Planing machine

Does anyone have room in their workshop for this machine? 8 foot x 30 inch table.Swift Summerskill planer on ebay at the moment.

Looks like tidy piece of kit. I would hate to have to scrape the surfaces🙂 . Too big for my workshop or anything I would ever want to plane!

Saw a bigger(?) one at the workshop next to the old pumping station (for controlling the water levels with hydraulic gates around the docks) at Bristol a couple of years ago. Well worth a visit.

very handy for getting the skin from a rice pudding

I must admit I have a bit of a soft spot for planning machines, starting with my apprenticeship at a famous machine tool maker - sadly long gone .

During my apprenticeship I worked several smaller machine and then graduated to a Butler with a 24 x 7 or 8 foot table planing the main base castings for large radial drills. Fantastic machine the way the tool just effortlessly tore away the cast iron. The down side was you soon looked like a coalman being exposed to the cast iron dust !

I remember at another company we had a very nice small machine similar size to the one mentioned above. This was a PLANERS OF HUDDERSFIELD and although is wasn`t very old it was all belt driven - it made a series of loud screeches when the belts shifted for the return stroke . Its other little trick was if you were working near its full stroke, the table would sometimes over-run the stops for the reverse motion and the rack on the underside of the table would become disengaged from the bull driving gear - then it would be some heavy pushing and shoving by all and sundry to re-engage the table rack .

Sadly, you don`t see many planers about these days - even less one being used. Probably big milling or plano- milling machines have taken the planers place . The planer, like the shaper has one big advantage over milling and expensive cutters - the planer / shaper`s simple tooling . You hit a hard / chilled spot in a casting and the tool edge goes - the operator can quickly restore his tool on an off- hand grinder , whereas the big milling cutter is a lengthy regrind job on a specialist tool and cutter grinder - that is if the teeth have not been seriously damaged or broken - and it is then beyond repair. Expensive ! .

A planer does take up a lot of space on the shop floor - at least twice the length of its working stroke, which is why so many have been done away with in favour of more compact machines. But great machines to operate - that big table and a load of castings and the noise it makes all working away along side you , you really feel something is happening under your control - you don`t get that with other machines - other than perhaps a large lathe , and even then you don`t get sensation of that big mass - travelling backwards and forwards right by you.

MARK RIGG

BRIDGNORTH

Hi Mark, I enjoyed reading about your planer operating reminisces from the workshop. Thanks!

We had a beautiful old ULRO (Urquhart, Lindsay and Robertson Orchar) and a Stirk in the tool room, the ULRO had some lovely castings from the days when machines looked nice rather than just functional. A very large Herbert ingersoll Plano mill took over most of the work from them, its work envelope was 10’ x 12’ x 16’ so could easily handle the very largest dies.

Mike

The last time I saw a big planer working was when I went with other apprentices to the Machine tool exhibition at Olympia 1964, I recall it was it was a Butler, it was machining a long chunk of steel,with big curls of swarf coming off about a inch wide,impressive,the coolant surged forward every time when the table came to rest,nearly over flowing the end of the table,then it surged to the other end of the table. Bosses were tight in those days on trips like that,no expenses and we had to make up the lost time by working two saturday mornings . Though it was worth it as it was possibly the last time the really big machine tools were exhibited,The Exhibition was held every four years and it must have taken an awful lot of effort to get all those machines assembled and working.When working as an engineer for a multinational I visited it in the 70s & 80s, these times it was all expenses paid and no lost time worries. The last time I saw a planer working was during the early 1970s it was an openside planer in a foundry toolroom, used for facing the larger gravity die blocks,the openside has only one column to support the tool slide,not as rigid as a double column but can take wider work which can over hang the side of the table. Going back to 1964 exhibition,I also remember seeing a 36 inch Butler shaper,and that is an almighty large shaper ,the only one I ever saw. Of course living in the South of this country there were very few works with really large machines so never got much of a chance to seeing them, in action.

Welsh slate mines used big planers to machine big slabs of slate, must have made machining cast iron seem aseptic by comparison.

Sadly I haven't got room.

I've always liked planers after seeing one in action at W H Allens in Bedford in 1971. Although it was a Saturday morning the planer was at work on the crankcase of a large diesel engine. I had a private tour of the factory (my father knew the apprentice master) to see if I was suitable for an apprenticeship, as it looked like my school career was going to end in a serious car crash.

If I ever win the lottery a large planer is high on the list of purchases.

Andrew

Having grown up in Halifax, West Yorkshire in the 1950s/60s. I well remember the machine tool makers mentioned in this thread, and, many others.

The Ebay listing must have expired, but was this the one that was listed some time ago with line shafting drive pulleys ? Not that I could fit that in the garage anyway ...

