Looking for a "small" planer in New England

[Largo]

Hi all,

OK, I'll admit that I'm crazy, but I've decided that I'd like to get a small metal planer - like a Warner and Swasey. By small, I mean an envelope of 20x20x60" or there abouts- even at that, it would be 12' long and weigh 6-10 tons!

There was one for sale two or three years ago in the Boston area for under a grand, but I wasn't interested then.

Cheers,

Brian
Taxachusetts

 

[Cyclotronguy]

And if you're really touched... you'll add a grinder to the the cross head and learn to grind lathe bedways...... OH wait a second, I resemble that remark.

Good luck, don't think you will regret it if you've got the space.

Cheer
Cyclotronguy

 

[Largo]

I would definitely be adding the grinder. Grinding lathe ways and other precision surfaces are all reasons I'd like to get one. I'm in the process of moving out several machines, so I can probably dedicate an area of 5x15', give or take, to such a beast. It will go well with the shaper I recently acquired.

Cheers,

Brian
Taxachusetts

 

[Cyclotronguy]

And a planer story; Back in the day my partner, a really swell chap had a shop in Berkeley CA. John had an 16 foot Ohio Dreadnaught planer, that had been converted from belt drive to direct drive. WEll one day a pin fell out of the shift lever that switched from the forward to reverse on the table.

Table was driven by a helical rack gear. Table went past limits, through a brick wall and landed with a massive thud on the sidewalk of High Steet. Foot cop comes along, and hollers..... hey get out here an pick that thing up!

Cyclotronguy

 

[Largo]

I can just imagine that beat cop!

This reminds of a story a good friend of mine told me about one of his nefarious cousins. This happened in Boston back in the 50's or early 60's. Turns out this guy was a shady scrap dealer and one of his favorite ploys was to go down to one of the freight yards at 2:00 am on a Saturday and load up the back of a one-ton pickup he had. Well one night he goes down there and the only thing available for him to steal was some recently removed railroad rail - you know, 39' long and about 130# per running yard - so think really heavy. Anyway, the guy had a pipe rack set up on the pickup bed that extended over the cab and a heavy duty winch of the front bumper, so he winched the rail up onto the pipe racking - something like two DOZEN lengths. You can do the math, but it was way over capacity for the truck.

Anyway, as he's leaving the freight yard, the rail starts to slide off backwards - apparently he wasn't able to get it quite balanced properly. So as he's driving through the Southie section of Boston he gets the idea to back the truck up to one of the many brick buildings in the area and gently push the rail back into position and get it balanced so he can safely make his getaway. Well the truck didn't have the oomph to move that much weight when done slowly, so he pulled away a couple of yards and gave it a bit more gas - the resulting impact moved the rails a couple of inches, so he kept repeating this - each time moving a little further away and giving it a little more gas on each successive attempt. Well, you guessed it - on the last backup he hit the wall so hard the rail blasted completely through the brick wall and got stuck there! He then pulled forward to free the truck and drove like a madman to get outta Dodge.

A cop comes by a couple minutes later - apparently the loud crashing was noted by someone in the area - and the guy nearly flips out when he sees 20+ lengths of railroad rail sticking out of the side of a building some eight or nine feet off the ground. As the rail yard was on the far side of the building, he called the bomb squad as he thought there must have been an explosion in the freight yard that hurled the rail completely through the building like some many javelins or arrows!

Man, that was one of the best laughs I have ever had!

Brian
Taxachusetts