That's a badass machine you got there, I'd love to see a video on the teardown and cleaning process! If you don't mind me asking, how much were you able to pick that up for?
I am a member of AGFA a WW2 historic demonstration group. We have a WW2 6 inch Coast Artillery Battery which we restored for the US National Park Service at Ft Hancock in NJ. We have a functioning WW2 vintage machine shop, small machines, for making parts in our restoration efforts. We have a 6" stroke Atlas shaper. It turns out small shaper were highly prized by the US Army in WW2 for replacing broken parts in remote areas. We have a picture of a Army machine shop mounted in the back of an Army truck located in a jungle in New Guinea. It had to be self sufficient. No end mills in the jungle. Dull a shaper tool and just regrinding it in a bench grinder - once you fill up the small generator with gas from your jerry cans also in the picture. It must have been quite interesting machining things while hoping you do not get hit with Japanese artillery fire or fighting off an infantry attack. That is why we call them "The Greatest Generation". My dad was an airplane mechanic on Fiji, Espírito Santo, Guadalcanal and Saipan.
This was great- I've wondered about shapers for a long time, and it was great to see one actually in use. So great that that machine ended up in your shop rather than a junkyard.
Making custom T-nuts and clamping doodads is an excellent beginner project. They are, for the most part, simple operations that do not require the burden of excessive precision. In fact, as you learned in making yours, you learn a bit about tolerances. Especially with older machines the "universal clamping kits" rarely seem to work all that well. Great video. Thanks!
I did use the shaper that was in the machine-shop in Anaheim, CA. This was the Anaheim Union High School. I wanted to take a fun class, so I signed up for the machine shop. Mr, Daradarian was the teacher, one really great teacher. One of our projects was a meat tenderizer. A handle made on the lathe, and the aluminum head made on the shaper. That was 1960, and I am 82 now. The shaper was fun, but could be dangerous.
This video took me back to the years between 1956 and '62 when I was an apprentice with Ediswans at Ponders End in the UK, who then made lightbulbs, TV tubes and radio valves. Although I was a student Valve Engineer apprentice doing a Electronics HND college course, I still spent some time in the apprentice training centre with the craft apprentices, to learn metalwork - but not to the higher skill levels of those who became toolmakers. The apprentice training centre was very advanced for the time, under the leadership of Mr Bright, and his assistants, Henry and Harry. Harry was an old but skilled metalworker who could make metal perfectly flat and square in about half a dozen strokes of a file, but Henry was more on the clerical side. He it was who took charge of the layout of the machines that became available for the shop, including an old Sedgwick lathe and his pride and joy, a Colchester Student lathe. When a shaper was donated - probably for the reasons mentioned in your video - he carefully directed its installation and naturally operated it on its first ever stroke in our shop. The apprentices who crowded round were amazed at the length of the forward motion, which seemed to go on forever, but all had to take cover from flying plaster and brick fragments when the back stroke plunged the ram into the wall behind the machine! After the wall was repaired, the shaper was moved much further forward.
Amazing! My uncles got a couple of these and he’s offered to give me one…if I can drive it all the way from Wisconsin to Seattle! Always thought they were too cool!
Oh did that bring back memories. I became the instructor in a high school machine shop vocational program in 1965. We had two shapers in the shop. We ordered rough castings for bench vises and the students could make themselves a nice bench vise. We used the shaper to machine the moveable jaw beam and a boring bar on the shaper to machine the box in the fixed jaw. That was a real test of manuevering the boring bar up and down for the sides and side ways to the top and bottom. We traded one of the shapers for an Index Vertical Mill and a Sheldon variable spd lathe. The lathe was a real steal, 12 X 36, and a 1.5 horse motor.
I learned how to setup and operate this exact model shaper 50 years ago at Northern Illinois University while pursuing a major in Industrial Tech. I inadvertently rested my hand on the workpiece while adjusting and testing stroke length. The sinking feeling I got when the HSS cutter just barely kissed my finger at the end of the stroke still remains, burned into my memory The awesome power of machinery like this must always be respected!
the few tlmes i have seen set up / operations on horizontal mills , the vise was seldom used most jobs clamped to table..thanks for saving a great machine.
That camera mounting on the shaper ram is so good. Somehow, the t-slot nuts on my mill stand just a bit above the table surface and I never realized how useful it would be to have them low enough to slide under work in progress. So, besides learning about shapers watching this, I learned about t-nuts.
When I first was becoming a machine tool builder it was an absolute privilege to watch our European master machinists perform their magic on their Shaper machines. A lot of our automobiles from the ‘80s were welded together on large scale welding automation built on top of shaper machined machine bases.
Nice to see a "Whitworth Quick-return Mechanism" in action! At college one of our shapers had the side door replaced by plexiglass so the operation was on display.
Great Video! Gotta tell you how nice it is to have a fellow Washingtonian and Seattle Metal Head doing youtube videos. Gives everything a "home grown" feel. You do a really good job!
I have a little 7" Atlas. LOVE that thing! I took a machine shop night class for the fun of it, and there was a 36" shaper there. The instructor demonstrated it for us with a foot long bar of steel. He set it up to cut 1/2" deep with a 1/10" index, and those blue hot smoking chips came off the end of that bar like bullets, hitting the wall 20 something feet away. Everyone was quite amazed, and I started looking for a shaper to go with my lathe and mill. 😊
I saw a UA-cam video about defense industry manufacturing during WWII. There was a segment showing ranks of multiple shapers going back and forth shaping metal stock. Some serious production going on in that place.
Awesome old shaper. I use my 16" G&E shaper as often as I can. Another machinist mentioned and I tend to agree, that the final nail in the coffin for the shaper was when carbide insert face mills arrived on scene. That made hogging material more efficient and cost effective.
