- Joined
- Nov 23, 2014
- Messages
- 2,634
Saw this one on Craig's List a couple of weeks ago. I use the web site http://www.searchtempest.com/ to do my CL shopping. Search Tempest takes a search title (i.e. die filer) and returns all Craig's List matching listings sorted by location (eBay listings too). You can enter the max distance and a price range too. Anyway . . .
Oliver S-1 table top die filing machine appeared on my search; $100 and only a little over 2 hours away. Don't know if it was a good buy or not, but I was very happy to bring it home. I do a fair number of projects with sheet metal and end up using needle files for clean up work. Yeah, could have continued to stroke back & forth by hand, but after building a new workbench for my sheet metal bending/shearing/punching machines, there was some free space on the old bench begging for something to hold it down on the shop floor!
Filer came with around 20 unused parallel machine files in 3 1/4" and 8" length. Parallel files cut on the pull stroke instead of the push stroke. The seller told me he'd called Oliver of Adrian and gave them the serial model number; machine was made in 1955.
By the way, it runs absolutely great! Quiet as can be, absolutely no slop back and forth on the ram. The ram is tight up/down too so the previous owners did a good job keeping the gearbox full of oil as there's no distinguishable play in the ram. I haven't pulled the over-arm off yet (for the 3 1/4" files) or trammed the table square; those are adjustments done from below. By the way, the over-arm has a clamp to grab the top of the file and has an extension spring that pulls up on the file during the up stroke.
I'll still go to my 2 x 42 and 1 x 42 belt sanders for outside radius work on sheet metal, but this Oliver will be put to work on inside radii tasks. Probably a case of not knowing how much I "needed" it until I start using it.
By the way, those parallel machine files are getting hard to find and are pretty pricey. I got a good supply with the machine but did a little searching for more. Falcon Tool in Traverse City, MI sells the 8" and 3 1/4" files: ~$15 each for the 8" files, ~$12 for the 3 1/4". American Rotary Tools in CA has the 3 1/4" ones for ~$12 each also.
I see another project in the future. Will make a turning attachment for grinding the ends of regular machine files for mounting in the ram's and over-arm's clamps on the Oliver. I'm envisioning something like a 5-C spin indexer mounted to the table of a bench grinder, manually advance and turn the file to grind a round shank on the end. I've read where guys have silver soldered a rod to the end of a file also. More than one way to skin a cat.
The Oliver documentation is from "Jeff" on the web who has a web site of vintage machinery.
Bruce
Oliver S-1 table top die filing machine appeared on my search; $100 and only a little over 2 hours away. Don't know if it was a good buy or not, but I was very happy to bring it home. I do a fair number of projects with sheet metal and end up using needle files for clean up work. Yeah, could have continued to stroke back & forth by hand, but after building a new workbench for my sheet metal bending/shearing/punching machines, there was some free space on the old bench begging for something to hold it down on the shop floor!
Filer came with around 20 unused parallel machine files in 3 1/4" and 8" length. Parallel files cut on the pull stroke instead of the push stroke. The seller told me he'd called Oliver of Adrian and gave them the serial model number; machine was made in 1955.
By the way, it runs absolutely great! Quiet as can be, absolutely no slop back and forth on the ram. The ram is tight up/down too so the previous owners did a good job keeping the gearbox full of oil as there's no distinguishable play in the ram. I haven't pulled the over-arm off yet (for the 3 1/4" files) or trammed the table square; those are adjustments done from below. By the way, the over-arm has a clamp to grab the top of the file and has an extension spring that pulls up on the file during the up stroke.
I'll still go to my 2 x 42 and 1 x 42 belt sanders for outside radius work on sheet metal, but this Oliver will be put to work on inside radii tasks. Probably a case of not knowing how much I "needed" it until I start using it.
By the way, those parallel machine files are getting hard to find and are pretty pricey. I got a good supply with the machine but did a little searching for more. Falcon Tool in Traverse City, MI sells the 8" and 3 1/4" files: ~$15 each for the 8" files, ~$12 for the 3 1/4". American Rotary Tools in CA has the 3 1/4" ones for ~$12 each also.
I see another project in the future. Will make a turning attachment for grinding the ends of regular machine files for mounting in the ram's and over-arm's clamps on the Oliver. I'm envisioning something like a 5-C spin indexer mounted to the table of a bench grinder, manually advance and turn the file to grind a round shank on the end. I've read where guys have silver soldered a rod to the end of a file also. More than one way to skin a cat.
The Oliver documentation is from "Jeff" on the web who has a web site of vintage machinery.
Bruce
