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Order it now while you know you can still get it. If you don't it will be NLA before you know it. Hey, nice load you got there but what is that white powdery packing material you have on it?

Took a pic of my Tormec, mock sharpening a Buck 110 (there is no water in the bath). The tool holder ensures a constant edge angle.
P1221045.jpg


This metric tap and die set is a very useful asset to the workshop seeing I do not have a lathe like all you guys.

P1221052.jpg


And I use this adjustable reamer set all the time. It is quite old - my father bought it after the war but it has been well looked after. Made here in Australia although I have never heard of the company - I guess it is defunct.
P1221048.jpg


P1221049.jpg


Al.
 
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Order it now while you know you can still get it. If you don't it will be NLA before you know it. Hey, nice load you got there but what is that white powdery packing material you have on it?

Took a pic of my Tormec, mock sharpening a Buck 110 (there is no water in the bath). The tool holder ensures a constant edge angle.
P1221045.jpg


This metric tap and die set is a very useful asset to the workshop seeing I do not have a lathe like all you guys.

P1221052.jpg


And I use this adjustable reamer set all the time. It is quite old - my father bought it after the war but it has been well looked after. Made here in Australia although I have never heard of the company - I guess it is defunct.
P1221048.jpg


P1221049.jpg


Al.

That adjustable reamer set is something that I wish I had... it's gotta be one of the handiest things in the shop.

I don't have a lathe either... :( Stuck with the taps and dies.

Hmm... about how much would one of them grinders run? I might have to pick one up...


Oh, and the white packing material is called 'snow' :D You might not have driven in it... Dry down there in Aussieland...
 
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Used to do a lot of skiing in my younger days - I thought I recognised it!:laugh:
It is hot here, about 35 degrees C and I have the A/C on flat out. I love summer though.
Those tormecs are spendy but they often come up s/h on fleabay down here. I bought mine new nearly 20 years ago and I forget how much I paid.
I love the old hand made box for the reamers.

Al.
 
Well, since you Aussies and Canucks are somewhat smart with metrics and stuff, how much power is a ,6/,8 Kw motor supposed to be putting out? The spec plate doesn't have a rated HP stamped into it.

From the size and looks, I figure it's around a 3-4 hp motor. However, when I did the calculations, the Kw rating was saying it was a .8/.10 hp motor... I'm confused, to say the least...
 
That's what my calculations come out as too, well, a .8hp-1hp. Not a .1hp

Nick

That doesn't sound right, unless 3 phase HP is rated lower than single phase HP. It had six wires running to the box... three wired into the upper screws, and three into the lower screws... one white neutral/ground to the case.

Doesn't three phase have nine wires?
 
Three phase power only has three wires plus a ground. Lots of different voltages though. 220 and 440 are common in the US, here in Canada ours is 575.
 
Three phase power only has three wires plus a ground. Lots of different voltages though. 220 and 440 are common in the US, here in Canada ours is 575.

Sad story - a place I was working at several years ago bought some used equipment from a plant in Canada. Electrician got electrocuted while attempting to hook it up, not realizing that all 3 phase is not the same. I don't know all the details, and clearly he was not taking all of the precautions he should have when working with electricity, but a reminder about making assumptions with this type of equipment.

Philbert
 
Sad story - a place I was working at several years ago bought some used equipment from a plant in Canada. Electrician got electrocuted while attempting to hook it up, not realizing that all 3 phase is not the same. I don't know all the details, and clearly he was not taking all of the precautions he should have when working with electricity, but a reminder about making assumptions with this type of equipment.

Philbert

I know people who have bought used equipment from the US not knowing the voltage was different and had to spend a pile of money, either buying transformers or changing motors. Some electric motors can be shifted to run on different voltage, but apparently some can't.
 
Action

WOW! This thread is really picking up and taking off like I had hoped for in the begining!!!
Thanks to all of you for putting up the excellent posts! Seems like questions are being asked and answers given back, along with some great photos as well:rock:
Lawrence
 
WOW! This thread is really picking up and taking off like I had hoped for in the begining!!!
Thanks to all of you for putting up the excellent posts! Seems like questions are being asked and answers given back, along with some great photos as well:rock:
Lawrence

Did you get my pm? I sent one to you regarding the boat stones.

Today, I found out new ones run about 10 bucks a pop. And from that supplier, you must order at least 5000 of them since they're coming from China...

