So small machines did do real work. WW2 mobile machine shop

I ran across a comment that the small 6-8" shapers were liked during WW2 for their ability to make small repair parts in remote locations. As the little shapers are often kind of politely dismissed as useless I did a little digging and remembered I have a book The American Arsenal that is comprised of reprints of WW2 era technical documentation of US equipment which includes a variety of WW2 era repair vehicles.


The working end of a WW2 era M16A2 Machine Shop truck.

These trucks were were set up as general machine shops and provided with a 10" lathe with milling attachment, 7" shaper, bench grinder, 10 ton hydraulic press and a 1/2" radial drill press, as well as a large selection of hand tools in both US and metric sizes. Included a 10kw generator to power the equipment.

Looks like an Atlas 7" shaper and maybe a 10" South Bend with an under drive motor and cabinet?




Not shown, but the M16A1 was a more specialized "heavy lathe" truck with a 14" or 16" gap bed lathe with milling attachment and a 1-1/4" drill press, along with appropriate hand tools to support it.

Thank you for posting that. I have a really cool old atlas 7B as well

Aaron_W said:

Looks like an Atlas 7" shaper

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Seems strange to have a shaper and no mill?

Larry$ said:

Seems strange to have a shaper and no mill?

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They would have likely only had a horizontal mill small enough to fit in a truck back then.

Also, the specs on the drill presses are kind of comical. I think mistakes were made.

Larry$ said:

Seems strange to have a shaper and no mill?

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They included a milling attachment for the lathe. Another tool that admittedly leaves quite a bit to be desired, but does work.

They don't get much respect since small vertical mills are so readily available, but in the 1940s a Bridgeport M head was a small vertical mill. I don't think the little Benchmaster vertical mills came out until after WW2. I have a small horizontal mill made during WW2 and it is still quite a bit larger and heavier than a 7" shaper.

RaisedByWolves said:

They would have likely only had a horizontal mill small enough to fit in a truck back then.

Also, the specs on the drill presses are kind of comical. I think mistakes were made.

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I'm guessing they just gave the chuck size. Wish they had included a photo with bench on the right hand side of the truck showing the other tools.

I would imagine the radial drill press was something like the relatively light duty ones Delta started making in the late 1950s. Basically their 11" and 14" drill presses with an adjustable ram to give them a much larger swing than the standard drill presses.

Aaron_W said:

I'm guessing they just gave the chuck size. Wish they had included a photo with bench on the right hand side of the truck showing the other tools.

I would imagine the radial drill press was something like the relatively light duty ones Delta started making in the late 1950s. Basically their 11" and 14" drill presses with an adjustable ram to give them a much larger swing than the standard drill presses.

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Probably even drilling capacity.

I almost bought one of those Rockwell radials, but when I looked it over I came to realize it was more of as woodworking tool than metal working.

I’ll bet that’s a Sheldon.

Anyhoo, yeah those fellahs pretending small machines have no utility are just used to doing a different sort of machining. There’s loads of utility in most machine tools. They didn’t build it for nothing! Lol

Here’s one from one of our members.

jwmay said:

I’ll bet that’s a Sheldon.

Anyhoo, yeah those fellahs pretending small machines have no utility are just used to doing a different sort of machining. There’s loads of utility in most machine tools. They didn’t build it for nothing! Lol

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Yup. The comment has been made several times that the 7b was only for training. I don’t think a portable machine shop could haul around and power especially a big 24” shaper. I’ve seen some big ones on ships. The beauty of the shaper especially the small ones is they have tiny motors and being able to dress a cutter for almost any kind of job a mill could do with just a bench grinder is a huge bonus. I toy with idea of selling my 7b because it’s not used all the time but I know I’ll never find one for that price again. There has been several jobs where that was the only tool for the job.

That first photo has been in a thread here before and one of the members has actually worked in a similar setup.