Cheap per pound

[halfnut]

I went out and about yesterday, did some shopping for Christmas. I found a really neat toy I wish I had room for.

8ft Grey planer, under power, everything seems to be in shape except the table, it needs a cut taken and cleaned up. This fine little jewel can be bought for less than 8 cents a pound. 32,000 lbs worth of Iron, only $2,500 and he will load it onto trailer.

Wonderful things could be done with this machine, if I had a corner big enough to put it in.

Is it too late to send a letter to Santa?

Might be to heavy for his Sleigh, but one can always wish.

I think I will stick with my Flather shaper, it fits in shop easier.

[kap pullen]

Dave,
Grey planers, that brings back some memories.
At Koppers Co. where it all started for me, we had two 84" wide table planers (don't remember how long).
One was a regular planer but the other was a "double cut".
It had a rotating tool block with carbide buttons and would cut in and out.
We planed side frames, and bases for cardboard box machines. Also keyed rolls, and notched knife bars for the corrigator lines.
You'd set up the frames and had an hour or so cut time before setting up the broad nose tool to finish.
Cutting steel 3/8-1/2 depth of cut and 1/16" feed the chips would hit the floor with a thud.
One time day shift was keying a shaft. The midnight tool grinder swapped day's tool with a piece of mild steel ground like a tool.
They wore on that shaft all day with that "tool".
Day foreman asked us to work on the job because it was "really Hard" and now late.
Of course we helped them out and had the job done in an hour.
What a laugh to ourselves.
Those machines had reverse dogs to reverse the tables. Every apprentice would
invariably start the machine outside the dogs.
The table would run into the stop blocks and have to be jacked back onto the rack with bolt on rack extensions.
What an embarasment that was. All the journeyman machinists made a point of giving you a hard time.
Enough of that
Merry Xmas
kapullen