I always found planers rather mesmerising to watch - the slow, steady cut, a "clack" at the end of the cut stroke as the clapper box pulled up then the whine from the table drive as table rapid retracted. Another "clacK" as the clapper box dropped & the feed motor incremented the relevant axis & the slow feed again. They may have been relatively slow machines compared to modern milling, but several of the same component could be placed end to end & completed at once, using inexpensive simple tooling & 3 faces worked on at one setting. It wasn't unusual to see both vertical faces & the top face of a casting being cut at the same time on machines with 3 cutting heads

Boxford had a small "Planers Huddersfield" machine that took 2 bed castings end to end & used it to rough machine the foot mountings & top surfaces. This operaton was carried out twice - once half way through the "weathering" process & again after weathering was completed.

Broadbents had 4 machines IIRC. The 3 smaller machines were Stirk & Swift Summerskill, the large machine a Craven Bros. All were Ward Leonard electric table drive & had electrical enclosures full of open frame contactors. There was a lrge drawer unit in Electrical maintenance full of replacement contacts & connection braids - when a machine stopped working it was usually a fractured braid or burnt contacts to blame.

We rebuilt & converted a Butler (8'x8'x40' IIRC) to CNC operation at my last employment. While it was fitted with a 30Kw milling head, the customer wanted to plane curves (they made points & crossings for main line & light railway systems). We did get it to plane curves, but ultimately could not produce the parts they wanted due to tooling problems - the machine lacked an axis to rotate the tool as it progressed along the curve & it jammed in the groove being machined. A tool ground to be able to pass through the groove was too weak to withstand the loads cutting manganese steel castings. The customer didn't want ot spend more to develop a rotating tool carrier, so the machine was mainly used for milling. I did operate it as a planer during the conversion, as we used the machine to finish cut it's own table and also machine the table assembly for a horizontal borer that was being converted in the works at the same time. I was fortunate to be able to call upon the knowledge & kindness of Bob Skinner (who operated R Skinner Engineering, sometimes referenced on here & who was the foreman of the planer shop at Butlers prior to setting up on his own), who loaned me the tooling, told me how to grind & set it up and what machining parameters and practices to employ.

Under rated machines. The engineering world is a poorer place for their passing IMO.

Nigel B.

When I was there, Sentinel, as sub contract, were making Huddersfield planers, using a larger one by the same manufacturer, to machine the bed.

The operator used to ride to and fro, on the table, while sitting on a chair. When he rose to sweep the swarf with a broom, he ducked as the table passed beneath the gantry!

The gears for the bevel boxes were lapped together by filling the box and with grinding paste and oil and running for several hours. After a thorough washout and fitting new bearings, the bevel boxes were finally assembled.

This was in the shop where the locos were erected.

Larger circular components, such as flywheels and loco wheels, were machined in the main machine shops on vertical lathes, know colloquially as "merry go rounds, with chucks about 4 feet in diameter.

Can't remember the maker, Kendall and Gent? Someone will remind me.

Further up the road, on Harlescott Lane a company was producing huge boring mills. The machine started in a hole in the ground large enough to take a 3 bed house, and when complete, the column was about the same height above ground.

The slideways were coated with Formica, since with oil lubrication, the coefficient of friction was far less than cast iron to cast iron.

Howard

Good to hear peoples memories of these old machines.I would love to find one of the very small planing machines with something like an 8 inch by 20 inch table.Even one of the hand operated ones would be good.

Trevor

Where I started my apprenticeship, we had two big planners. We machined castings up to 6Metres long. I have seen them maching two castings on the top face with two heads on the bridge, and down the side at the same time.

The amount of metal they took of was a serious amount, one once missed the end return limit switch and ran off the rack. The funniest feeling was if you stood to the side of the machine watching for a while you felt like you were moving with the table.

Edited By JOHN MOSLEY 1 on 14/11/2020 16:25:50

Details are currently still shown on epay under the item number 284019433107

Edited By not done it yet on 14/11/2020 16:38:55

The Stirk I mentioned above was easy to run the table off the drive pinion, the easy way to get it back was to use the overhead travelling crane to pull it back on, the slinger didn’t seem to understand what the millwrights wanted him to do. The wire sling which was probably a half ton one and easily capable of dragging the table was never going to lift the table that weighed a few tons, he signaled the crane driver to hoist rather than traverse and the sling parted quite spectacularly, uncomfortably close the the millwright who tore the idiot slinger a new one. The table drive motor was a Ward Leonard speed control with a rather lovely control panel, slate backplane and cast iron enclosure.

Mike

There is (or was) a working planer at the Lillie Road Depot near Earls Court. I was doing some construction-related work there about 4 years ago and I was watching a rastafarian guy planing railway points blades on it just through the open door.

Details are currently still shown on epay under the item number 284019433107

Unfortunately the link isn't a link & putting the number directly into Ebay doesn't bring anything up ?

Nigel B.

If you tick the completed listings box you will find it.

Mike

Yes it does. You are simply not looking in the right place, I would guess?

The item can be found in the ‘completed’ section as it was put up for auction months ago.