Wadkin Planer/Jointer restoration project

[9fingers]

Karl,
I've been having a bit of a think about your motor and converter.

I wonder if the phase converter block is simply a capacitor with two terminals on the top. Is there anything written on it you can photo and show us?

The motor internals look a bit nasty. Either the insulation is melted/burnt or something else has happened - not too clear from the picture.

I suspect that it is a special motor in as much as I can't see a bearing on the outboard end.
This could be deliberate as the integrated cutter block and motor shaft would otherwise have 3 bearings in a line. A feature normally avoided unless absolutely essential (such as a car crankshaft) as the fine tolerances needed make manufacture difficult.

The observation of your motor turning but slowly is surprising. i would expect little or no rotation but a lot of buzzing/grumbling with the lights dimming or it eventually to pick up speed to normal revs (2850 at a guess) but perhaps not have much power due to dodgy third phase.
Normally the speed would be governed by the layout of the windings and the mains frequency hence it is not natural just to go slowly without the smoke being let out!!

Lets assume you need a new motor. I don't think you will find a direct replacement and trying to graft a new conventional motor on the end will give you 4 bearing in a line - Not Good!

I'd be tempted to saw off the rotor leaving a shaft stub sticking out, fit a pulley and a belt drive to a newly positioned single phase motor like in the picture that Scrit posted earlier in the thread.
Using a normal 1425 rpm motor, the belt drive could speed up to 2850 or even a little bit more at the cutter head.
You would need a belt guard but this could be made from plywood etc - more than adequate for domestic use.


It is a pity you are so far away from me as I'm intrigued by the machine and would like to see it in the flesh.
Hope my comments are of some help.

Good Luck

Bob

 

[Digit]

Good point. A capacitor of that age would well past its sell by date.

Roy.

 

[9fingers]

Quite agree Roy,
I suspect that the only reason the converter worked at all without extra switched starter capacitance ( I tend to use 40 mfd per hp run and 6 to 10 x the run value to start) is the direct drive and low rolling friction of the direct coupling to the cutter block.

Bob

 

[Karl]

Bob

Many thanks for your input. The motor/converter are going to be what makes or breaks this project.

I'll get some photo's posted up over the next few days of the motor, converter and casing etc. I'm also going to re-attach the motor and get the beast fired up again and report on the outcome. Is there an easy way of determining the rpm of the cutter block?

I have no experience of motors or such, so am really feeling my way. but I would love to keep the original motor - the housing is obviously part of the original machine, and it'd seem a shame to have to scrap it. But if needs must....

Cheers

Karl

ps - is there any way of posting a video onto the forum? I could capture a video of the motor/cutterblock in action, and then you could see it for yourself. Or could I upload a video to say Photobucket, and post a link to it?

 

[9fingers]

Karl, motors running on 50 Hz have fundamental speeds of

2850, 1425 950 710 etc. Very rare to go below 710 (8pole) and impossible to go faster than 2850 (2 pole)
Anything slower than 2850 for a planer would be very slow rate of work to get a good finish.

For posting video, photobucket plus a link is best although the frame update rate distorts any sense of speed.

You might be able to keep the motor housing in situ with a couple of slots for a belt drive to 'escape'

Bob

 

[bugbear]

I note this site hasn't been mentioned, which is a serious omission!

http://www.owwm.com/

especially

http://wiki.owwm.com/Default.aspx?AspxA ... eSupport=1

BugBear

 

[Blister]

Been doing a fair bit of cleaning up this week, primarily on the base unit. Pics to follow (once all other parts are cleaned up).

I'm going shopping tomorrow, so which paint - 3 options:

1) Black Hammerite smooth finish.
2) Black Hammerite hammered finish.
3) A completely non-standard colour (silver, red, Clifton Green), either smooth or hammered.

I can't decide, so opinions please. I am erring towards a non-standard colour, in a smooth finish.

And does anybody have any idea on which areas are actually painted (I know the tables and fence aren't.........). It is really hard to establish which parts were originally painted. May have to wing it if there isn't an example out there.