My dad later told me that the place I got these from used to be a tool and die shop. So these are indeed old school boat stones... basically NOS. Only wear, if you want to call it that, is from being moved around the place.

I might be giving some away... and will probably go into the swap meet thread with the remaining ones that I wish to unload. Keep an eye out there for a post...
 
I have to agree with DSS. You should have a qualified electrician from a motor repair shop look at the motor to determine what it is and how it can safely be used.

Nick
 
Nardoo

I love good knives too. I have always had great luck with Gerber and Buck but I see they make quite a bit of their stuff in China now. I have a nice Puma, which is my favourite, but usually do most of my work with Green Rivers, Victorinoxes and ####s.
To sharpen them I have a Tormec wet bath grinder which is the best investment you can get to put good repeatable edges on your knife stock. I have had it almost 20 years and it is still going strong. And to touch up I have a Gerber and a #### steel which have done a mountain of work.
I found a pic of a couple of knives I have had for over 40 years, a Gerber shortie and and I forget what the other one is. I do not think it is an Okapi but it has beautiful Soligen steel that keeps an amazing edge. They have both done a lot of work but are far from worn out.

Picture011.jpg


Al.
Nardooo, What do you do for a living down under! I got the impression you work with knives,am I right? I am very familiar with some of the knives you mentioned such as Victorinox also Green River-Russell-Wenger-and of course the the company Friederick.D. from Germany.I worked Slaughterhouses and meat processing for 30 years.In my opinion Friederick.D make the best sharpening steels.There is another company that manufactures sharpening steels in Switzerland that are supposed to be very good but I have never used them,I'll try and think of the name.I don't want to risk getting a swearing infraction with the spelling.
Lawrence
 
Hey guys, I'm still alive and well up here in the North. :) Just survived two days of -40°C (or °F too, they're the same at -40) last Wed. - Thurs., though now it's back up to +5° the last couple days. A week before the cold snap we had +13... It's been a crazy winter. Not too much snow though. I've been reading this thread from time to time (though not much else of the site, sad to say...) but haven't had the time to post. I actually got myself married up on Dec. 27th so that took a lot of my time/attention, and I've been working ~55-60hr weeks at the mill.

Well, since you Aussies and Canucks are somewhat smart with metrics and stuff, how much power is a ,6/,8 Kw motor supposed to be putting out? The spec plate doesn't have a rated HP stamped into it.

From the size and looks, I figure it's around a 3-4 hp motor. However, when I did the calculations, the Kw rating was saying it was a .8/.10 hp motor... I'm confused, to say the least...

1 HP = 746 Watts = .746 KW

So a rough estimate is that the KW rating will be about 3/4 of the HP rating, and the HP rating will be 1-1/3 the KW rating. I'm guessing that your motor is 0.6 KW on 50Hz and 0.8 KW on 60Hz, at least that would sound about right.

That doesn't sound right, unless 3 phase HP is rated lower than single phase HP. It had six wires running to the box... three wired into the upper screws, and three into the lower screws... one white neutral/ground to the case.

Doesn't three phase have nine wires?

Nope, a HP is a HP is a HP, no matter the voltage/wiring. There's different ways of measuring a motor's power rating just like there is in automobiles (some cheap motors just advertise how much current the motor draws when it's loaded to the point of stalling, which results in an inaccurately high measurement), but in general you can just multiply the motor's voltage by its Full Load Amp draw (FLA) to get its wattage (and thus HP) rating - for example, a motor running on 240V and drawing 10A will use 2200 Watts of electricity; divide by 746 and you get 2.95, or about 3 HP.

As for the wires; some 3-phase motors use 9 wires but most common ones use only 3 plus a chassis ground. The 9 wire ones can be reconfigured to run on different line voltages and frequencies; one can rewire the coils in either a Delta or Wye configuration (which I won't bother explaining right now unless someone really wants me to; Google is your friend. ;)) to change how the electricity is routed through the motor. The 9 wire ones are also hell to work with if the wires aren't labelled well...

Three phase power only has three wires plus a ground. Lots of different voltages though. 220 and 440 are common in the US, here in Canada ours is 575.

Our sawmill still runs on 480V, though almost every time I have my meter on something it's reading pretty close to 500V. 575 is available, but is such a nightmare to rewire an entire plant to that nobody in town that I know of has done so; all the mills here are still running 480. I'm fairly certain that they still offer 230V light industrial/commercial 3-phase around here too. Unfortunately, in British Columbia it's next to impossible to get residential 3-phase unless you somehow have a legacy setup.
 