I've got a 14 in shaper, originally steam driven with a five horse motor, and a 7 inch atlas from the thirties with an electric original motor. I don't use them often but when they're called for nothing beats them. They have internal bars, like a boring bar for a lathe, as well and are very useful all around. Thirty years ago I worked in a machine shop that made boat shafts up to four and five inches in diameter for the local fishing fleet. We had seven or eight shapers up to thirty inch tables and used them to cut keyways in straight shafts and in the tapers for props and couplers. You're right, the 7 in shaper was seven or eight hundred bucks more than twenty years ago, the 14 was free to a good home, mine. I do gun work and they're good for shaping internal rectangular holes to fit a sliding bolt with an internal striker assembly.
I have a 6" stroke Atlas shaper. i got for free. Someone took itt to a scrap yard and the owner knew me because i came to his yard for scrap steel for projects. it was in mint conduction and the scrap yard owner could not see a reason to scrap it. i have used it for many years and the big reason is the cost of tooling i can use the same tool holders from my small lathe and HSS tool blanks to grind any tool shape i need instead of buying high-priced milling tools. i have had a couple old machinist come over just because they could do thing on my shaper better than they could do in their shop. By letting them use my shaper, i learned tricks on using the shaper. Like cutting splined shafts. or how to use a shaper as a surface grinder with a tool post grinder on a home built mount
T nuts is the first thing I made on mine, though I modified some I had on hand that were for 5/8" studs but were too large to fit in the slots, I was lucky and mine still had its vice, I bought it from a guy who was retiring and he had had it sat in a corner at the back of his shop but hadn't ever used it, in 40 plus years, never even wired in and he told me it came from an R&D shop which he bought a bunch of machinery from when it shut. So its in pretty decent condition. I also bought an nearly unused universal dividing head, most of the accessories were still greased and wrapped from new and its in the factory shipping crate.
My grandfather had two very nice Atlas shapers in his shop. As a kid i was allowed to do setups and adjustments for parts, but not to run them. the buttress bar had two bolts per long T nut 1/2-13 and was used even with the vise. The vise was always set up with the movable jaw toward the machine, which made clamping a pain sometimes.
They had one in my school engineering workshop back in 1971. I "used it" in making a clamp which was part of the practical for an exam. I suppose that it had been in there since 1954 when the school opened. (Coventry England). ps Not having done any machining since then I was fascinated to see UA-cam videos of milling.
I learned to use a shaping machine as part of the Basic Engineering Craft Studies course at Mid Herts College of Further Education in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, UK in the mid 1970s. This course was usually taught to students aged 16 to 19 as a "day release" course, that is you worked four days a week in industry and went to the college one day a week. The course was heavily subsidised and cost about 20 pounds a year. There was a motorcycle called the YG1 made by Yamaha in the 1960s and 70s on which the gearbox input shaft was almost certainly made on a shaping machine. It had four gears of different sizes right next to each other, all made as an integral part of the shaft so they could not have been cut by any sort of revolving cutter.
Its better to clamp stuff in line with the stroke, that way should it overpower the clamp it will just slide it off the clamps. If you clamp at 90 degrees it will crash, either damaging the part or the machine
very underrated channel. even though your two-thirds keyboard video did get a lot of views and is good, i like these videos about old stuff even more. you have a good presenting and editing style and are very knowledgeable; your videos are a joy to watch. thank you.
The only shaper I saw being used commercially, was one in a shop that specialized in rebuilding screw machines. The small slides in those super complicated, multi-spindle, multi-cutting tool, master machines of mass production, sometimes needed reworking.
There were 3 hydraulic shapers at Edison Technical School on Broadway in 1965 and a 6 ft Rockford planer. One of our projects required using a shaper and it was fun using it. Had to hand grind the tools for it and the lathes. At Boeing during my apprenticeship they has a shaper in the shop and when my milling machine broke down the leadman said to finish the job on the shaper, probably thing I wouldn't know how the run it, surprise I did. Everything a shaper could do was replace by the milling machine and the and the key seater. All the old planers I saw had mill heads mounted to them. When I was in Cleveland there was a Rockford planer the came from the factory with a mill head on the vertical and side.
Wow, a shaper! Not to be confused with it's obsolete cousin, the planer. A planer is similar, but the workpiece moves instead of the cutting tool moving. They are often much larger. I saw a WWII era Churchill planer with a 22' table!
The machinery museum in DC had a planer that had a sixty foot table if I remember right, for manufacturing machine tools like lathe beds and milling machines, 1890's Columbian exposition, 92 I believe.
Very interesting. I have had one in my garage, and I do mean the place my car “should’ be”. Mine looks to be a similar size but slightly newer as it has an electric motor to power it. NOW THE FUN BIT not only did mine come with the enormous vibe but it came with a rotary table, why you might ask, because it also can cut gears, [this it does in a vertical motion so you have two separate setups and two ram heads (only one on the machine at a time )],albeit only straight cut teeth. It also came with a huge array of gears to facilitate the different tooth spacing. Cheers.
We've got a gear shaper that I run at my work sometimes. It was made in 1922, and still runs like a top. I run some pretty damn new turning centers and mills, but I get almost as much satisfaction from making a part on that gear shaper as I do from knapping an arrowhead from flint or obsidian. Thanks for sharing this!
Using a gear shaper, you can cut proper gear teeth with a tool ground like for an acme thread, "shaping the teeth". I made some odd gears for some old lathes I've been using for years.
Used a smaller and more modern shaper in highschool back in the 70s. They worked well but as you say were somewhat slow. On the plus side once you set it to task it didn't require much attention. I can imagine shops in the old days would require several for the work flow and they would be going all the time. A loud working environment.
I used a Milwaukee horizontal shaper in high school the machines in our shop were mostly from WW2 surplus. lathes, milling machines, surface grinders, drill presses, bandsaws. all were old in the 70s.