Cheers

Karl

NO PLEASE NOT HAMMERITE " VOMIT "

Please a nice light grey smooth paint , arr my sanity has returned


:wink: :wink:

 

[Blister]

Karl

Re your question " So - any views on the motor? "

If I were you I would take the motor to a motor rewind specialist

you will probably find that when they remove the field coil and clean it all out , scrape the armature recesses and give it a good once over it will be fine

Worked for me on a Union wood turning lathe :wink:

 

[woody67]

Bugbear - OWWM is one interesting site :shock: are there any similar UK based ones? Reason being, my dad had lots of old machinery - TS, bandsaw and even a buffing machine that once resided in his shed which was a former cloggers shop made from old ammo boxes - hence the tons of brass screws I removed as a kid when it was being dismantled!! :shock:

Mark

 

[seaco]

Lots of elbow grease should sort out the tables.
If you have any pitting on smaller detachable parts you could try electrolytic rust removal (google for details) It works well. It does not put metal back but does get rid of rust ready for filling and paint.

Bearings could well be imperial sizes. These are still available. One supplier I have had good service from is arc euro trade.

Good luck

Bob

I did a bit of a tutorial on electrolytic rust removal here it works a treat...

https://www.ukworkshop.co.uk/forums/view ... highlight=

Lee

 

[GraemeD]

Karl,

I just came across your thread and was amazed to see you are restoring pretty much the same machine as I am!! I bought my Wadkin RA planer on Ebay for £70 a while back.....really as a kind of challenge. It seems it was in slightly better nick than yours with no missing parts, and maybe slightly newer (having asked Wadkin they reckon the serial number equates to about 1938!), but still very much in need of a full strip down, paint and rebuild.....which I am in the process of doing right now.

I too was amazed how similar it is to a modern machine in design....in many ways the safety features are the only major difference, and these can be brought up to date if necessary. I was particularly impressed by how smoothly it came apart and the great condition of the machined surfaces....it truly is a quality machine and worth I think of bringing back to life. Much better than something made in China today.

Interestingly in mine (a 2 cutter block version) the knives are slightly angled (ie. not at 90 degrees to the axis of rotation) to give a slight skew cut. Hopefully better for finish on difficult woods? Dunno, but I was impressed!

Anyway, I have some pics of what the planer looked like when I got it, which may help you....plus I really should take some pics as it is now, in pieces but fully painted. It's been a "parked" project for a bit now, while I do some real woodwork (I was getting withdrawl symptoms!), but I'll be picking it up shortly. We can compare notes perhaps!

(Also need to work out how to post images....I'm new to this!).

Looking forward to seeing your further progress!

Cheers
Graeme

[/img]

 

[Karl]

Hi Graeme

I'd love to see photos of your Wadkin - may help me to decide what to do with mine.

Mine is "parked" on a temporary workbench in about 15 bits..... :lol: Been quite busy with work, and not really had much time to do anything in the shop for a little while.

By way of general update, i've decided on a matt smooth black painted finish. Got the base cleaned up and undercoated, just trying to get the other bits sorted. Might get it finished before Xmas...... When it's painted up i'll post some further pics.

Cheers

Karl

 

[GraemeD]

Hi Karl,

I'm just pleased to hear that I'm not the only one doing this kind of rebuild! It takes a lot of time and is often quite tedious, but I just can't resist sometimes, as I know the end result will be worth it.

I made a huge mistake with my paint! I spent a lot of time prepping it, as my old paint was totally shot. Used an angle grinder with abrasive flap discs to strip it down to bare metal, filled in some of the worst blemishes in the castings with car body filler, and then primed with a zinc based metal primer. So far so good.

Then I had some kind of brainstorm and decided to use a domestic type gloss paint...a la Dulux. I managed to get what I believed to be an authentic colour match with the original (blue/grey), but the paint itself was simply not appropriate....far too soft, so it scratches and chips at the slightest thing. I really wish I'd used a proper machine enamel of some kind, which are admittedly harder to get hold of, but not that hard. So unless I re-strip it all down again (and life is too short for that), I will be continuing with what I have.

