# Metal shaper from scrap



## Loafy

here's my metal shaper built from sand casting using old blown up alcohol kart engines. the plans came from Dave Gingery''s "Build your own metal working shop from scrap" Book #3. I've also built the metal mill and dividing head from the series of his books.
the patterns.


All I had to machine the parts for this was a 6" swing sears lathe, some parts required 7" swing. The larger parts were machined on a friends lathe. It took me 3 months from start to finish.


finished machine cutting on a chunk of scrap aluminum
[video=youtube;AyNMzSj7yfo] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyNMzSj7yfo [/video]


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## jghm

That is SO COOL!
John


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## Old Iron

Great Job, I've got 3 of the little craftsman lathes I need to get working.

Paul


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## Loafy

The reason for building these machine was so I could fix my sears lathe. The lathe spindle pulley is a 3 step pulley with an attached gear. The gear runs the back gear so it can turn slow speed for threading that gear had spit out it's teeth. Long story short I priced the pulley it was over $300.00 more than I had paid for the lathe. I finally broke down and was going to buy the pulley, the place where I was going to buy it had sold out none were available anywhere. So I figured take the money, build some machines and make my own gear. That is just what I did. That is a long round about way of doing it but I learned a bunch. I'm self taught using the machines and make a few mistakes, but the mistakes can be remelted, no one will ever know. Now I try to figure out and make stuff just for the fun of it.
I have a list a mile long of things I want to make.
I'd seen the Gingery series of books years ago. I figured it would be too time consuming to do. Turns out it takes a lot of time to make the tools etc. But once you have the tools, you look at thing differently,saying how could I make that? or make it better?
A foundry is almost a must for a do it yourselfer, aka poorboy home cobbler.


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## blame582

Hey Norman have you tried melting any cast iron yet?

Blame


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## Loafy

No I haven't tried iron probably won't.


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## Loafy

Thanks for the kind words. I still need to do some work on truing it up but for small cuts it works pretty good. This was my first try at making a machine from scratch. I do need to go back and reshim the working surfaces as they are wearing some from use.
I did the gingery mill after I finished the shaper. I make a simple indexing tool to cut the gear for my sears lathe, once I got the lathe repaired. I built the dividing head. I've made a couple of gears for the Grizzly G0602 out of aluminum to replace the plastic gear that are on the lathe when I made the reverse tumbler gear for the lathe. The aluminum gear on the spindle made the spindle ring like a bell so I went back to the plastic gears. The plastic gears seem to be doing fine, if I crash the plastic gear then I'll have metal replacements. But will probably use the aluminum until I either make plastic gears or buy them.


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## Loggerhogger

Excellent job on the shaper. may you make many chips together.


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## Loafy

Not any more I've whittled the pile down to only a couple of engines left. One of my friends gave me some scrap, its a transmission he broke it up before bringing it to me, I have a pretty good supply of scrap right now.
Tator salad , Have you heard of Ron White aka,Tator Salad the comedian?, he grew up in Fritch,Tx. about 30 miles west of where I live.


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## cjtoombs

Loafy,
I have read Dave Gingery's books on most of the machines, and I'm a bit of a shaper nut, so I was curious if you had pushed this shaper any, to see how heavy a cut you could do before it started chatering?  

CJ


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## Metalmann

Excellent job on that shaper! Used to love setting up and running shapers and planers in the 60s. Eventually, they were phased out in most shops; in favor of all the bigger, badder, horizontal and vertical milling machines. Then, along came NC, then CNC.

Always wanted to build the Gingery machines, but waited too long to retire, and have the time to do it.


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