Old mitre cutter

[TFrench]

Just picked up an old mitre trimmer from gumtree - its a bit of a monster!
20161027_204842 by tfrench123 french, on Flickr

Its got no makers ID anywhere - can anyone shed any light? A quick google finds none with a wheel and rack and pinion drive. It came with spare reground blades - just as well, the originals are seriously chewed! No wonder it was giving a bit of tearout!

 

[TFrench]

I swapped the blades today - big improvement but its still tearing a little - any tips for trying to eliminate this? I clamped a bit of pine to the fence as a zero clearance fence and it still did it a bit. Would the grinding angle of the blade affect this? If so I may try regrinding the damaged blades at a different angle.

 

[toolsntat]

I swapped the blades today - big improvement but its still tearing a little - any tips for trying to eliminate this? I clamped a bit of pine to the fence as a zero clearance fence and it still did it a bit. Would the grinding angle of the blade affect this? If so I may try regrinding the damaged blades at a different angle.

Cracking find 8)
When you put the new grinds in did you hone the grinding marks away to give a polished cutting edge?
These bits of kit generally do give super smooth finishes.

Andy

 

[TFrench]

I did try it on the second one after the first tore a bit and it was better but not perfect. I'll have another go and really polish them up.

 

[Trafalgar]

Wow, very solid and of commercial quality for sure.

 

[TFrench]

Had a tinker with it this afternoon. Honed one of the blades on my new diamond stones - it took a while to get it there but it now cuts much cleaner. I've also found the two brass knurled wheels above the fences are an eccentric cam - undoing the bolt below allows you to adjust the pivot point of the fence to bring it in tighter to the blades. I'm very impressed! The chap I got it from said it came from an old brewery in Birmingham.

 

[AndyT]

Here's a scan of a page from the 1925 Richard Melhuish catalogue. Model 886w looks pretty close to yours. Is yours the superior No 2 model, with angles from 45° up to 130° ?

Even if it's the cheaper No 1 model, it was still a seriously expensive piece of kit, which might account for its rarity. (In the same catalogue, a fancy Stanley 55, imported from the USA, was £5 11s 6d; a nice infill smoothing plane was around £2.

I don't know who made these trimmers - Melhuish were a retailer - but the same picture of the big one on legs also appears in the 1908 Tyzack catalogue under the name "Zyto" which was just their default 'own brand' name.

 

[AndyT]

Ok, here's a bit more information.

It seems that these trimmers had quite a long manufacturing life - I've now found this image in the 1964 Buck and Hickman catalogue, calling it an "Eclipse" pattern, and it does seem to be a dead ringer for your machine. Maybe there's a connection to the long established maker of hacksaws and honing guides or maybe Eclipse is just a randomly chosen name. Either way, your trimmer could be quite a bit more modern than I thought at first.

 

[TFrench]

Thanks Andy, I was hoping you'd come up trumps with it! It is indeed the No2 model with the wider range of angles. Showed my dad the pages you posted and he came out with the 1938, 1939 and 1940 editions of the ironmongers guide - full of fantastic adverts!

 

[custard]

I use a Morso for mitre cutting, which works on the same guillotine principle as your machine. The almost polished quality of the cut is better than anything you'll get from a saw, but (there's always a but isn't there!) to achieve that quality and look after the blades you must only ever take light paring cuts, and the harder and bigger the timber the lighter the cut you need to take. If you try and chomp straight through a big section of Oak you'll get a rubbish result and knacker your blades, so cut the mitre first with a saw, then use your machine to refine the cut, removing well under a mill at a time.

Good luck!

 

[Racers]

How about this one chaps.



That is a 12" rule on the bed!

Pete

 

[TFrench]

Not being one to let a bargain or chunk of rusty cast iron pass me by I picked this up off ebay the other day:
Mitre guillotine
It was sold as all seized up but 5 minutes with WD40 and a soft hammer got it freed off nicely. Had a bit of a go at the bed today and its coming up quite nicely. The handle at the front winds the throat plate in and out. The fences have spring loaded knobs to locate in the stops at preset angles but the plungers are actually properly seized and someone has stripped the thread on the left one. Will get the induction heater on them and see if they let go. The stripped thread will be a little more of a problem though, sure I'll get round it though.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Andy's examples are quite close in price, actually. I looked at an inflation calculator, and the older one comes out at a £1008, the newer one £950.

 

[TFrench]

This thing is seriously well made! Like a 3D puzzle trying to take it to bits. Doesn't seem to be any makers markings, just patent dates on the fences but no actual numbers.

 

[bugbear]

This thing is seriously well made! Like a 3D puzzle trying to take it to bits. Doesn't seem to be any makers markings, just patent dates on the fences but no actual numbers.

Take LOTS of digital photos as you take it apart. Most helpful for putting it back together, I find...

BugBear

 

[mbartlett99]

Lie Custard said - really light cuts. Think of it as a weird looking shooting board; cut on the saw finish with the trimmer.

 

[TFrench]

already on it! Having a phone always in the pocket is very handy. I tend to bolt an assembly back together once it comes off the machine too, can't lose anything then!

 

[scrimper]

Sorry to reopen an old thread but I have only just found this one!
Over 30 years ago I bought one of the same mitre guillotine as in this thread and I knew nothing about it, never having seen another one.
Yesterday I was in the workshop and decided to make a Youtube video about the trimmer as I thought it was a rare beast and today after searching for ages found this thread!

My video is here if anyone is interested. https://youtu.be/LpZ_2M_Lqq4

 

[marcros]

Excellent stuff!

I bought the one in the thread, and have only just put it on my bench to have a play with.

I can't decide whether the wheel should go to the front, back or side. At the front, it is easier to turn, but holding the timber being trimmed is more fiddly. The reverse is true with it at the back. I could put it on a workmate, but that would take up a lot more space if I needed access to front and back.

Any thoughts?

 

[TFrench]

I always used it with the wheel at the back.