That kind of spoiled my momentum, but I am keen to complete it soon....it requires re-assembly, the main bearings cleaning out and looking at, and then electrics. Mine came with a modern motor but it was very underpowered (the original had been 3 phase and replaced by a previous owner with a 1/4 HP motor). I managed to pick up a decent and more appropriately powered motor off Ebay from a local source, so I will have to make up some kind of fixing for that when the time comes around.

Pics to follow when I get a chance!

Cheers
Graeme

 

[GraemeD]

Hi Karl,

Pics as promised. First, a general picture taken as it arrived.

And a close up.....

And how it is today....painted (and not cleaned up) and still in pieces.

The main body....

The base....

And finally a box of bearing housings, supports, and general parts

Now I just need the imputus to get it finished. The paint prep nearly finished off all my enthusiasm, so I guess I'm just recharging that with some proper woodworking. I am keen to see this up and running....my initial indication when I ran it up as it arrived was that it ran pretty sweetly, so it should be a great little machine to have around.

Hope these help to inspire you!
Graeme

 

[Chems]

Takes some serious moxie to get a project like this going and to do such a fine job. You'll have so much satisfaction when your using it!

 

[GraemeD]

You're not wrong, Chems! I started this with huge enthusiasm, and now need a short rest whilst I recharge. I will complete it however as it is a truly fine machine and deserves to be put back into use. I know I will enjoy using it when it's done, and the light is at the end of the tunnel!

One thing I would be interested to hear opinions about is the "repaired" table edge. In my second pic you can see that the nearside edge of the left hand table has been repaired with a fillet of silver weld material. My theory is that this was a machine made during wartime restrictions, and they made good any slightly less than perfect castings rather than wasting them.....it surely is not an after factory fix, as it makes no sense. This carries on through the machine where the critical machined faces are perfect, but some of the other cast surfaces (which are cosmetic) were pretty much unfettled. I used my angle grinder to remove a lot of rough patches and car body filler to level out depressions. I was surprised how rough some of it was, yet how fantastic the parts were where it does matter to operation. Is this normal for Wadkin, or could it be my theory of wartime measures holds water?

Any thoughts?

Graeme

 

[Chems]

Short rest is up, lets see it together!

 

[GraemeD]

You're probably right!! Unfortunately I'm about to leave on holiday, but on my return I think I will have no excuses but to pick this up and run with it again....particularly if Karl is catching me up!!

Cheers
Graeme

 

[Karl]

particularly if Karl is catching me up!!

Chance would be a fine thing ! Work and family commitments are keeping me out of the 'shop at the moment. Not made any progress on mine since I stripped it down, cleaned up the base and primed it. But I am hoping to get back to it in a couple of weeks.

Cheers

Karl

 

[Scrit]

I too was amazed how similar it is to a modern machine in design....in many ways the safety features are the only major difference, and these can be brought up to date if necessary.

Why are you so amazed? The design of the round block rotary cut planer goes back to the mid 19th century and is fundamentally unchanged except for details since about the 1870s. Modern industrial machines since the 1960s have some improvements not seen on Far Eastern home shop clones including parallel lifting devices on the tables (White of Paisley introduced this to the UK just after WWII, Wadkin took until 1978 to adopt it) and serrated or finger type steel table inserts at the inboard ends of the table to reduce noise, but even the wedge-type cutter block was introduced to the UK about 1930 or so and became standard on all Wadkin planers for the home market around 1951. The most amazing thing is that very little in the way of significant new concepts have appeared since around WWII.

Interestingly in mine (a 2 cutter block version) the knives are slightly angled (ie. not at 90 degrees to the axis of rotation) to give a slight skew cut. Hopefully better for finish on difficult woods?

