. It's no light-weight either, weighs somewhere between 1 and 2 tons. It's described as "A machine for producing the very highest grade of work in furniture, piano and cabinet factories, or wherever a fine, smooth finish is required" This is equal parts "I love old machinery and will spend hours playing with this like a big toy" and "when I get this going I can thickness plane wood for one piece archtop backs from the maple tree my friend gave me". Yet another friend is going to bring it over with his fork-lift once I uncover it, and then I need to figure out how to put motors to it. In full production mode it would take a 15 hp motor, I will probably use two much smaller motors - one for the drive rollers and one for the cutter head. The cutter head is a three knife round head in ball bearings, and it spins as easy and clean as you please. The bed is around 5 feet long, so this thing will basically be a jointer as well as a thickness planer.

http://www.vintagemachinery.org/mfginde ... 8004-A.jpg

Brian

[Bryan Bear]

Wow, I don’t know which I’m more jealous of, the machine or the fact that you have space for it!

[Gordon Bellerose]

Wow. That is quite the machine!
I too am jealous of the room you must have to get that into your shop.

Even with smaller motors, I would imagine you will have to re-wire with a couple of 220 volt circuits.

[Brian Evans]

My property has two kind of sides, one is the house and garage, the other is two buildings that used to be a fishing boat building shop. 35 - 40 foot off-shore lobster boats, this being Nova Scotia. The big shop is 65' by 60 feet, mostly, the small shop where I have my woodworking machinery is 60 by 40, with 15 foot ceiling. I mostly just store stuff in them, I have a thousand linear feet of 5/4" by 6" hemlock decking in the small building, and a 35 foot RV... I went a looked at the planer today, and uncovered it. Everything moves, the cutter head is 3" diameter with four knives, there is supposed to be a sharpening attachment for it. It has an almost new 15 hp 550 volt three phase motor, with four vee belts that drive the cutter head at 3600 rpm, and belts to drive the feed roller gear train at far lower speed. I have yet to calculate the gear reduction, but the gears are massive - like 2 feet in diameter... The feed rollers are neat, but the in-feed and out-feed are driven, and have spring loaded segments so they conform to rough finished lumber. This is going to be fun!

[Matthew Lau]

rent it to cabinet makers...workbench makers...milling companies.

Sheesh! Big equipment, and big spaces!

[David King]

The three phase motor might be a trick to get running on single phase. My friend had a 16" table saw with a 7.5HP motor that he started with a pull rope wrapped around a pulley. Timing is everything as they say... You'll get about 10HP on single phase power. Of course you could find an old VFD drive on eBay that could run it but the frequency drive would want to be in the 20-25 HP range to derate accordingly. A 220-550V Step up transformer in the 10 to 20KVA size would be your first necessity. I got mine from a defunct gold mining operation in Alaska. The fellow I got it from had carried it out 15 miles bushwhacking on his back and wasn't too willing to negotiate on the price. <g>