Used to run shapers a lot. Flat work, slots, dovetails etc. Cincinnati's, Milwaukee's and Rockford hydraulically powered. Plus verticals. Also for some jobs we would just use the quill on a Bridgport and do the job by hand. We also had a very specialized vertical shaper. A Fellows Gear Shaper. Used for internal and external toothed forms.
a shaper vice would likely have a right and left hand screw on the same shaft so that both jaws move in and out while the center position stays the same. that way once you center it you could put any size round bar and still be in the center for your keyway.
For those who think that sharpers are not worth the money, consider this. A number of tool and die shops here in this area used shapers to remove heavier amounts of stock before doing the finish machine work on vertical mills. Consider the cost of end mills and other cutters. The time to change the cutter and reset for dimensional requirements are all a part of machining thought process. Use a good grade of hs tool steel. Determine wear of the ram vs the column ways vertical and horizontal ways. Also for parts that have been welded to repair or build up worn surfaces HS steel tooling will generally be cheaper to use than end mills or in some cases carbide insert tooling. What you want to consider is flexibility. Since shapers are usually cheap it can be a low cost investment that even if only used occasionally can be a job saver = money maker.
The Shaper in our High School shop got used 2-3 times a year. The instructor would take off the tarp, go through the oiling/inspection ritual, clamp down a bit of stock, run the machine, clean it, put the tarp back on. We liked 'Shaper day'...all we had to do was watch the Master at work. No students allowed!
It's a shaper I operated one in community college in thier advanced metals machine technology lab. It was slow as a Caterpillar. It used a lathe tool bit I'm not sure if browne and sharpe made them.
I'm a graduate of the machine tool technology program of Los Angeles Trade Tech college ('13) and I can't remember the two instructors -- Shibuya and Rauterkus -- so much as ever even referencing these even once though I knew about them from older books on the subject. As time is money for most shops large and small, I tend to lump them in with power hacksaws (also on their way out): that is to say, on their cutting stroke they're making progress and earning the shop money, but on the return stroke they're not. String together all of those return strokes in total and that's time that it's not doing any work for you at all -- in comparison to a horizontal bandsaw or mill which is cutting non-stop. I'm fond of well made old machinery but, I'd pass on owning one of these. Still, your video made for an enjoyable watch and I'm happy that you're able to effect some utility from it and keep it out of the hands of a scrap merchant. Good luck with it.
Fun video. I have never run a shaper. I am only a hobbyist. I do have an ST optical comparitor, mostly for bragging rights. Thanks for the warning about T nuts and vises, in case I do go shopping for a shaper.
I heard about linear lathes in Jr. High shop class, back in 70s. Have never seen one and finally saw a video of a much more primitive one in use on a YT video from India or Pckistan. The pour the block they are going to shape barefoot. I have thought of a shaper as a fix mounted griinding bit I thibk yours is top of the line. I'd look to non-destructively mod it, even with computers and micro controllers if beneficial. I wish i had one.
If I remember correctly, there was a shaper like this in my high school metal shop. Pretty cool machine, and looks to be in good shape. That was in 1967.
I used to deliver to a large shop that had its bigger brother, 30 foot table planer, table moves back and forth and the tools move side to side, up to a 30 foot stroke
I have a 32” sitting in my shop right now I would love to sell. It is set up for internal keyways and will key a part about 9” long with a 3” bore or so. I have not used it in years. I think it a Bickford but I may be wrong on that. Everything works including the rapid travel. I also have a big vise. Not sure how to contact anyone interested from YT. Its about 9000 pounds. Its a beast.
we used to use a piece of leather behind the tool so that you didn't drag the tool across the part... this also works on a planer... the machines I used to run had sets of Zip Bolts,,, T nuts with the studs as part of the t nut... that machine probably had 5/8 zip bolts,,,
When I took Manufacturing Materials Processing at WPI in the late 1970s, the professors pointed out that the shaper was the ideal tool for making the first machining passes on a sand casting. The advantage was that the lathe bit was cheap and easily resharpened or replaced if a sand inclusion tore it up. As opposed to a $50 dollar end mill. Once you got the rough cut done, you could switch over to the Bridgeport.
Back in the 80s in Akron the Karder Machine Co. had a shaper that the table moved under the cutting bridge and it was a monster of a machine with a table width of 4 ft and it was 12 ft long. Dozens of pieces were bolted to the table and it cycled back and forth with the cutter indexing above them.
Those are called planers, predate, and overlap shapers, they made all the machine tools we now have up until knee mills and such took over and made most operations performed on a shaper obsolete by doing them faster and with a different order of operations, better.
I have a friend that bought a shaper a couple of years back. I don't think he's done anything much with it since. He has ideas, but like so many of us he struggles to find the time to work on hobbies.
Nice looking machine (especially for its age). You can run it much faster than shown in the video - the clapper box will make a loud , well, clap, on each return. I'm not too sure about using the mill-type clamping kit - the forces run in the wrong plane. Better to use an ordinary mill vice even if it's not as robust as a proper shaper one.
Graduated 1980 from trade school as a machinist. In the summer of 78 I worked in my first machine shop after 10th grade. Half of the shop was run from a belt and shaft that was almost a century old . This was an old machine shop when Lynn MASS was shoe capital of the world. Upon graduation I worked at United Shoe Manufacturing corporation ( USMC ) in Beverly Massachusetts. This was the factory that produced shoe making machine's and was the largest shop in America. It is now Cummings property. This factory had its own foundry and production line machining where I worked on an old Milwaukee horz and vert mill as piece worker. The story that ruined this company was about a monopoly. USMC had its own thread system and nothing was standard measurement. Meaning no 1/4 20 tap but maybe..265 by 18 tap. No 1/4 , 3/8 or other known measurements but .240 or 385. This is examples and not real but no one could produce or make any piece until courts sided with the government and forced USMC to use same system in the country
gah. and i bet they used nuts that were those pesky "neither metric nor imperial" like certain british/australian machines loved to use... effin kills me pulling apart old machines with BSA/whitworth sizes... unless its really important, i drill and tap them out to metric rather than even bother undoing them? i derive much pleasure from destroying "sh1tworths"... and thread geometries that arent the standard iso 60 degree, either... the most common is bspt, 55 degree, thats ok, its still widespread, but just enough difference to the NPT to be a pain in the butt when dealing with plumbing/hydraulics.
