Chapter 5: 1931-1940: 5:5
Technological developmentBack to Chapter 5
under
construction 4-24-2008 -- it will be
big! 5: 5
Technological development: e.g.,
US patents issued; availability of alternating current;
portability of power machines
A
O Smith acquires
Sawyer Electric of Los Angeles, California, a manufacturer of electric
motors. In the later 1940s, A O Smith motors are installed on Shopmiths.
V-belts
begin replacing flat belts, permitting more compact designs of power
tools, and encourages shift toward "individual motor for individual
tool"
The Drill Press Flexes Its Muscles in the Home Workshop
Emergence of Delta's Famous Drill Press in Early 1930s
When the Delta Drill press pictured below was introduced is not clear, although we know the following: Herbert Tautz, founder of the Delta line, authored with Clyde Fruits The three-volume set, The Modern Motor-Driven Woodworking Shop. While no drill press is shown in the pages of the set, what is shown is of equal interest. On the left is Delta's "Boring Machine and Circular Saw, Mounted on a Bench" (Several different congigurations are also shown, but there is not Drill Press shown the three-volume set.
Just a year later, in 1931, page 30 of Delta's catalog includes the drill press shown below. This same drill was advertised by a hardward store in Appleton, Wisconsin. On page 32 of the same catalog, is a notice of the availability of Getting the Most Out of Your Drill Press (curiously, the newspaperarchive.com, the database where I located the Appleton, Wisconsin advertisement, does not list any other papers showing the Delta drill press.) Notice, too, that the drill press comes WITHOUT the fractional horse-power motor needed to drive the unit.)
Competiton was fierce, however. Along with Delta, other machine tool manufacturers were targeting the growing homeworkshop market for power tools: Walker-Turner, Boice-Crane, J D Wallace, Sears, Champion, all hurried to market bench-top, floor and wall-mounted models.
(I have ordered on bookfinder.com a 1931 (first) edition of Getting the Most Out of Your Drill Press -- when it comes, I will scan and upload it)
And here, in an issue of Popular Homecraft, is the claim the editors :"And Tools to Work Withal ... the best there is..."
Marshall, Missouri, fitted out with several power tools, including a shadowy image of a Champion bench drill press. These images come from Popular Homecraft 3, no 3 September-October 1932, pages 210 & 265.
This is the caption below the photo:
REMEMBER the "newspaper" stories you've read and the movies you've seen where the demon reporter, editor, or whoever the hero might be, sighs happily as he hears the throbbing roar of the mighty presses?
Well, Frank C. Green, who lives in Marshall, Mo., is one of the men who make the
presses roar, being by trade a newspaper pressman but, after the day's run is over and the press is washed up—
"You can find from two to a half-dozen young men in my home shop enjoying seeing different articles in the course of construction."
I have not spared time or expense in equipping my shop with the best there is. As fast as new machinery or tools worthy of consideration are put on the market, I add them to my now very complete outfit.
Anchor contentMy shop equipment now consists of the following, in addition to about a thousand hand tools:
New South Bend 9-in. lathe with about $100 worth of extra equipment;
Oxyacetylene welding outfit; Wallace 14-in, handsaw, with unit motor;
Bonnett-Brown circular saw and extra attachments with unit motor;
Champion bench drill;
Black & Decker electric hand drill;
Stanley miter box with 6 by 30 in. saw;
Foley saw filer, Model F5;
Lacquer spray painting gun with compressor and tank;
Driver flexible shaft outfit, with all present available accessories;
Atkins Silver Steel handsaws;
16-in, drum sander with disk sander attachment.
My list of small tools is by far too large to enumerate, but all the tools I have are of standard brands and not the cheap kinds that so many beginners make the mistake of wasting their money on.
Shapers
and Routers Become Viable as Power Tools in Home Workshops
The
Carter-Stanley router comes on the market
In
1929, the
Carter line Stanley Electric Tools
purchased and produced routers until the
company was sold to the Bosch Tool Corp. in the early 1980s.
