"If WADKIN made toilets they would not flush".

[tool613]

they would scare the **** out of it.

2 day ARN haul horse trade with my buddy Dave the wakin lover. i will let Dave tell the story of how the wadkin was saved. The wadkin RM Over under is in the yard.


sorry boys i use a sissy 400HP tractor for loading

home to be taken care of and placed in the wadkin tempal.

skewed knife head

used a scale for scale

head has the removable plates for moulding knifes

one box of scary came with it

and few other toys

here are some pictures of the load off of the machine

jack

 

[Max Power]

Thats quite a machine Jack , can't beat the old Wadkins but you wouldn't want one falling on your foot. :mrgreen:
How did a country that used to produce that quality of machinery end up making nothing

 

[woodbloke]

How did a country that used to produce that quality of machinery end up making nothing

Say again?...how about 'Tornado':

...I know it's only a 'one off' but it's a start...and there's more in the pipe line - Rob

 

[Karl]

Great machine Jack - looking forward to seeing it once your worked your magic on it!

Out of interest, what power motor is in it?

Cheers

Karl

 

[condeesteso]

Nothing quite like a nice clean Wadkin. And that's nothing like a ... sorry :lol: :lol:
Love 'em. I still have sights on a Wadkin bandsaw (re-saw really) that the mill want to sell, I want to buy, but no-one fancies moving it.
There really must be a Wadkin fanclub somewhere?
Pics when it's a tads cleaner please? (and well done for homing it... too many have gone the way.)

 

[tool613]

Out of interest, what power motor is in it?

Cheers

Karl

Karl
Wadkin specked a 5HP head/block motor and a 1HP drive motor. This machine was made for a 25 hrs old Niagara power grid and those motors are long gone. What you see is the the PO rigged up. I have found and old footed wadkin motor off a similar machine but for the drive I think I will put a 3HP feed motor with a VFD. The slowest feed speed on the this is 20 FPM on a 2 knife head so with the motor at half speed i will still have 1.5 hp for the drive. this should be sweat with the molding part of the machine.

Nothing quite like a nice clean Wadkin. And that's nothing like a ... sorry

Eskimos have an unusually large number of words for snow. And wadkin restores have just as many for rust :mrgreen:
it really is in great shape for it age and i have planed some walnut to see the feed work work.
check it out on YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_erQsboKZ9o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXzx_O8x ... er&list=UL


jack

 

[bugbear]

How did a country that used to produce that quality of machinery end up making nothing

Say again?...how about 'Tornado':

...I know it's only a 'one off' but it's a start...and there's more in the pipe line - Rob

That's not manufacturing - that's Theme Park Great Britain. I was furious when they made a "new mainline engine" and didn't use the advances of Livio Porta. They just copied the old design.

Tornado is about as representative of GB manufacturing as the Babbage difference engine. Both are lovely.

BugBear

 

[Harbo]

Come, Come BB there's a lot of skilled craftsmen still out there - they perhaps need to be channeled into something more productive?
They did it out of love and passion.

You only have to visit the many Model Engineer Shows to see the quality of stuff produced.

Quality stuff is expensive to produce and in a world of cheap gear, difficult to compete?

Did you see the program on making the Airbus wings - lots of high end engineering going on there.

Rod

 

[tomatwark]

Thats quite a machine Jack , can't beat the old Wadkins but you wouldn't want one falling on your foot. :mrgreen:
How did a country that used to produce that quality of machinery end up making nothing

http://www.wadkin.com/wadkin-built

 

[woodbloke]

Tornado is about as representative of GB manufacturing as the Babbage difference engine. Both are lovely.

