Vintage Wood Machining Books

[Trevanion]

Post amended to add:

Modern Shaper Practice by W.H. Rohr, 1923

This is a book I’ve been after for a very long time, it has been quite difficult to find one in Britain as I suspect there are very few copies that have made it here, I had to import this all the way from the United States and the postage cost much more than the book itself!

A very interesting early book on the subject of wood moulding/shaping, showing some peculiar methods of work that are seldom seen today, how many people have used a spindle moulder/shaper to make fancy rosettes in this century?

 

[AJB Temple]

You must be one of the UK's foremost experts in this field Dan. All credit to you for preserving this important slice of history.

 

[Trevanion]

You must be one of the UK's foremost experts in this field Dan. All credit to you for preserving this important slice of history.

Expert is a bit of a stretch, enthusiastic collector is more like it

One thing you do notice when you've been keeping an eye on the market for this kind of thing for a couple of years is that there must be bigger fish than yourself out there. It's not uncommon to see some woodworking machinery catalogues, particularly Thomas Robinson ones, fetching well over £100 which I would never pay, but it obviously means there are some quite serious but quiet collectors out there.

 

[SamQ aka Ah! Q!]

there are some quite serious but quiet collectors out there

P'raps members of the Robinson family?

 

[Trevanion]

P'raps members of the Robinson family?

Not impossible, but there are some diehard collectors out there as well, especially the Wadkin aficionados.

I have been told before about a gentleman who has a lot of Thomas Robinson paraphernalia through collecting but also clearing out the offices when they went under, a very private individual apparently.

 

[Trevanion]

Post amended to add:

C.D. Monninger Catalogue of Saws and Accessories, 1967.

Quite a late Monninger catalogue filled with the usual interesting bit and pieces. It shows how far the industry has come on in some ways and how some things have largely stayed the same in other ways, I would’ve thought the moisture meter and metal detectors were hideously expensive pieces of equipment in their day, now you can buy very compact yet effective versions for very little. Monninger’s centenary was in 1967, 15 years later it would be bought by Leitz and over time turned into Leitz UK which is still operating today.

 

[Trevanion]

Post amended to add:

The Machine Woodworker and Sawmill Owner Magazine, 1919.

It’s quite rare to find copies of this magazine, the paper is like newspaper so very fragile after a hundred years or so. It provides an interesting look into the woodworking and wood machinery industries just after the Great War, in particular the “Croid” advert on the front directly references the war and land ships/tanks. There’s a style and charm to the adverts that you don’t see at all today.

 

[AndyT]

I thoroughly agree.

And I can still remember the smell of Croid glue from the 1960s.

 

[Trevanion]

I got around to fixing all the hyperlinks after the forum software update so they should all work properly now.

Post ammended to add:

C.D. Monninger Catalogue of Saws and Accesories, 1952.

This is an unusual one, a hole punched binder which allows the pages to be removed for easier photographing, they must’ve thought about me seventy years ago! Nice to see some photographs of the inside of St Anna Works as well which I’ve never seen before. I wonder how much a 3” hollow mortice chisel and auger would’ve cost back in 1952!

 

[Trevanion]

Post amended to add:

Dominion Woodworking Machinery Catalogue.

You rarely come across any literature from Dominion, so this was a pleasant find, even more so for £3. Dominion were best known for their “Elliott” line of combination machines but also produced a full range of high quality machinery which is still very well regarded. In particular I appreciate finally seeing a Dominion “Wedgelock” block in print, and that I was correctly calling it a “Wedgelock” all along without realising that’s what Dominion had called it originally.

 

[Cabinetman]

Interesting thank you, about 47 years ago, the local Nautical school was forced to get rid of a Dominion Combination mc, from memory it wasn’t stopping quickly enough after being turned off.
My friend who shared my workshop was the son of the head of the school who allowed us to remove it, it was a big heavy beast and we (in our wisdom) decided that as we only wanted the ripsaw and the planer and we would have to lug it upstairs the best thing we could do was cut it up and rebuild the parts we wanted separately.
Unfortunately it never did get sorted. I think it was a more modern version of the one in your catalogue though but still a really solid well built piece of kit.

 

[Trevanion]

My friend who shared my workshop was the son of the head of the school who allowed us to remove it, it was a big heavy beast and we (in our wisdom) decided that as we only wanted the ripsaw and the planer and we would have to lug it upstairs the best thing we could do was cut it up and rebuild the parts we wanted separately.

If I recall the "Supreme" Elliot weighed in the region of two tonne, quite a monster.

 

[wallace]

Aren't Dominion still making stuff or selling badged stuff?

 

[Trevanion]

Aren't Dominion still making stuff or selling badged stuff?

No, and Yes. VWM Woodworking Machinery bought the Dominion brand when the Thomas Robinson group was liquidated, they do sell machines branded as Dominion but I believe these are manufactured in the Far East and just re-badged, very similar to how Advanced Machinery Services (AMS) operates the Wadkin Bursgreen brand.

 

[wallace]

No, and Yes. VWM Woodworking Machinery bought the Dominion brand when the Thomas Robinson group was liquidated, they do sell machines branded as Dominion but I believe these are manufactured in the Far East and just re-badged, very similar to how Advanced Machinery Services (AMS) operates the Wadkin Bursgreen brand.

Was it true they were buying up old majors and such to remanufacture them like AMS have done with sanders and morticers

 

[Trevanion]

Was it true they were buying up old majors and such to remanufacture them like AMS have done with sanders and morticers

I wouldn’t have thought there would be much market for them commercially even twenty years ago, you would need to charge a fortune for a refurbished model that is up to modern standards as you would need a DC brake for each motor unless you can come up with something that works for them all, and then have adequate guarding as many have been condemned in the past for the lack of proper guarding.

 

[Trevanion]

Post amended to add:

Tools and Sundries for Woodworking Machinery, Wadkin and Co, 1925

This is quite an early Wadkin catalogue and I don’t think I’ve seen one exactly like it before. The early years of the Wadkin and Co company are interesting, with the company being formed in 1896 as a partnership between J. Wadkin and D. Jarvis, then the partnership dissolved 12 years later in 1908 but the company still retained the Wadkin name whilst being run by D. Jarvis. Jarvis then brought on his friend J.W. Goddard to help run the company, when Jarvis ultimately met his demise on a trip to the United States on the Titanic in 1912, J.W. Goddard took over the company and brought on his son J.H. Goddard to run it. Together the Goddards ran Wadkin and Co with their names under the “Wadkin” header until 1927 when J.W. Goddard passed away, then his son ran the Wadkin company until his own death in 1958. It’s interesting that J. Wadkin was only involved with the company in its infancy for 12 years yet the name stuck and it was never changed, and the Goddards ran the company and built it up for 50 years but rarely get a mention today.

I wonder if there’s still any Wadkin branded glue pots still in existence?

 

[wallace]

Ooh that is a nice one. An interesting snippet of history is that when Mr wadkin left the company he set up another machinery company called wadkin mills with a chap called thomas scott king. They made a pattern miller. When Mr wadkin passed away in 1921 the company was purchased by wadkin. That is where the WH miller design came from. Prior to that wadkin were still touting the old mechanical woodworker miller.