Shaper Tool Holder Question

[Uncle Buck]

Very nicely made cutter holder there! I have seen plans for making your own through the years too. You did a smashing job with yours.

 

[Uglydog]

If anyone is interested, I've got several extra of these.
Just the holder no bar.
I'll post them on the for sale section.

Daryl
MN

 

[Dranreb]

Very nicely made cutter holder there! I have seen plans for making your own through the years too. You did a smashing job with yours.

Thanks Uncle, nice of you to say so.

I made a mistake when I wrote 'Using it with the nut under the clapper will reducer chatter.' I meant to say 'having the nut away from the lapper will reduce chatter'

Bernard

 

[benmychree]

Thanks Uncle, nice of you to say so.

I made a mistake when I wrote 'Using it with the nut under the clapper will reducer chatter.' I meant to say 'having the nut away from the lapper will reduce chatter'

Bernard

Yes, this effectively makes it into a hook tool; getting the tool bit nearer or even behind the pivot point of the clapper box is what we are after. Only thing, for heavy cutting it puts a big strain on the swivel part of the holder; likely better to do roughing with the tool in front and finishing with the tool behind.

 

[C-Bag]

Yes, this effectively makes it into a hook tool; getting the tool bit nearer or even behind the pivot point of the clapper box is what we are after. Only thing, for heavy cutting it puts a big strain on the swivel part of the holder; likely better to do roughing with the tool in front and finishing with the tool behind.

Hi benmychree,

Please explain "hook tool". There are so many details to shapers that are particular to them it seems. I tried switching my cutter to the back early on because I saw it somewhere, but I didn't have enough experience to get what was going on. I also was lucky that my old 7b had a sharp cutter on it. It was done in a way I'd not seen before. And that's not surprising as I'm new to machining and totally noob to shapers. It was very rounded and the top rake was not flat, but curved or dished, like what you would do with like a burr. As I used it and resharpened I ground into the top, taking away the curve. I couldn't figure out with my grinders how to do that and definitely my finish went to hell no matter what I did. Then yesterday I remembered I'd gotten some diamond burrs and the smallest was just right. I was able to finally recreate that curved top rake and did a test and hallelujah it's back peeling those perfect little curls and leaving a beautiful finish. I would have never known that if I hadn't gotten that tool with it.

 

[benmychree]

In the days of forged tools, a hook tool would be forged out so that the cutting edge was moved backwards more or less in line with the backside of the tool's shank instead of more or less in line with the front side of the shank; if it is in front of the shank, the tool tends to lift due to the angle between the clapper box pivot point, the hook tool places the cutting edge more nearly directly under the pivot point and the tendency to lift is greatly reduced, greatly diminishing the tendency for the tool to chatter in the cut. The way I grind roughing tools for the shaper is to use the tool forms that were created by F.W. Taylor in his experiments on the most economic methods to cut metal "On the Art of Cutting Metal" published in the late 1890s after about 27 years of experiments; his tools had a fairly large radius curve in the cutting flank, blended into a much smaller radius on the point, and ground with sufficient top rake to cut freely (Which can be considerable) The end and side clearance need be no more than a few degrees, as the shaper or planer tool does not feed over while cutting as in a lathe.
If the top of the tool is dished, I suppose it could be fed in either direction, however, as you point out, it is not really easy to accomplish and tedious to sharpen; the better approach would be to simply grind an angled rake on the tool and have left and right hand tools for right or left handed cuts in steel or iron; a tool for brass would not need any side rake and could be used for both left and right cuts.

 

[C-Bag]

Thanks so much for that and putting me on to that book. Turns out you can DL pdf of it here:

https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/parent/3x816s35t/technical_reports/gx41mp578

Seems like this should be added to the library here HM.

 

[benmychree]

It is quite a tome, shows illustration of all the equipment used in the experiments, tool shapes and the history of the endeavor. a footnote is that Taylor and White, his assistant developed the process of hardening HSS; previous to that, they used carbon steel for tools, and a sort of super carbon steel from Britain, known as Mushet Steel. In fact, they discovered that it was a semi hardened form of HSS; they discovered by accident, by overheating a tool in the forge that was reshaped and re hardened that it took on the properties of HSS, being able to cut at a higher rate of surface speed and exhibit the property of red hardness; after the tool was heated up to the melting point, they removed it and thinking that it was ruined, they gave it a try anyway; the rest is history! The two stage hardening process where the tool is brought to a red heat, then quickly to white heat is known as the Taylor-White process of hardening HSS.

 

[benmychree]

Here are some pics of my shaper tools and holders:
#1 a spring tool used on shaper or lathe when using form tools to reduce chatter; tool head swivels and screw is used to limit or eliminate spring feature
#2 Williams swivel head shaper tool, has serrated ring to allow many more positions of swivel than the similar Armstrong type.
#3 My favorite roughing tool
#8 The tool in the reversed position as "hook tool" Note the setscrew in the side of the clapper box housing, it is used to lock the clapper in position when doing internal shaping, it bears into a drill point hole that is drilled a little back from the setscrew so that when tightened it draws the clapper block firmly against it's seat in the clapper box housing.
#9 some of my other shaper tool bits
#10 A light spring used to quiet the clapper when stroking fast; if allowed to go to full applause when running at high speed, the vibration can cause the tool slide to slip downwards, feeding into the work deeper, possibly ruining the job.

 

[C-Bag]

Great stuff, thanks! My wife laughs herself silly when she looks over my shoulder and asks what in the world are you reading! When I say a manual, or the Connoly scraping book, or the many shaper books I've gotten off here she just can't believe it. It's fantastic that somebody has preserved these old books digitally. The sad thing is I've got other projects I'm trying to do right now and when I try to think back where in the hell I saw this its going to take some digging.

I deeply appreciate the sharing of knowledge and the willingness to get slightly off the rails when the opportunity arises.