@@paradiselost9946 it was a great company until the government got involved. Look on Google maps and see. Beverly Massachusetts under Cummings property. Around 1900 it was the largest building on earth it had 3 parallel buildings joined by connecting buildings and was 3 stories tall. Had it's own electric power plant and a foundry for its own castings and metal. Worker's had a yacht club and it's own country club. If you work for General Electric and wanted better pay and benefits then you went to USMC. Look at Google to see how big it was
When you’re brought up with Whitworth, it’s easy to think of metrics or SAE as foreign cr*p. That’s life. When you can cope with all of them…then you’re an engineer✔️
@caroleast9636 none of this was metric it was there own standards. I was familiar with both but USMC was different and it all started around 1900. But it was not metric. I don't know if you think that they were using metric but the government forced them to go standard and it ruined the company. This all happened in the 70s
Hi and thank`s for Your video. Being a Nerd for old machinery myself, I liked this. And I have been renovating a lot too. Now, I just finished a milling machine from 1964. A Deckel FP2, with the original tools/tool cabinet. It`s for sale. You know any nerds there who might be interested? Or any forums to put it out on? from a Finn in Diaspora
The shaper can take very deep cuts compared to any vertical mill that takes an r8. Not carbide friendly. Once you get used to it, you can run it semi unattended. Use cardboard t keep the chips from going everywhere.
I have a Havir Shape-Right 8” in my shop. It was given to me by my Boss. It had sat in an old barn at work for years. I asked him if he would sell it, and he said sure - $0. I use it for a number of small jobs. I’m about half done on the tear-down/deep-clean, which advances a bit every time I have a job to do with it.
I bought a pedestal mill at a clearance sale for $200 and at the end there was a Nicely made home built shaper left so I paid $100 for it ( probably cos I knew what it was) my father had one and made an boring head for an 1890’s mill with it . I sold it to a friends brother and he loves it.
In the early 70s our school metalwork teacher was using the shaper to skim the cylinder head of his Mk I Lotus Cortina. As you say it’s a slow business and half way through a certain mischievous student added 5 thou to the depth of cut resulting in a very obvious step. Teachers really shouldn’t throw hammers at students but fortunately it missed 😅. Rectification meant another pass and a significantly higher compression ratio than was originally intended. Happy days!!!!
Learned to use a shaper in high school. Boys being boys, we quickly learned without input from the teacher how to aim chips by careful grinding of the tool bit.
"I wish I had a vise" *looks at machine shop* ....um..... Want a vise, make a vise. Great man said that to me long time ago.... in fact, like 5 great men said it to me. You have a machine shop and know how to use it, do the research, make the drawings, determine what needs to be cast iron and machine the required shapes to form a mold and find someone like Clark Easterling at Windy Hill Foundry to pour them, then machine the castings, screws and attachments. I know it sounds insane, but it is content for a few episodes and in the end you get the vise you wish for that you may never find...and, maybe, you'll be asked to make a few afterwards for those who wish they had a vise.
In forty five years working for twenty five different companies I have never seen at tee slot broken or cracked from being over tightened or having the stud go all the way through the tee nut. I have heard the warning repeatedly but never seen it happen. Just like I have repeatedly heard about grinding aluminum after steel on a belt sander. Never once ever heard of or saw any thermite fire.
Put a sheet of paper in between the workpiece and the table and it will be less likely to move. The chips sould be coming off hot, but not blue if you are using HSS. Contrary to common wisdom, you can in fact use carbide with a shaper, in which case you can run at a speed where the chips are coming off blue. It still won't be as fast as a mill, but you can get things done.
Congrats on the shaper. It looks like it’s in excellent condition. Your video quality is great with good editing, camera work and scripting. The content is interesting. Yeah, there’s a “but” coming. The ring light is not your friend. A little soft box gives off much more flattering light. The highlights in your eyes are terribly distracting!
Here for the teardown and the deep clean!
I second that!
I really enjoyed this! Thanks for subtitling your videos, as a deaf person that's greatly appreciated!
It's awesome seeing these older machines up and running. Congratulations
That's a badass machine you got there, I'd love to see a video on the teardown and cleaning process! If you don't mind me asking, how much were you able to pick that up for?
I am a member of AGFA a WW2 historic demonstration group. We have a WW2 6 inch Coast Artillery Battery which we restored for the US National Park Service at Ft Hancock in NJ. We have a functioning WW2 vintage machine shop, small machines, for making parts in our restoration efforts. We have a 6" stroke Atlas shaper.
It turns out small shaper were highly prized by the US Army in WW2 for replacing broken parts in remote areas.
We have a picture of a Army machine shop mounted in the back of an Army truck located in a jungle in New Guinea. It had to be self sufficient. No end mills in the jungle. Dull a shaper tool and just regrinding it in a bench grinder - once you fill up the small generator with gas from your jerry cans also in the picture.
It must have been quite interesting machining things while hoping you do not get hit with Japanese artillery fire or fighting off an infantry attack. That is why we call them "The Greatest Generation". My dad was an airplane mechanic on Fiji, Espírito Santo, Guadalcanal and Saipan.
This was great- I've wondered about shapers for a long time, and it was great to see one actually in use. So great that that machine ended up in your shop rather than a junkyard.
Great video ! They once told me “ you can make anything on a shaper …..except a profit ! “ 😂
Making custom T-nuts and clamping doodads is an excellent beginner project. They are, for the most part, simple operations that do not require the burden of excessive precision. In fact, as you learned in making yours, you learn a bit about tolerances. Especially with older machines the "universal clamping kits" rarely seem to work all that well. Great video. Thanks!
really awesome video! thanks for giving a great tour of the machine!
