• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

wadkin LP restoration

W

wallace

Old Oak
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Its been a whole 24hrs since I finished my last machine and I was getting twitchy fingers. So I decided to start another. I need this one to complete the PK so its a good excuse.
Ive had this for about 4 years but it worked when I got it so it got pushed to the back of the que.
This machine was built in 1934 and is a very versatile thing. It can drill, mill, trench and is pretty much a poor mans pattern miller. Wadkins original mechanical wood worker used quite a bit of the same tooling range as the LP.
I had a couple of hrs spare so got cracking.

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I did have a bit of a clenchy bum moment whilst dragging it about, I'd re rigged the rope so it was pulling from the bottom and was slowly dragging it up a little step when It started to tip really slowly. Luckily I ran over and grabbed it.

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The keen eyed amongst you will notice it has some similarities to the LQ recessor. The LP is its older brother.

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A DC machine

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Some ones been bodging a bit.

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It looks like some one has drilled through the table and into the gear

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That's as far as the handle will take the column and its stuck, I know if I could rotate it would come out easily. Problem is it has a rack on the other side which you cant get off.

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That's in pretty good condition considering its 85 years old

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No research to back it up but I find 400V (if I read that plate right) and DC slightly terrifying.

I've had a few shocks in my time but at least with AC you can let go. Not sure that is so with DC. I'm sure you know what you are doing and everything will be well insulated.

Where did they get 400V DC 80 odd years ago?
 
When I got this it was being ran off an AC supply and I've used it off my static converter. I might have to have it rewound because I want to use a vfd for speed control. I've got a good motor winder guy who will keep me safe.
Wadkin would do a machine to what ever the customer wanted be it AC or DC or voltage and were pioneers in the use of frequency changers to obtain scary speeds for over head routers. They had a spindle moulder that ran at 18k rippums.
 
The column finally succumbed to a bit of wood and big hammer.

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The machine that replaced this the LQ had a spring to lift the quill up and return the foot pedal.
This one has a big ol chunk of solid steel, which was fun to get out because someone had put a split pin in a place that could not be gotten to, so I had to unscrew the big lump off a threaded lug.

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There were two tapered pins holding the foot pedal on its shaft which were stuck solid, so I had to drill them out.

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The top pulley that drives the quill was a bit of a headscratcher to work out how it came off.

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Its screwed in place from underneath and theres a little hole in the main casting to put a screwdriver through.

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It has two self aligning bearings at the top

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made in Sweden

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I started taking the dodgy blue paint off, I was hoping their would be enough original paint to leave it in its working clothes so to speak but there was lots missing

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I spent about 4 days filling a priming. Still a bit more to do

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Im going to do a final polish after I've painted. Because you cant put any rust prevention on because you need to mask the handle, I've found the polished surface will rust underneath the masking tape

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A bit more done, got the top coat on the main casting

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Its a pretty clever method of controlling the x y movements of the table via the two handwheels. A shaft runs inside and engages a bronze nut.

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I think I will be leaving this handwheel in place, its got a bronze bushing the full length and I don't fancy damaging it.

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A bit bodge work

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The whole table rotates

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A bit more done

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Its nice to have an original fence for this

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I got the spindle to bits,

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The casting work is such good quality

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A big table of parts ready to prime

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Etch primer followed by filler primer

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The column the table sits on

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Theres nothing more relaxing than cleaning rusty nuts and bolts

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I find the whole process relaxing especially as I am not doing the work. I am sure it looks as good as when it was new.
 
More done
The table has some adjustable stops, this one had a broken stud in it. I drilled it and tried a stud extractor. Snapped the extractor.

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So then I welded on a nut to try and unscrew it with no success

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In the end I just bashed it sideways with a hammer .

The table has been in wars over the past 8O years, someone drilled all the way though into the ways

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I might have a secondary top fixed on

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Chucked some pillar box red about

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This counter weight is seriously heavy

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Stripped the motor of old paint

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I've been sitting here working out how you spray that motor plate red :)

Came to the conclusion you must only mask the lines with hand stamped letters and numbers and just overspray the rest...then sand and polish paint off all the raised stuff.

Certainly looks good as does all the now smooth painted or shiny bits.
 
Wallace - nice work as always - when you were spraying the motor how did you stop paint getting inside the motor via those vent slots ? or did you somehow blank it off ? just wondering .
Steve
 
Robert":3r0ultph said:
I've been sitting here working out how you spray that motor plate red :)

Came to the conclusion you must only mask the lines with hand stamped letters and numbers and just overspray the rest...then sand and polish paint off all the raised stuff........
Click to expand...

Yep, I sat and puzzled that one out too, and came to the same conclusion.
 
Bob this must have been back to wadkin over the years. The tag on the machine says DC but its just a normal 3 phase motor. Another strange thing is the starter box tag says 4hp and has a lever for fast and slow, but the motor is 2hp and single speed

Steve, behind the grill is a iron ring but on the other side where the leads terminate I just shove tissue in the hole to stop paint getting in.

I've just about finished assembling but I'll save pics for the big reveal.
This is how I do the tags, just clean then spray then wrap sand paper around a block and sand. The thin tin tags are a lot more fiddly because the raised portion is so slight.

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The original starter box is perfect to hold a vfd. I'm going to keep the innards.

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I really like original conduit, its such good quality and always cleans up nice

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I found this work light in my junk stash which should clean up

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tracerman":1r8w5dkd said:
Wallace - thats beautiful , please remind me , what are the functions of this model ?
Steve
Click to expand...

Thanks Steve, its a boring and recessing machine. So it can drill, do recesses for stairs, it can hold a moulding head, it can hold router bits. In its day it was used as a poor mans pattern miller for doing core boxes. I'v got a bunch of original scary tooling somewhere.
 
Another amazing transformation. You make it look easy but I know it isn't.

I bet I'm not the only one wondering what is in the packing case on a pallet :)
 
Someone asked me to do a machine but I said I was concentrating on my own machines and wanting to make my workshop into a wood working place once again. I haven't done wood work for 3 years. He sent it anyway saying do it whenever I wanted.
Its a CK radial arm saw. I did one years ago
 
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