It's actually to generate a slightly skewed cut which makes the cutting action more progressive, partly because it requires less power and results in the machine slowing down less when starting the cut.

My theory is that this was a machine made during wartime restrictions, and they made good any slightly less than perfect castings rather than wasting them.....

Sadly no. You've said that Wadkin dated your machine at circa 1938 - WWII started in 1939 but Wartime restrictions really only came into force around early 1941 and as Wadkin turned over Green Lane in Leicester (their factory) to war munitions production at about that time a wartime machine would probably have a plate stamped "Manufactured by R.O.F. Nottingham", who continued to manufacture many Wadkin machines until the mid 1950s. It is much more likely that a casting was cracked and nickel brazed to repair it at some time in the past, the table surfaces being reground before reassembly. I've seen a lot of old machines repaired in this way. It's not an uncommon technique.

Final point - do you know of anywhere I can get spare parts??? As you say, the cutter guard is missing, and the wheel to adjust the outfeed table is also missing.

Hopefully you'll have gotten those items sorted out by now. Otherwise you may need to get the existing handwheel copy cast (we have a foundry called Hargreaves opposite the old Sagar works in Canal Lane, Halifax who can do that but you're bound to have someone nearer) and a thread turned on it (standard Whitworth thread I'd have thought so not a killer) whilst the guard is simply a roll-formed piece of flat brass or 1.5mm thick steel (local sheet metal fabricator?)

So - any views on the motor?

Yes. It all depends on whether or not you want the machine to look original, or you want it to work better. If it's not working having a 70 odd year old motor rewound is going to cost a lot of money. It's also not going to deliver the best performing machines. Machines with in-built electric motors first appeared (this design was apparently introduced around 1927/28 ). V-belt drives were in their infancy (and unreliable) so motors were seen as a direct replacement for the earlier overhead line shaft and flat belt drive, hence direct connection to the cutterblock. During the 1930s experience and research showed that planers ideally need to run with a cutter block periphery speed of about (or above) 1,525 m/min or circa 5,000 ft/min (which is the speed about which many modern planers run). For a 5in cutter block (which is what the later machine has, I'm assuming yours is similar) that translates to the block spinning at a minimum 3,900rpm. If your motor is a two-pole design it will be nominally rated to run at 3,000 rpm, however a phenomenon which I believe electrical engineers call field slip (and if I've expressed that incorrectly I apologise) reduces that figure by around 5% to 2,850 rpm in the real world. At 2,850 rpm the cutterblock has a surface speed of only 1,100 m/min (or circa 3,700 ft/min). The slower speed means that the machine is more prone to slowing or stalling in cut and that the machine is more likely to snatch or tear out when dealing with awkward timbers. Wadkin changed the design of the RA early in its life and retained a separate motor with a belt drive running the block at at 4,500 rpm until production ceased in about 1956 or 1957 (giving a tool speed of 1,750 m/min or 5,790 ft/min) which makes for a much smoother running machine.

Converting to a belt drive would probably mean having a pulley wheel machined to attach to the end of the cutterblock (and I'm assuming that the motor and cutterblock are not a single piece here) but other than that you could probably make-up your own motor mountings from steel.

Scrit - you mentioned checking the bearings on the cutter block - I have loosened the access panel to check them over. Now, what am I looking for?

The cutter block should have a reduced diameter shaft at either end sitting in a plummer block, not like this:

These plummer blocks hold the ball bearing races (and the date of this machine means it should have ball bearing races rather than flat bearings) and normally have a Stauffer cup or grease nipple (probably the former on an old machine) at the top. I'd carefully refill the bearings with an acid-free machine bearing grease until you are just starting to push out some of the old grease past the bearing seals then turn the block over by hand listening for clicking, rumbling and roughness. If there is no clicking the bearings may well be OK, but as you're stripping it down having a new set of bearings pressed on is probably going to extend the life of the machine well past yours! (and despite what some people say modern dust sealed ball bearings are often superior to those made in the 1920s and 30s)

Scrit