I did use the shaper that was in the machine-shop in Anaheim, CA. This was the Anaheim Union High School. I wanted to take a fun class, so I signed up for the machine shop. Mr, Daradarian was the teacher, one really great teacher.
One of our projects was a meat tenderizer. A handle made on the lathe, and the aluminum head made on the shaper.
That was 1960, and I am 82 now. The shaper was fun, but could be dangerous.
This video took me back to the years between 1956 and '62 when I was an apprentice with Ediswans at Ponders End in the UK, who then made lightbulbs, TV tubes and radio valves. Although I was a student Valve Engineer apprentice doing a Electronics HND college course, I still spent some time in the apprentice training centre with the craft apprentices, to learn metalwork - but not to the higher skill levels of those who became toolmakers. The apprentice training centre was very advanced for the time, under the leadership of Mr Bright, and his assistants, Henry and Harry. Harry was an old but skilled metalworker who could make metal perfectly flat and square in about half a dozen strokes of a file, but Henry was more on the clerical side. He it was who took charge of the layout of the machines that became available for the shop, including an old Sedgwick lathe and his pride and joy, a Colchester Student lathe. When a shaper was donated - probably for the reasons mentioned in your video - he carefully directed its installation and naturally operated it on its first ever stroke in our shop. The apprentices who crowded round were amazed at the length of the forward motion, which seemed to go on forever, but all had to take cover from flying plaster and brick fragments when the back stroke plunged the ram into the wall behind the machine! After the wall was repaired, the shaper was moved much further forward.
Amazing! My uncles got a couple of these and he’s offered to give me one…if I can drive it all the way from Wisconsin to Seattle! Always thought they were too cool!
Oh did that bring back memories. I became the instructor in a high school machine shop vocational program in 1965. We had two shapers in the shop. We ordered rough castings for bench vises and the students could make themselves a nice bench vise. We used the shaper to machine the moveable jaw beam and a boring bar on the shaper to machine the box in the fixed jaw. That was a real test of manuevering the boring bar up and down for the sides and side ways to the top and bottom. We traded one of the shapers for an Index Vertical Mill and a Sheldon variable spd lathe. The lathe was a real steal, 12 X 36, and a 1.5 horse motor.
I learned how to setup and operate this exact model shaper 50 years ago at Northern Illinois University while pursuing a major in Industrial Tech. I inadvertently rested my hand on the workpiece while adjusting and testing stroke length. The sinking feeling I got when the HSS cutter just barely kissed my finger at the end of the stroke still remains, burned into my memory The awesome power of machinery like this must always be respected!
the few tlmes i have seen set up / operations on horizontal mills , the vise was seldom used most jobs clamped to table..thanks for saving a great machine.
That camera mounting on the shaper ram is so good. Somehow, the t-slot nuts on my mill stand just a bit above the table surface and I never realized how useful it would be to have them low enough to slide under work in progress. So, besides learning about shapers watching this, I learned about t-nuts.
The t-nut segment was a solid "the more you know" moment.
Just bought a 20" Steptoe and cleaned and painted it up first. Will be watching and hope to learn from your efforts!
When I first was becoming a machine tool builder it was an absolute privilege to watch our European master machinists perform their magic on their Shaper machines. A lot of our automobiles from the ‘80s were welded together on large scale welding automation built on top of shaper machined machine bases.
Nice to see a "Whitworth Quick-return Mechanism" in action! At college one of our shapers had the side door replaced by plexiglass so the operation was on display.
Thanks... You resparked my interest in restoring my Atlas Mini Mill...
Great Video! Gotta tell you how nice it is to have a fellow Washingtonian and Seattle Metal Head doing youtube videos. Gives everything a "home grown" feel. You do a really good job!
My Favorite machine tool, very versatile, and tooling is inexpensive. Used it all the time.
I have a little 7" Atlas. LOVE that thing!
I took a machine shop night class for the fun of it, and there was a 36" shaper there.
The instructor demonstrated it for us with a foot long bar of steel. He set it up to cut 1/2" deep with a 1/10" index, and those blue hot smoking chips came off the end of that bar like bullets, hitting the wall 20 something feet away.
Everyone was quite amazed, and I started looking for a shaper to go with my lathe and mill. 😊
they never went away I used one as an apprentice and was still using one when i retired, a wonderful tool. Enjoy using it.
I saw a UA-cam video about defense industry manufacturing during WWII. There was a segment showing ranks of multiple shapers going back and forth shaping metal stock.
Some serious production going on in that place.
Awesome old shaper. I use my 16" G&E shaper as often as I can. Another machinist mentioned and I tend to agree, that the final nail in the coffin for the shaper was when carbide insert face mills arrived on scene. That made hogging material more efficient and cost effective.
*Great presentation & explanation & history all combined. Thank you!*
I remember the tool & die maker in my Dad's shop using a shaper for stock prep in the late 1970s.
Nice to see this video.
operated one like it in 1951 when i was a 1st year apprentice.
had one of these at school in belgium still being used for metalwork practice 15 years ago
Good to see someone springing for a shaper. Dad & I two Cincinnati units & were generally busy & that was in 1958 to 1961.
I've got a 14 in shaper, originally steam driven with a five horse motor, and a 7 inch atlas from the thirties with an electric original motor. I don't use them often but when they're called for nothing beats them. They have internal bars, like a boring bar for a lathe, as well and are very useful all around. Thirty years ago I worked in a machine shop that made boat shafts up to four and five inches in diameter for the local fishing fleet. We had seven or eight shapers up to thirty inch tables and used them to cut keyways in straight shafts and in the tapers for props and couplers. You're right, the 7 in shaper was seven or eight hundred bucks more than twenty years ago, the 14 was free to a good home, mine. I do gun work and they're good for shaping internal rectangular holes to fit a sliding bolt with an internal striker assembly.
It's videos like this that make me envious for the space you have available in the US. Barely elbow-room in south-east England!
I have a 6" stroke Atlas shaper. i got for free.
