Shaper madness

Someone had a good weigh in.....

World's gone mad....

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A good buy if one had need and the space for it.

Nick

Is that a wry Hawkwind reference, or to the 1950's moral panic movie?

Neil

I like my shaper, but that one would be a nice machine to have, especially with the rotating table option.

It's almost immaculate and hardly been used

Hi Neil, went to see them a couple of times back in the 70's, once in Cambridge and once in our own cornhall, however, I can only recall one of the songs they ever did.

This particular record came in very handy at an old years night Disco party I did! for a largish group of head banging bikers. I wasn't really geared up (pun in there somewhere) for biker discos, music wise, but did the job at short notice for a fellow DJ who couldn't make it, but I did find enough material for them to enjoy a really good evening.

Now that's one way of shaping up to the job in hand.

Regards Nick.

The smaller shapers do seem to be making better money of late. Even so, at £500+ he must be as happy as a dog with two thingys. I’d be well pleased to get that much for my 10” if I ever sold it!

Rare swivel table? Mine has one and so do most of the larger ones I have used in the past. Is he confusing “swivelling table” with his swivelling vice I wonder?

Rik

Rare swivel table? Mine has one and so do most of the larger ones I have used in the past. Is he confusing “swivelling table” with his swivelling vice I wonder?

Rare on a Boxford shaper - most seem to have been supplied with a fixed table. My Boxford has the fixed table, machined with tee slots & a swivel vice mounting hole on the top face and tee slots, a swivel vice mounting hole and a shallow vee on the RH face. Mine came with the swivel vice - many on Ebay are missing this.

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I would be very happy to get a similar price for mine if I chose to move it on.

Nigel B

I saw Hawkwind too, back in the mid 80s, fairly certain it was in Newcastle. It was a bloody joke. There was only one "original" band member (bass player?) and the rest were just stand-ins. The music was recorded, so that the various members could walk on and off the stage without affecting the "performance". The young lead singer was clearly off his face on some form of ill-advised and inappropriate stimulant and behaved as if he would shortly appear in hospital, either A&E or for sectioning. Certainly one of the more surreal and disappointing gigs I ever attended.

You started it, Neil!

I don't really have the workshop space but at 300 quid for one in good condition with a vice I'd possibly think about it even though the last one I touched was many decades ago and scared me more than any moving object I've ever seen before or since.

Been idly watching the market for the last year or so (on ebay) and the last few prior to this have gone for 450, quite a few around the 300-350 mark with the lowest in the past week or so at around 200 'with faults'

I would not be parted from my Boxford 8 inch stroke single phase machine it is an extremely versatile and robust machine.

It can produce work not possible on the mill with out resorting to very special cutters and it is very cheap to run in terms of tooling.

Tooling is simple to create and sharpen and long lasting I use 8 mm cobalt HSS square tool bits in a tool holder.

The machine can do anything from blocking up and removing bulk, comfortably removing 3mm plus per pass to high precision and fine surface finish work. I can run it on self feed and do something else in the shop whilst it does the hard work

Having been trained to use a shaper as an apprentice I tend to use it a lot it saves my milling cutters and I could not recommend owning one and finding the space for one highly enough.

When you have got used to it you will wonder how you ever managed before without it.

Paul

Original vices for Southbend and Atlas 7" type shapers are fetching $2-300 in the States. If you've bought a

Boxford 8"/Elliot 10M shaper over here sans vice, i'd imagine a good correct shaper vice is worth £100- £150. Far better than adapting some swivel base milling vice for the job, too tall and nowhere near as substantial.

My 2 Baht's worth...

Makes my Alba New 1A with swiveling table look like a right bargain at £160 a couple of years ago, like many of them, the vice was missing

So on a Boxford - does the vice bolt directly to the table (rather than via the T-slots)?

Because the vice fitted to this one looks like it does. That vice also looks very much like the original Atlas vice that came with my 7" Acorntools shaper too....so that might explain it.

They are very good vices and unfortunately there is nothing comparable available (new) these days...so I understand the high resell values.

Regards,

IanT

Mine is a late (1979) S200 metric version and uses the 4 bolt vice bolted to t-slots. Lathes.co.uk site show this vice on the swivel box table version, though my box table is std. The machine however does have vertical power feed. Most Boxfords have the vice bolting directly to the box table with a central spigot/hole.

Hi phil

That is about the same price i paid for a mk 1 Royal, ( off a m/c tool dealer ) i did get A vice with it but not a proper shaper vice just a standard milling vice ( not a very pretty one, looked like it had been well pecker"d used as a drill press vice ) minus the the swivel base, so i filled in all the pecker dinks with weld, took most the excess weld off using the shaper in standard mode then resorted to angle grinder fixed to the tool slide to take care off a few really hard bits & a finale skim ( vice base is cast iron weldable but can get a few hard spots usually the size of a match head )

The vice is / was way too big for the table / box, of which i was never too impressed with nothing wrong with it just no where handy to put little bits & piece"s when setting up, so i cannibalized a old land rover engine conversion plate to use as a sub plate on top the box ( sliced off the bit the starter motor bolts to ) The hole in middle of c/plate where the oil seal fits is about the same size as the recess in the underside of the vice, have been using the the oil seal only half way fitted to centre ish the vice will get round to turning up proper boss / spigot some when!

The Royal mk 1 is pretty much the same as the Alba 1a the only difference being the Royal has square shears to the ram where the Alba ( later to become the Elliot 10m ) has dove tail shears ) there are advantages and disadvantages to both, though with the Royal the disadvantage may be more easily over come, cant say for sure as its a work in progress thing, some when!

I have manuals for the 1a and the 10m as far as i can tell the only difference being the 10m has a roller bearing some where in the works and 1a and the Royal have plain bearing, for what its worth i have always thought the terms used in the sales blurb at the time " The new Elliot high speed shaper " to be total BS marking ploy as well as saving a fair few quid by not having to fit the OEM 6 pole motor & jacking the price up with the term "high speed"

The original design speeds for the Alba 1a & Royal mk 1 were 28,36,44,52 of course things things will take a little longer to do but it makes for much more pleasing machine to use, running at these speeds one can mount the machine on a trolley very handy if ones pushed for space

With a few mods a shaper will match the finish & accuracy of a surface grinder..............b

For the shaper enthusiast.

A copyshaper... holy smoke

Who made that...?

Edited By Ady1 on 19/12/2016 10:24:23