MadModder

Hi fellas,
I thought you all might like to have a look at a few pictures.
I already have a Douglas 101/2 inch shaper (pictures from it's ad below) that I bought last year, but have been looking out for a bigger one. I nearly bought one for $1000 in good nick last week, but this week I came across this Abla 24 inch shaper made in England. Has any one got any info on it? I searched for a couple of nights but can only find info on the smaller ones. I found out hey changed over to Elliot somewhere along the way.
I went and checked it out and only paid $300 for it. I have to pick it up this weekend so I only have one picture so far. It came with a heap of boring bars, tools, etc but sadly no vise, I am after one if anybody knows of one, the bigger the better.

While I was there he had a small to medium horizontal mill with cutters that I couldn't knock back for $200, so I bought that as well. No pictures of it yet either.
It looks worse than it is, It's only been out of the shed for a few days so it could be sold. The slides are fine and the gears are greased, only the paint is peeling, a bit of TLC and I will have it looking like new.
The Douglas looks like a baby compared to this one
Now to make some room in the shed
Davo

                                               "picking up the shaper"
                                   The things we do to feed our tool addiction
Well it's home
The shaper was advertised as pick up only, (will need crane truck), I had no idea of the weight of the shaper. After talking to him, he said he would use his tractor (backhoe) to load it into a trailer, that was if it would lift it. It was starting to sound really heavy. He said had bought the shaper from were he used to work (a tile manufacturer) when they closed down, and delivered it to his house with the company's large truck crane.

After trying to borrow a trailer from Wednesday onwards to move the shaper and the mill on Saturday, I finally found a reasonably priced 9 x 5 one to rent on Friday afternoon for $60 with $200 deposit. I could not believe a dual axle trailer was so hard to come by, as I usually hire a tray top truck. Most every hire company had a booking for the weekend, the few that did have one wanted anywhere from $110 to $210 a day, I could rent a truck for $89, but all that was available was an enclosed one for furniture etc. So it wouldn't be impossible to load and unload the machines.
I have a good 7 x 4 single axle trailer, but I was worried about the weight of the shaper and for a few years I have had a 10 x 6 dual axle trailer in the paddock that a mate gave me, it needs work to say the least, so I can see it needs to come up to the top of the projects list soon and give it some
                                             
We arrived at the blokes farm (Tom) about 11:30am on Saturday to pick it up, he walked over said Hi, then held out a $50 note. He then went on to say when we paid the other day, two $50 notes must have been stuck together because we he had counted it latter we had over paid him $50, now thats country honesty for you.
 
My 17 year old son and I got into dismantling the shaper with an engine crane. I took it up so I didn't have to call on him every time we needed a lift with the smaller things like the ram, table, knee and the solid rear cast motor extension off, as he didn't think his old Ford backhoe would lift the hole thing, so we had to make it lighter, thats a ford for you.
                                                           
After dismantling it in 38degC heat, which took about hour and a half he came over with the backhoe and started lifting it to load it into the trailer. the backhoe struggled to lift the main casting and had me worried about weather the hire trailer would take it, and the road back up there had lots of pot holes and was really rough. He gave up on the front bucket and switched to the rear bucket which also struggled to lift it, but with the son reversing the trailer under it and me directing the shaper we got it in sitting on six 4 x 2 RHS across the trailer that I brought with me to spread the load, so we didn't bend the trailer.
The mill was next. and again even with taking the 3 phase motor off, his backhoe struggled to lift it into my sons Ute and we used the same technique to load it. The rest of the parts went in with no trouble, we put them onto timber blocks that we also brought with us. After strapping it down we were ready to go, it was 3:15pm. The hour and a half trip home went fine. I could feel the pull on our V6 commodore wagon but it wasn't too bad. My son followed behind in his Ute with the mill and a few of the shaper parts.

When we got home, I reversed the trailer into the shed, and we used the 2 ton chain block to lift it off. After taking the weight and getting it up off the trailer it didn't feel that heavy on the chain block. We estimate the main casting to be around 800kg, thats going off what my new 1 ton mill felt like on the same chain block when it was delivered. So all up we think it would weigh around 1300-1500 kg's. Maybe a bit more but no were near what we thought it was going to weigh. We were thinking it was going to be more like 2 to 2.5 ton, so this must be one of the lighter classes of 24 inch shapers. I am not sure what the capacity of a tractor is but this one didn't seem to be very strong. He said he had replaced the hydraulic pump with a new one. The hydraulics were working hard because it nearly stalled the motor a few times when he was lifting the machines.

I have only given it a quick look over while dismantling and unloading it, but I have only found a few light scratches on the ram ways, probably because they have had way wipers on there, and a few heavier ones on the knee ways. No teeth missing anywhere and nothing rusted up.

I don't have any pictures of loading it because we forgot to take the camera up their, but here are a few while unloading it.
I will update this tread as I progress with the shaper, and will do a separate thread on the mill in a few days.

Davo

Brilliant, looks just like mine 

I think we are going to have to swap some pic's, I'll try to do some in the next couple of days 

Glad you got it home safely, there is no way I'd be able to two both machines in one go. I borrowed a 4.3x2M twin axle trailer last week to collect my sons car. We struggled a bit on the steep hills here but got it done in the end. I got stuck on one hill, had to stop to allow someone to pass and just could not get going again as the fron't wheel drive just span. Luckily some farmers wife in her 4x4 pickup towed us and the trailer to the next flat and we were off again ... Phew !!

Have fun with the shaper 

Hi Darren,
Here are the photo's of the clutch set up.
It works off a sliding tapered male drum attached to the shaft by key way, the pulley has the female taper and runs freely on the shaft when not engaged. Pulling on the lever pushes the male taper into the pulley and a small spring loaded detent pushes into the the side of the rocker arm next to the pulley to hold it there. Pretty simple really.
Davo

Thanks Dave,

My pulley wheel is keyed to the shaft so doesn't look possible to convert. Those parts are too big to make on my machines leaving the only option to find one being scrapped. Not very likely these days I wouldn't think.

Hi Dave,

Sounds feasible, but I agree with your last sentence  I think the only attraction for a clutch is to start the motor without a load.

I'll have a play with the machine first and see how I feel