Someone took itt to a scrap yard and the owner knew me because i came to his yard for scrap steel for projects.
it was in mint conduction and the scrap yard owner could not see a reason to scrap it.
i have used it for many years and the big reason is the cost of tooling i can use the same tool holders from my small lathe and HSS tool blanks to grind any tool shape i need instead of buying high-priced milling tools.
i have had a couple old machinist come over just because they could do thing on my shaper better than they could do in their shop. By letting them use my shaper, i learned tricks on using the shaper.
Like cutting splined shafts.
or how to use a shaper as a surface grinder with a tool post grinder on a home built mount
T nuts is the first thing I made on mine, though I modified some I had on hand that were for 5/8" studs but were too large to fit in the slots, I was lucky and mine still had its vice, I bought it from a guy who was retiring and he had had it sat in a corner at the back of his shop but hadn't ever used it, in 40 plus years, never even wired in and he told me it came from an R&D shop which he bought a bunch of machinery from when it shut. So its in pretty decent condition.
I also bought an nearly unused universal dividing head, most of the accessories were still greased and wrapped from new and its in the factory shipping crate.
My grandfather had two very nice Atlas shapers in his shop. As a kid i was allowed to do setups and adjustments for parts, but not to run them. the buttress bar had two bolts per long T nut 1/2-13 and was used even with the vise. The vise was always set up with the movable jaw toward the machine, which made clamping a pain sometimes.
Love tools. Enjoyed the video. Great shop.
They had one in my school engineering workshop back in 1971. I "used it" in making a clamp which was part of the practical for an exam. I suppose that it had been in there since 1954 when the school opened. (Coventry England). ps Not having done any machining since then I was fascinated to see UA-cam videos of milling.
I learned to use a shaping machine as part of the Basic Engineering Craft Studies course at Mid Herts College of Further Education in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, UK in the mid 1970s. This course was usually taught to students aged 16 to 19 as a "day release" course, that is you worked four days a week in industry and went to the college one day a week. The course was heavily subsidised and cost about 20 pounds a year.
There was a motorcycle called the YG1 made by Yamaha in the 1960s and 70s on which the gearbox input shaft was almost certainly made on a shaping machine. It had four gears of different sizes right next to each other, all made as an integral part of the shaft so they could not have been cut by any sort of revolving cutter.
Its better to clamp stuff in line with the stroke, that way should it overpower the clamp it will just slide it off the clamps. If you clamp at 90 degrees it will crash, either damaging the part or the machine
very underrated channel. even though your two-thirds keyboard video did get a lot of views and is good, i like these videos about old stuff even more. you have a good presenting and editing style and are very knowledgeable; your videos are a joy to watch. thank you.
The only shaper I saw being used commercially, was one in a shop that specialized in rebuilding screw machines. The small slides in those super complicated, multi-spindle, multi-cutting tool, master machines of mass production, sometimes needed reworking.
There were 3 hydraulic shapers at Edison Technical School on Broadway in 1965 and a 6 ft Rockford planer. One of our projects required using a shaper and it was fun using it. Had to hand grind the tools for it and the lathes. At Boeing during my apprenticeship they has a shaper in the shop and when my milling machine broke down the leadman said to finish the job on the shaper, probably thing I wouldn't know how the run it, surprise I did. Everything a shaper could do was replace by the milling machine and the and the key seater. All the old planers I saw had mill heads mounted to them. When I was in Cleveland there was a Rockford planer the came from the factory with a mill head on the vertical and side.
Wow, a shaper! Not to be confused with it's obsolete cousin, the planer. A planer is similar, but the workpiece moves instead of the cutting tool moving. They are often much larger. I saw a WWII era Churchill planer with a 22' table!
The machinery museum in DC had a planer that had a sixty foot table if I remember right, for manufacturing machine tools like lathe beds and milling machines, 1890's Columbian exposition, 92 I believe.
Very interesting. I have had one in my garage, and I do mean the place my car “should’ be”. Mine looks to be a similar size but slightly newer as it has an electric motor to power it. NOW THE FUN BIT not only did mine come with the enormous vibe but it came with a rotary table, why you might ask, because it also can cut gears, [this it does in a vertical motion so you have two separate setups and two ram heads (only one on the machine at a time )],albeit only straight cut teeth. It also came with a huge array of gears to facilitate the different tooth spacing. Cheers.
We've got a gear shaper that I run at my work sometimes.
It was made in 1922, and still runs like a top.
I run some pretty damn new turning centers and mills, but I get almost as much satisfaction from making a part on that gear shaper as I do from knapping an arrowhead from flint or obsidian.
Thanks for sharing this!
Using a gear shaper, you can cut proper gear teeth with a tool ground like for an acme thread, "shaping the teeth". I made some odd gears for some old lathes I've been using for years.
Used a smaller and more modern shaper in highschool back in the 70s. They worked well but as you say were somewhat slow. On the plus side once you set it to task it didn't require much attention. I can imagine shops in the old days would require several for the work flow and they would be going all the time. A loud working environment.
I used a Milwaukee horizontal shaper in high school the machines in our shop were mostly from WW2 surplus. lathes, milling machines, surface grinders, drill presses, bandsaws. all were old in the 70s.
Used to run shapers a lot. Flat work, slots, dovetails etc. Cincinnati's, Milwaukee's and Rockford hydraulically powered. Plus verticals. Also for some jobs we would just use the quill on a Bridgport and do the job by hand.
We also had a very specialized vertical shaper. A Fellows Gear Shaper. Used for internal and external toothed forms.
a shaper vice would likely have a right and left hand screw on the same shaft so that both jaws move in and out while the center position stays the same. that way once you center it you could put any size round bar and still be in the center for your keyway.
For those who think that sharpers are not worth the money, consider this. A number of tool and die shops here in this area used shapers to remove heavier amounts of stock before doing the finish machine work on vertical mills.