Speaking of motors, here's how I spent a whole day back in late October:

attachment.php


The big 150 HP shavings blower motor up on the roof of the planer flashed out and all 3 coils shorted to ground... Took out two of the main fuses out at the mains supply for the whole mill, the place was in darkness. Luckily the last time that motor blew, we had the crane guy put the replacement plus a spare up there, so all we had to do was maneuver the spare into place this time instead of calling the crane operator in again. Which, to be fair, is still much easier said than done... That thing weighs a good 500 lbs, I'm sure. And the bolt pattern was different than the old one, so we had to flip the spare on its side and drill new holes in the base. Luckily it's just cast iron and not too hard to drill.

And speaking of knives, here's a new toy I got a few weeks ago at work:

attachment.php


It's a Michigan MK72 knife grinder for our planer and chipper knives. It has a 6' long (hence the 72) magnetic bed/chuck, so all I have to do is put the knives in place and flip a switch, and it's ready to go. The old dinosaur we were using before had an old-school clamp bed, so I had to manually go through and clamp all the knives down and make sure they were straight and not overtightened. This thing is saving me SO much time; I can do a set of 6 chipper knives in well under an hour if the guys haven't tried to feed rocks through the chipper and haven't back-ground them too far with the die grinder. I have a few ideas for customizing it a bit for our needs, and it'll be even faster then. In the pic here I had just quickly wired it up and was fiddling with it to make sure it all worked; we got it for pennies on the dollar at a sawmill auction, so it came as-is.


Right now I'm gathering parts and whatnot to build myself a lathe. Nothing huge and really fancy, but I want to be able to do some metalwork with it. I have an old friend who will mill a spindle for me; once I have that done, I can figure out the rest myself, more or less. For a headstock I'm considering using a stripped-out smaller SM-Cyclo gear reducer housing similar to this one:

attachment.php


I tore out all its guts so I can fit different bearings and a larger shaft in it. And it worked out quite well; in the nose end (to the right in the photo) I have a 35mm ID double-race heavy duty ball bearing that fits perfectly, and on the inside behind that, it's already milled out such that a 40mm ID taper roller bearing that I have fits perfectly, which would work great as a thrust bearing. So far I'm not sure what to do for a bearing on the other end; the housing was designed to directly couple to a C-Face motor, so it had quite a small 3/4" ID ball bearing and there isn't much to work with on that end as far as boring it out to fit a larger one. Might have to have a custom cap machined for it to fit another taper bearing, but that wouldn't be a huge job really.

So as far as the spindle goes, I'll probably start with a 1.750" shaft and have it machined down so there are shoulders for the two aforementioned bearings; once they're seated tight that thing won't want to move at all. As for the business end of it, I'll probably have my friend machine a #3 Morse Taper, and bore a hole as large as the taper will allow clear through the length of the spindle for a draw bar etc. Beyond that, I don't really know. I don't know much about different chuck backplate mounting methods or threads yet, so I'll likely talk to my friend and see what he thinks the best option is. He's well into his 70s and has been a machinist for the sawmills around here since the late '50s, so he's done it all and I trust his opinion. You should see his shop - it's small but he has pretty much anything you could ever want or need. Stuff I've never seen or thought of anyway.

It'll be an adventure, to be sure, and I have no idea when it'll be finished (or usable for that matter; I have a feeling I'll be working on and adding to it for years, if it works well). I'm gonna start on it at work though; that's where I have more time and access to materials for now. We have a myriad of old broken machines just rusting away in the weather that I can rob parts from; just have to ask the boss, and he usually doesn't care at all.
 
Speaking of motors, here's how I spent a whole day back in late October:

attachment.php


The big 150 HP shavings blower motor up on the roof of the planer flashed out and all 3 coils shorted to ground... Took out two of the main fuses out at the mains supply for the whole mill, the place was in darkness. Luckily the last time that motor blew, we had the crane guy put the replacement plus a spare up there, so all we had to do was maneuver the spare into place this time instead of calling the crane operator in again. Which, to be fair, is still much easier said than done... That thing weighs a good 500 lbs, I'm sure. And the bolt pattern was different than the old one, so we had to flip the spare on its side and drill new holes in the base. Luckily it's just cast iron and not too hard to drill.

