Strong Arm Shaper

[waumbek]

Martin Model makes a nice set of castings for a manually operated shaper and I thought I might post some photos of my progress. Shapers are fascinating things and certainly off the beaten track nowadays. However, once in awhile you might really need one for internal keyways, gears, and other odds and ends. In my case I wish to cut v-grooves of about 92-93 degrees into small pieces of brass that will easily fold up into miniature brass "boxes" of about .25 inches square for brazing. These will become the ends of the many wooden arms required to reproduce a replica of Jefferson's first polygraph or copy machine - something that no one has seen for 200 years. Yes, two of his later machines survive, but his very first has been lost to history.

I have made great use of a similar Strong Arm build by "Stepside" posted here several years ago (he has also recently been super encouraging by email!) and I thought I'd post some similar photos for anyone else contemplating the project and offer similar help and/or suggestions. It's a bit involved but the castings are absolutely superb. I started by skimming the top to allow for accurately machining the bottom.



The traveling slide is a bit tricky. It helped me to write out the steps for proceeding.



Current state:



About those t-slots: I have discovered t-slot cutters are like most machinists, home and professional. They're quite sensitive and have too much to do!
Here is where convention requires I mention no connection to Martin Model other than very satisfied customer....

Regards, Charles M

[Dan Dubeau]

Looks good so far. Keep us updated on the progress. I've seen the castings many times, but don't think I've seen a build thread of someone building it. Looking forward to it!

[mattthemuppet]

very cool, I look forward to your progress! I don't know if it was the same set of plans/ castings, but I know Stepside built a hand shaper a while back. The thread is called something like "a dollar a day for a year" or similar.

[BCRider]

As a shaper owner (Alba 1A) this will be a fun thread to follow. Smooth chips to you!

[waumbek]

Your right, it was Stepside, many, many apologies to him. For some reason I wrote the handle down incorrectly. Again, my apologies, I have edited the post.

[JRouche]

Nice project.. Please keep her coming. Id always wanted to tackle one of them. JR

[The Artful Bodger]

Nice project and I trust all goes well!

I have a little Adept 2 shaper and although it is powered it is a manual machine which they also fitted for motorization. It is not an everyday tool but it is something I can walk over too and do a simple slot, keyway or whatever in just a few minutes.

[Noitoen]

You could adapt a pneumatic cylinder to do the arm work

[The Artful Bodger]

You could adapt a pneumatic cylinder to do the arm work

I think that would be unsuitable. The pneumatic cylinder would have spring in it's action which I expect would make heavy strokes very interesting.

[BCRider]

I think that would be unsuitable. The pneumatic cylinder would have spring in it's action which I expect would make heavy strokes very interesting.

Yep, pneumatic would be.... interesting to say the least. Now HYDRAULIC on the other hand.....

If a hydraulic setup were installed it would mean that this small bench top normally hand operated shaper would have the hydraulic in common with the really BIG machines...

[Noitoen]

If the pneumatic is big enough I would think it would work fine. Of course you would have to feed the same amount as if it was hand operated.