Consider the cost of end mills and other cutters. The time to change the cutter and reset for dimensional requirements are all a part of machining thought process. Use a good grade of hs tool steel. Determine wear of the ram vs the column ways vertical and horizontal ways. Also for parts that have been welded to repair or build up worn surfaces HS steel tooling will generally be cheaper to use than end mills or in some cases carbide insert tooling. What you want to consider is flexibility. Since shapers are usually cheap it can be a low cost investment that even if only used occasionally can be a job saver = money maker.
Indian engineering students still have to learn the shaper.
I am oooold and I've once worked in a building that used one. Major flashback. The engineering that went into this is brilliant.
Thanks for sharing your experience.
The Shaper in our High School shop got used 2-3 times a year.
The instructor would take off the tarp, go through the oiling/inspection ritual, clamp down a bit of stock, run the machine, clean it, put the tarp back on.
We liked 'Shaper day'...all we had to do was watch the Master at work.
No students allowed!
I used one in the past. (1960s) Like a vintage car, solid and simple. great to use.
It's a shaper I operated one in community college in thier advanced metals machine technology lab. It was slow as a Caterpillar. It used a lathe tool bit I'm not sure if browne and sharpe made them.
3D print an addition to the strap clamp box for the new t-nuts?
That's a good idea -- once I figure out where they're living, other than on the bandsaw table!
@@Attoparsec just look for the 10 mm socket, you will find them but not the 10mm socket.🤣
My experience anyway.
Great video. Thanks.👍
I have an old "Shape-Rite". I love it. I don't use it very often but when I do it is always a pleasure! Inefficient but quiet and competent!
I'm a graduate of the machine tool technology program of Los Angeles Trade Tech college ('13) and I can't remember the two instructors -- Shibuya and Rauterkus -- so much as ever even referencing these even once though I knew about them from older books on the subject. As time is money for most shops large and small, I tend to lump them in with power hacksaws (also on their way out): that is to say, on their cutting stroke they're making progress and earning the shop money, but on the return stroke they're not. String together all of those return strokes in total and that's time that it's not doing any work for you at all -- in comparison to a horizontal bandsaw or mill which is cutting non-stop. I'm fond of well made old machinery but, I'd pass on owning one of these. Still, your video made for an enjoyable watch and I'm happy that you're able to effect some utility from it and keep it out of the hands of a scrap merchant. Good luck with it.
Fun video. I have never run a shaper. I am only a hobbyist. I do have an ST optical comparitor, mostly for bragging rights.
Thanks for the warning about T nuts and vises, in case I do go shopping for a shaper.
I heard about linear lathes in Jr. High shop class, back in 70s. Have never seen one and finally saw a video of a much more primitive one in use on a YT video from India or Pckistan. The pour the block they are going to shape barefoot. I have thought of a shaper as a fix mounted griinding bit I thibk yours is top of the line. I'd look to non-destructively mod it, even with computers and micro controllers if beneficial. I wish i had one.
If I remember correctly, there was a shaper like this in my high school metal shop. Pretty cool machine, and looks to be in good shape. That was in 1967.
I used to deliver to a large shop that had its bigger brother, 30 foot table planer, table moves back and forth and the tools move side to side, up to a 30 foot stroke
A treat for the eyes and a joy that will last forever...
I have a 32” sitting in my shop right now I would love to sell. It is set up for internal keyways and will key a part about 9” long with a 3” bore or so. I have not used it in years. I think it a Bickford but I may be wrong on that. Everything works including the rapid travel. I also have a big vise. Not sure how to contact anyone interested from YT. Its about 9000 pounds. Its a beast.
Where are you located, this kind of post is probably the best means.? I'm in eastern NC and know a few shops that use them.
@ im about 35 miles nw of Birmingham AL.
we used to use a piece of leather behind the tool so that you didn't drag the tool across the part... this also works on a planer... the machines I used to run had sets of Zip Bolts,,, T nuts with the studs as part of the t nut... that machine probably had 5/8 zip bolts,,,
When I took Manufacturing Materials Processing at WPI in the late 1970s, the professors pointed out that the shaper was the ideal tool for making the first machining passes on a sand casting. The advantage was that the lathe bit was cheap and easily resharpened or replaced if a sand inclusion tore it up. As opposed to a $50 dollar end mill. Once you got the rough cut done, you could switch over to the Bridgeport.
Back in the 80s in Akron the Karder Machine Co. had a shaper that the table moved under the cutting bridge and it was a monster of a machine with a table width of 4 ft and it was 12 ft long. Dozens of pieces were bolted to the table and it cycled back and forth with the cutter indexing above them.
Those are called planers, predate, and overlap shapers, they made all the machine tools we now have up until knee mills and such took over and made most operations performed on a shaper obsolete by doing them faster and with a different order of operations, better.
I have a friend that bought a shaper a couple of years back. I don't think he's done anything much with it since. He has ideas, but like so many of us he struggles to find the time to work on hobbies.
Nice looking machine (especially for its age). You can run it much faster than shown in the video - the clapper box will make a loud , well, clap, on each return.
I'm not too sure about using the mill-type clamping kit - the forces run in the wrong plane. Better to use an ordinary mill vice even if it's not as robust as a proper shaper one.
Graduated 1980 from trade school as a machinist. In the summer of 78 I worked in my first machine shop after 10th grade. Half of the shop was run from a belt and shaft that was almost a century old . This was an old machine shop when Lynn MASS was shoe capital of the world. Upon graduation I worked at United Shoe Manufacturing corporation ( USMC ) in Beverly Massachusetts. This was the factory that produced shoe making machine's and was the largest shop in America. It is now Cummings property. This factory had its own foundry and production line machining where I worked on an old Milwaukee horz and vert mill as piece worker. The story that ruined this company was about a monopoly. USMC had its own thread system and nothing was standard measurement. Meaning no 1/4 20 tap but maybe..265 by 18 tap. No 1/4 , 3/8 or other known measurements but .240 or 385. This is examples and not real but no one could produce or make any piece until courts sided with the government and forced USMC to use same system in the country
gah. and i bet they used nuts that were those pesky "neither metric nor imperial" like certain british/australian machines loved to use... effin kills me pulling apart old machines with BSA/whitworth sizes... unless its really important, i drill and tap them out to metric rather than even bother undoing them? i derive much pleasure from destroying "sh1tworths"...
and thread geometries that arent the standard iso 60 degree, either... the most common is bspt, 55 degree, thats ok, its still widespread, but just enough difference to the NPT to be a pain in the butt when dealing with plumbing/hydraulics.