And speaking of knives, here's a new toy I got a few weeks ago at work:

attachment.php


It's a Michigan MK72 knife grinder for our planer and chipper knives. It has a 6' long (hence the 72) magnetic bed/chuck, so all I have to do is put the knives in place and flip a switch, and it's ready to go. The old dinosaur we were using before had an old-school clamp bed, so I had to manually go through and clamp all the knives down and make sure they were straight and not overtightened. This thing is saving me SO much time; I can do a set of 6 chipper knives in well under an hour if the guys haven't tried to feed rocks through the chipper and haven't back-ground them too far with the die grinder. I have a few ideas for customizing it a bit for our needs, and it'll be even faster then. In the pic here I had just quickly wired it up and was fiddling with it to make sure it all worked; we got it for pennies on the dollar at a sawmill auction, so it came as-is.


Right now I'm gathering parts and whatnot to build myself a lathe. Nothing huge and really fancy, but I want to be able to do some metalwork with it. I have an old friend who will mill a spindle for me; once I have that done, I can figure out the rest myself, more or less. For a headstock I'm considering using a stripped-out smaller SM-Cyclo gear reducer housing similar to this one:

attachment.php


I tore out all its guts so I can fit different bearings and a larger shaft in it. And it worked out quite well; in the nose end (to the right in the photo) I have a 35mm ID double-race heavy duty ball bearing that fits perfectly, and on the inside behind that, it's already milled out such that a 40mm ID taper roller bearing that I have fits perfectly, which would work great as a thrust bearing. So far I'm not sure what to do for a bearing on the other end; the housing was designed to directly couple to a C-Face motor, so it had quite a small 3/4" ID ball bearing and there isn't much to work with on that end as far as boring it out to fit a larger one. Might have to have a custom cap machined for it to fit another taper bearing, but that wouldn't be a huge job really.

So as far as the spindle goes, I'll probably start with a 1.750" shaft and have it machined down so there are shoulders for the two aforementioned bearings; once they're seated tight that thing won't want to move at all. As for the business end of it, I'll probably have my friend machine a #3 Morse Taper, and bore a hole as large as the taper will allow clear through the length of the spindle for a draw bar etc. Beyond that, I don't really know. I don't know much about different chuck backplate mounting methods or threads yet, so I'll likely talk to my friend and see what he thinks the best option is. He's well into his 70s and has been a machinist for the sawmills around here since the late '50s, so he's done it all and I trust his opinion. You should see his shop - it's small but he has pretty much anything you could ever want or need. Stuff I've never seen or thought of anyway.

It'll be an adventure, to be sure, and I have no idea when it'll be finished (or usable for that matter; I have a feeling I'll be working on and adding to it for years, if it works well). I'm gonna start on it at work though; that's where I have more time and access to materials for now. We have a myriad of old broken machines just rusting away in the weather that I can rob parts from; just have to ask the boss, and he usually doesn't care at all.

hmm... myriad of old machines...

You got any old compressors sitting around there? Kinda like the one I posted a couple pages ago?

As for that 150 hp motor, all I can suggest is rewinding it or simply pulling the copper out and scrapping it. You'll get about 2-3 times as much money scrapping the iron and copper separately... no idea which way would be better. Probably rewinding since the thing is so damn big, lol.

For kicks... look through here at the Baldor (many consider the best in the business) motor prices for one of that size... Baldor Products Page

Holy ####... :dizzy:


It's good to hear you've been busy. Most aren't busy enough these days.




If any of you guys need a few machine parts, I have a handful of them... mainly stuff from a Traub screw machine. Could be adapted for other uses, I'm sure. Still going through stuff and cleaning it up before I get pics of them put up. I'll try to get the rest of the parts cleaned up and get some pics posted here soon.
 
My fabrication skills are not the best so I just bit the bullet and got the proper tool.
Husqvarna/Jonsered crankcase splitter #502516101

attachment.php
 
My fabrication skills are not the best so I just bit the bullet and got the proper tool.
Husqvarna/Jonsered crankcase splitter #502516101

attachment.php

It's almost too pretty to use. Spendy?
 
My fabrication skills are not the best so I just bit the bullet and got the proper tool.
Husqvarna/Jonsered crankcase splitter #502516101

attachment.php
If you just took the time to trace that out on a piece of paper and scanned it and added some numbers and posted it that would be handy for us guy that can fabricate!!!:D
 

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