BugBear

...as is Wadkin BB. Both Wadkin and 'Tornado' hark back to the days when we produced stuff that was solid, heavy and hopefully would last for a very long time. The fact that the loco is new illustrates that we can still make this sort of thing, even if we had to outsource the boiler to Germany Agreed, it's not representative of GB manufacturing, but there's very little that's actually manufactured in GB these days, as Sarah Smith on Jon Snow's Channel 4 News amply demonstrated the other evening when she tried to outfit her new house with goods made entirely in the UK...an impossible task today, but probable 30 or 40 years ago - Rob

 

[condeesteso]

watched the vids Jack - looks way better inside than it did on the truck in the dark! Confirms what I already knew - I love old Wadkins.
Just a thought - did Wadkin ever have a distributor in U.S. / Canada, as shipping and hauling that lump all the way over must have added a bit to the cost when new.

 

[tool613]

did Wadkin ever have a distributor in U.S. / Canada, as shipping and hauling that lump all the way over must have added a bit to the cost when new.

there were in eastern Canada it was

you can tell by the tag they were very proud of the machinery as that Bronzes tag is the same as wadkin's.
In Canada we have a fair bit of wadkin in the schools and pattern shops. very little made it to the USA but Oliver did sale the wadkin pattern mill in the US under licence up until the 30. I do believe Wadkin did supplied other machines to round out Oliver's pattern shop line.Most over here have never heard of Wadkin and you can pick it up cheep. Like the $150 we gave this owner for the RM



jack

 

[condeesteso]

Those cast makers' plates of that period are works of art, the Wadkin logo in particular, and the WW device on the top one. Here's another nice one:

 

[wills-mill]

Brilliant! Thanks for the videos as well.....

I've got a Wadkin 30" thicknesser of the same era to get sorted out over the next few months. 3 knife head and powered feed rollers in the table, it's a lovely old monster.

One of my videos (the BT500 thicknesser (willwallacetree)) turns up on the sidebar of youtube when you view your videos. If you put some 'tags' with your video (keywords) it's likely that more mad Wadkin fiddlers can find them. Obviously that'll put the price up in Canada so maybe not....!

 

[tool613]

Those cast makers' plates of that period are works of art, the Wadkin logo in particular, and the WW device on the top one. Here's another nice one:

Yes i think that they are art too. In fact the machines of this era were what i call the zenith of wood working machinery. where technical and artistry came together with a view that the good life would last forever.

One of my videos (the BT500 thicknesser (willwallacetree)) turns up on the sidebar of youtube when you view your videos. If you put some 'tags' with your video (keywords) it's likely that more mad Wadkin fiddlers can find them. Obviously that'll put the price up in Canada so maybe not....!

I think my post of rebuilds have bump the price up some . guy from the US are heeding in to Canada to poach wadkin machinery.

the Wadkin PK I posted start a bit of a riot. good thing i got mine first :mrgreen:

hope that was not to many pics. thank you for looking.


jack

 

[MickCheese]

Too many pics, too many pics! Fantastic, absolute art.

Mick

 

[Mark A]

That's so nice it should be in a glass case!

 

[dddd]

Wow that looks amazing, thanks for posting, that really has made my day... Although I must have one now, time to get a bigger garage i think...

 

[tool613]

here are some more pic that I think you will find intersting

Aa grown man can not pick this motor up and I don't care how big you are. that's a tall boy can of beer for scale. I found this Wadkin motor with wadkin pulley's the right size for the head on the machines. this never happens. and the good part is it was free, so I have the head motor. I also got the electrics out of Daves Wadkin RM he is changing to single phase, so I have a starter for a 15hp motor, the PO's rig was a joke.

the head is missing a bolt for the clam and some of the bolts don't look wadkin

this a wadkin bolt it has a round head

these are not but there is the same one on the there side for balance

just so you can get a sence of the size of the jointer i put a tall beer on the table

Now friend Arthuror Matty may be the only one that will appreciate these next pics

the rack pinon handle is diffident from my older 16" RD its ARN with more webs. it could be use as a dating tool. so this machines is i would think after world war 2 when Britain had many aluminum foundry for the war effort.

the wadkin head tool and the canting table

jointer(planner) tables crank

dirty papers(manual)

notice the 25 hrzs

jack