@@paradiselost9946 it was a great company until the government got involved. Look on Google maps and see. Beverly Massachusetts under Cummings property. Around 1900 it was the largest building on earth it had 3 parallel buildings joined by connecting buildings and was 3 stories tall. Had it's own electric power plant and a foundry for its own castings and metal. Worker's had a yacht club and it's own country club. If you work for General Electric and wanted better pay and benefits then you went to USMC. Look at Google to see how big it was
When you’re brought up with Whitworth, it’s easy to think of metrics or SAE as foreign cr*p. That’s life.
When you can cope with all of them…then you’re an engineer✔️
@caroleast9636 none of this was metric it was there own standards. I was familiar with both but USMC was different and it all started around 1900. But it was not metric. I don't know if you think that they were using metric but the government forced them to go standard and it ruined the company. This all happened in the 70s
I've got a machine from I believe 1944. Bought it probably 3 or 4 years ago now, still haven't hooked it up to run it. Maybe this year.
When I did metal work at school the shaper was my favourite machine
Nice one! It has been over 35 years since I ran one of these.
Hi and thank`s for Your video.
Being a Nerd for old machinery myself, I liked this.
And I have been renovating a lot too.
Now, I just finished a milling machine from 1964.
A Deckel FP2, with the original tools/tool cabinet.
It`s for sale.
You know any nerds there who might be interested?
Or any forums to put it out on?
from a Finn in Diaspora
The shaper can take very deep cuts compared to any vertical mill that takes an r8. Not carbide friendly. Once you get used to it, you can run it semi unattended. Use cardboard t keep the chips from going everywhere.
I cut a huge number of taper bore keyways on a Milwaukee shaper but it was a much newer model
I have a Havir Shape-Right 8” in my shop. It was given to me by my Boss. It had sat in an old barn at work for years. I asked him if he would sell it, and he said sure - $0. I use it for a number of small jobs. I’m about half done on the tear-down/deep-clean, which advances a bit every time I have a job to do with it.
I bought a pedestal mill at a clearance sale for $200 and at the end there was a Nicely made home built shaper left so I paid $100 for it ( probably cos I knew what it was) my father had one and made an boring head for an 1890’s mill with it . I sold it to a friends brother and he loves it.
Used a shaper in High School in 1976 to make a steel machinists hammer 🔨 head. The handle was turned on a metal lathe and then knurled on the lathe.
Jolly good show!
I worked on a couple of shapers long ago.
Ill have to go look but I think I have that exact same machine with a transmion on it
Nice video. Good find, I'm happy for you!!!
See also Leyton's "A Generative Theory of Shape".
Yeas, learned to work with a shaper decades ago!
With enough effort, you can make almost anything on a shaper... except for money.
Had one in the shop at Cody high school Detroit early 60's
In the early 70s our school metalwork teacher was using the shaper to skim the cylinder head of his Mk I Lotus Cortina. As you say it’s a slow business and half way through a certain mischievous student added 5 thou to the depth of cut resulting in a very obvious step. Teachers really shouldn’t throw hammers at students but fortunately it missed 😅. Rectification meant another pass and a significantly higher compression ratio than was originally intended. Happy days!!!!
Learned to use a shaper in high school. Boys being boys, we quickly learned without input from the teacher how to aim chips by careful grinding of the tool bit.
"I wish I had a vise" *looks at machine shop* ....um..... Want a vise, make a vise. Great man said that to me long time ago.... in fact, like 5 great men said it to me. You have a machine shop and know how to use it, do the research, make the drawings, determine what needs to be cast iron and machine the required shapes to form a mold and find someone like Clark Easterling at Windy Hill Foundry to pour them, then machine the castings, screws and attachments. I know it sounds insane, but it is content for a few episodes and in the end you get the vise you wish for that you may never find...and, maybe, you'll be asked to make a few afterwards for those who wish they had a vise.
I have used a shaper, fun piece of equipment
In forty five years working for twenty five different companies I have never seen at tee slot broken or cracked from being over tightened or having the stud go all the way through the tee nut. I have heard the warning repeatedly but never seen it happen. Just like I have repeatedly heard about grinding aluminum after steel on a belt sander. Never once ever heard of or saw any thermite fire.
I got a little Logan, it is the only machine I own that I will watch it run just for fun
Wow! I can imagine a shop filled with this type of machine. The sound would be deafening.
Mills are faaaar louder
OK I know ZERO about machining but wonder how much work / cost would be to make a vice? Again I know nothing on this.
Put a sheet of paper in between the workpiece and the table and it will be less likely to move.
The chips sould be coming off hot, but not blue if you are using HSS. Contrary to common wisdom, you can in fact use carbide with a shaper, in which case you can run at a speed where the chips are coming off blue. It still won't be as fast as a mill, but you can get things done.
What a beauty, totally jealous here
OK, who's gonna put out some plans for 3-D printing a benchtop shaper?
A 3d printer and small 5 axis cnc would be helpful in your restorations
Congrats on the shaper. It looks like it’s in excellent condition. Your video quality is great with good editing, camera work and scripting. The content is interesting. Yeah, there’s a “but” coming. The ring light is not your friend. A little soft box gives off much more flattering light. The highlights in your eyes are terribly distracting!
I invested all the ad revenue from the videos that went viral this summer into better lighting gear. :)