Blurb from 1932 J D Wallace
Catalog:
"Thousands
of Workace Electric Shapers are in service -- in
large plants and small
shops-schools and hobby shops, maintenance departments, pattern and
cabinet shops and furniture repair departments, etc."
The J D Wallace "Workace" bench
top shaper is released to the market, definitely with the home workshop
woodworker as a chief target. (More
discussion here.)
Boice-Crane's
"Low-Priced Shaper" given "royal-treatment" by Popular
Homecraft in promoting this power tool to
the homeshop. Strangley, this shaper evidenlty had a short life span.
In the only Boice-Crane catalog on www.owwm.com -- a
1935, page 31, which features a "shaper", is obliterated by a "price
list", super-imposed over the top of it. The fraction of the shaper's
base that you can make out -- its outline stretches out beyond the
border of the price list -- looks to me like another model of
a shaper. Popular
Homecraft November 1930 page 362 <
LOW-PRICED
SHAPER
Only
a shaper can give that distinctive "finished" touch required by every
piece of artistic woodwork. It is adapted to a greater variety of
refining and beautifying work than any other machine in the woodworking
industry. Its vertical high-speed spindle will carry any type of
cutter, jointer head, cope head, dado head, saw, router, dovetail,
rounder, rosette, fluter bit, drum sander, disk sander or carving tool
and will transform the simple and unattractive lines of the amateur to
the handsome, molded work of an expert.
 The
manufacturers have
long realized the great need of the amateur and small shop owner for a
low-cost shaper that anyone, even the man who has never before seen
such a machine, can operate with complete safety and satisfaction.
Some
of the mechanical details of this shaper are: Ball-bearing spindle;
17-in, stationary table, cast as an integral part of the floor column
and absolutely square with the spindle; adjustable spindle that raises
and lowers to accommodate different styles of cutters and heads;
adjustable cast-iron fence and combination safety guard and hold-down.
Any
motor that can be operated vertically can be used for operating the
shaper and, at 1750 r.p.m., the shaper spindle is revolved at 7,000
r.p.m.
A very complete assortment of cutter
equipment is
available, in addition to a new solid milled-type cutter that has been
developed by the manufacturers, which makes it possible to produce 70
different modeled shapes with but a single cutter.
This
machine,
aside from its size and price will compare favorably with the larger
and heavier production-type machines and that, in fact is exactly what
it is — a production shaper adapted to the requirements and
the
purse of
the amateur worker and the small woodworking shop.
|
Walker Turner is one of the major manufacturers of power tools for the home workshop market. Walker-Turner's house organ, Home Craftsman -- for background, scroll down on Chapter 5:2 -- launched in 1931, was published until 1965. Initially, H-C contained only advertisements for W-T products -- see below, for example of ads for W-T power tools in first issue of H-C:
Delta Announces Lathe
More on this event later. The Deltagram's editor, Sam Brown, featured several articles in that magazine, and Delta issued in 1935 Brown's 48-page, Getting the Most Out of Your Lathe in 1935.
Delta Announces in The Deltagram the Company's New Bench-top Shaper, January, 1937
In preparation for the machine's release to the market, The Deltagram's editor, Sam Brown, had penned a Delta "Getting the Most out of Your Shaper" in 1936. (By February, 1947, ten editions were recorded on the manual's title-page, suggesting that perhaps 25,000 cpoies were in circulation.) Brown waited until November, 1937, to feature anything about the shaper; that month's page 39 is about shaper cutters, and the "bread-and-butter" details about window making. However, not until February, 1938, does Brown include a feature article -- a one-pager -- on "freehand shaping". The shaper itself gets cover treatment in the March issue, and a one-page "how-to-do-it" on making a "corner-clock-case", including an illustration of shaping edges of shelves with the bench-top shaper.
Delta Announces Unisaw The Deltagram February 1939
On the left below, the patent submitted by Herbert Tautz for the Unisaw; further below, on the right, an ad from The Deltagram, March 1940.
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