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About three years ago I went to an auction for a deceased gun smith's machine shop. While everyone was perusing the lathe and horizontal mill I, having my trusty Maximat Super11 and V10P with 6 speed Emco head, immediately gravitated to the AMMCO Shaper, the pristine AMMCO Shaper, I might add! I got it for $350.00, I would have paid lots more!
It sat in my new unfinished workshop until now. In 2006 I built a new garage thinking that the old, attached garage, would make a nice new workshop and I could bring my metal working 'stuff' up from the dungeon.... finally!
Well as Robert Burns once said," The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft a glee" so went my upstairs workshop. Apparently I did to darn a good job on the room, a stone I don't expect to stumble over again any time soon. The 'new workshop' is now simply "the new room" and the AMMCO Shaper is now in the dungeon with may family of other machinery, I hope it likes the view.
I built a new table for it with wheels in the front in case I ever plan to move it around but probably never will.
Now to the good stuff. The shaper was in such good shape that I suspect it had only been used a few times if that. I have all the original manuals and the purchase order from November 1946. The only thing missing is the belt guards. You can't have it all! I immediately set out to make several cutters and of course, like any respectable HSM the first cutters I made were fine finishing tools. I stocked a piece of muddy junk hot rolled steel into the vice and low and behold the finish came out like glass.... There is a God!
Someone once said, the only thing you can't make on a shaper is money. What they failed to realize is that you can save a bundle on cutters, You can also do special jobs but to tell the truth none of these things really matter, there's just something about shapers that no other machine has, it's mesmerizing, I can sit in front of it watching that ram go back and forth for hours as the bed clicks merrily along.
While looking around on the net I noticed on eBay, where else! someone selling new Phenolic gears and while mine is fine it would be nice to have a spare. There's a Phenolic gear on my Emco mill that I stripped doing an intermediate cut on copper about 30 years ago for a commercial job, thank the God I just discovered that I'll never have to do those types of jobs again.... I hope. Anyway back then it was a simple process to buy another gear from Emco and while I think you can still get parts from places like Blue Ridge I have, as someone once said, the only machines that can fix themselves, besides Blue Ridge only sells parts made out of gold!
This brings me to Phenolic gear material, the 'L' type or perhaps Delrin (Acetate) sheets to keep in the shop for those late night interrupted copper cutting projects I swore I'd never do again.
What someone here might help with is the size of the bull gear on the AMMCO. While I had to disassemble it to move it to the dungeon I never thought to measure the gear itself (diameter and width) so that I could buy the appropriate size blanks.
Thanks for your help,
Rob
It sat in my new unfinished workshop until now. In 2006 I built a new garage thinking that the old, attached garage, would make a nice new workshop and I could bring my metal working 'stuff' up from the dungeon.... finally!
Well as Robert Burns once said," The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft a glee" so went my upstairs workshop. Apparently I did to darn a good job on the room, a stone I don't expect to stumble over again any time soon. The 'new workshop' is now simply "the new room" and the AMMCO Shaper is now in the dungeon with may family of other machinery, I hope it likes the view.
I built a new table for it with wheels in the front in case I ever plan to move it around but probably never will.
Now to the good stuff. The shaper was in such good shape that I suspect it had only been used a few times if that. I have all the original manuals and the purchase order from November 1946. The only thing missing is the belt guards. You can't have it all! I immediately set out to make several cutters and of course, like any respectable HSM the first cutters I made were fine finishing tools. I stocked a piece of muddy junk hot rolled steel into the vice and low and behold the finish came out like glass.... There is a God!
Someone once said, the only thing you can't make on a shaper is money. What they failed to realize is that you can save a bundle on cutters, You can also do special jobs but to tell the truth none of these things really matter, there's just something about shapers that no other machine has, it's mesmerizing, I can sit in front of it watching that ram go back and forth for hours as the bed clicks merrily along.
While looking around on the net I noticed on eBay, where else! someone selling new Phenolic gears and while mine is fine it would be nice to have a spare. There's a Phenolic gear on my Emco mill that I stripped doing an intermediate cut on copper about 30 years ago for a commercial job, thank the God I just discovered that I'll never have to do those types of jobs again.... I hope. Anyway back then it was a simple process to buy another gear from Emco and while I think you can still get parts from places like Blue Ridge I have, as someone once said, the only machines that can fix themselves, besides Blue Ridge only sells parts made out of gold!
This brings me to Phenolic gear material, the 'L' type or perhaps Delrin (Acetate) sheets to keep in the shop for those late night interrupted copper cutting projects I swore I'd never do again.
What someone here might help with is the size of the bull gear on the AMMCO. While I had to disassemble it to move it to the dungeon I never thought to measure the gear itself (diameter and width) so that I could buy the appropriate size blanks.
Thanks for your help,
Rob
JR
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