Old Iron Jointer with pics

[Nate Rogers]

Any of you old iron junkies have any comments on this beast?
I know it is a 24" "frank clement" jointer, it is currently listed on ebay..
Thanks
Nate

[Alan Turner]

I am not familiar with this unit, but that won't stop me.
1. Looks like it was converted from a DMD to a single phase belt drive. That is not a problem if well done.
2. Can't see the cutterhead. Is it round? 3 knives?
3. Looks like from the rear shot that it still has babbit "bearings". That could be an issue, depending. Some guys can repour them if need be, but I cannot.
4. I don't know if this is common or not, but on my 3 legged Am. WW Machinery 12"er, the double leg is on the outfeed side, but on yours it is on the infeed side. This is just an observation, not a coment.
5. You will like the ship's wheel for infeed height adjsutment. Measure the TPI of that lead screw and mark the handle, and you will be able to accurately read the depth of cut. On my 12" noted above, I have an 8 TP!, and 4 spokes, so each spoke is 1/32" of adjustment. Yours is a 5 spoke, so your math will vary.

Let us know what happens on this big old guy.

Edit,
Went over to the bay and took a look. Should have started there. Looks like a pretty servicable machine for the price. You might be able to covert it to a BB unit with a Byrd head if you can buy it at the minimum. It is a round head, but 2 knife.

[Kyle Kraft]

I'd say it looks like someone hung a motor from an old feed auger on that bad boy!! Based on the 4 groove sheave on the spindle it was probably intended for a 20-30hp motor, but thats just the millwright in me thinking again.

Looks like a fun restoration and use project!!!!!!

Kyle in K'zoo

[lou sansone]

those old jointes were normally flat belt driven and that is why it has 4 groove sheave on it ( basically taking up the same amound of shaft space, but not really needed). As far as the HP is concerned, 5 hp to 7.5 would have been typical for these machines.

nice old machine, but a little too old for me.

lou

[Charles McKinley]

Hi Nate,

I'm running a 16" cresent. If the price is right it looks like a great unit.



There are several places online that offer very good instructions for redoing babbet bearings. Babbit bearing gave years of precision service before ball bearings were available. Keeping them properly lubed seems to be the key to keeping them running.

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

Mmmmm I smell Babbit.

[Barry O'Mahony]

I'd say it looks like someone hung a motor from an old feed auger on that bad boy!! Based on the 4 groove sheave on the spindle it was probably intended for a 20-30hp motor, but thats just the millwright in me thinking again.

I was thinking the same thing. That little motor and skinny belt would have a tough time spinning that big cutterhead. Maximum depth of cut must be about 1/64".

[Joe Chritz]

If you ever got kicked out of the house you would have a nice flat surface to put an air mattress to sleep on.

Can't comment on the old machine's potential but it looks COOL!

Good luck

Joe

[Alan Turner]

Shows you what I don't know. I thought all of the big old jointers were direct motor drive, but what Lou says makes sense.

[Brett Baldwin]

That is a cool looking machine. Its too bad he put it in such an obscure category for this type of machine. If it does sell, he likely won't get as much as he could for it.

[lou sansone]

an example of a flat belt jointer

enjoy
lou

[Dev Emch]

This is a beast! If you have the time and patience, you can get a nice jointer out of this. If your looking to get a wedge bed to actually do some woodworking before the next milliunium, track down a northfield HD. Look for upgraded cutter head... preferably with four knives and safty gibs. Ball bearings are also nice.

Babbit bearings if dialed in and tuned up can hold their own with a class 5 precision ball bearing. But pouring and scaping babbit bearings may look easy... its not! Its been said that if the bearings on the Titanic were off by 2 thou, the vibration would ripple wine glasses in the first class dining room! The good news is that if you goof up, then just remelt the babbit and start over again. Babbit bearings need care and feeding and adjustment (via shims) to run well. But when they run well, they do indeed run extremely well. I would need to go ball bearings costing many hundred dollars each to surpass the quality of these bearings. The bearings in a 24 inch Oliver 166 for example are about $500 to $800 dollars EACH! A 100 year old jointer that has been dialed in will blow away any 8 inch jointer bought new today!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This jointer was run from a shaft drive. A leather belt driven from a shuttle clutch/jack shaft assembly used to power this bad boy. Maybe even from a water wheel source. Now its got a retrofit motor arangement.

My biggest concern with this jointer or any jointer for that matter is the following. I dont like wedge bed jointers in which the table and wedge are cast as a single integral unit. They need to be two independent items which can be shimmed as needed. Otherwise, your going to need to shim under the main ways which is something I dont like to do. So make sure you can unbolt the table from the bed wedge. If you can, you can adjust and shim out all sorts of evil.

Best of luck if you go this route. Its a massive amount of work and this thing weighs a ton... well, maybe a bit more. But once you have used a large jointer, you will not wish to go back to those tiny jointers.