What are modern joinery/woodworking shops looking like nowadays?

[screamer]

when i started the workshop planner/thicknesser started by pulling the lever down until it got to a certain speed then you flicked the lever up to get it running, there was also a ply board put on the table to stop the thicknesser cuttings hitting the guy tailing off

 

[teaboyjim]

when i started the workshop planner/thicknesser started by pulling the lever down until it got to a certain speed then you flicked the lever up to get it running, there was also a ply board put on the table to stop the thicknesser cuttings hitting the guy tailing off

Was it some kind of gear mechanism?

 

[screamer]

Was it some kind of gear mechanism?

no, all electric, not sure if it was anything to do with phases?

this was 1986 and it was an old workshop then

 

[Deleted member 174758]

Sounds more like overhead belt drive! A piece of ply deflecting clippings on the out feed implies that there was no dust extraction on the machine - and even in 1986 that was a breach of the regulations. Sure it wasn't an ancient piece of kit?

 

[teaboyjim]

Most joinery shops have a Wadkin lurking about. Ive been fettling a Wadkin BZB today. The muppet that bought it 2 years ago didn't know how to set the blade guides....first time he used it it bluntened one side of the blade and wouldn't cut straight.....I got it set up today and used it to cut out box sash chill notches....it cut accurate to 0.3mm

I suppose because of the quality of those heavy machines people keep them because they're better than new ones in terms of longevity

 

[Notch7]

no, all electric, not sure if it was anything to do with phases?

this was 1986 and it was an old workshop then

A manual star delta by the sounds of it.

Still common on quite new machinery.

 

[teaboyjim]

So the small joinery company I'm helping to get going has classical machines: Tenoner Surface planer 4 sider Wadkin BzbBandsaw Wadkin EP spindle moulder......probably 1950s machine. Modern window tooling blocks. Wadkin machines are still widely used in joinery companies, the older machines have cast bodies, extremely heavy construction and well engineered with heavy duty bearings.
Old machines have no numeric read outs so setting up is trial and error. New machines tend to have digital read outs for repeatable settings. The way to become more productive is either through CNC routers or using Classical machinery like a spindle moulder but with programmable control. It used to have a spindle with 2 axis control - to set fence position and spindle height.

I think the old machines weren't made with the numeric read outs on them were they

 

[Notch7]

I suppose with the quality of those heavy machines there's nothing that's built like that any longer and so people keep them because they're better than new ones in terms of longevity. I don't know if they still make the famous BZB any longer? They again even had heavy builds which I think were cast iron weren't they? Then they moved on to the cabinet made ordinary rolled steel would it be or steel sheet material.

You can indeed buy that level of quality still, notably from Martin or Panhans

Below is a £40k spindle moulder

 

[teaboyjim]

Dalton's bought the name designs, trademark and intellectual property rights of Wadkin the last time they went under. They manufacture a small range of classic machines as well as badging a few imports. For decades, since the 1960s, Wadkin had imported many of the more high tech bits of kit they sold and marketed them under the "Wadkin Agencies" banner. In particular I recall them selling Weinig 4-siders as an alternative (cheaper, lighter, faster) than their own heavyweight machinery as well as both Casadei and Lurem kit They weren't alone in the UK, for example Startrite sold SCM kit for a long time under their own name and later on (after SCM had opened their own operation here) sold Robland kit rebranded "Startrite" whilst Interwood were another firm whon rested on their laurels and sold imported kit (in their case Altendorf, etc)

I didn't realize this was happening. I thought they were still the traditional manufacturers.

 

[Deleted member 174758]

I don't know if they still make the famous BZB any longer? They again even had heavy builds which I think were cast iron weren't they? Then they moved on to the cabinet made ordinary rolled steel would it be or steel sheet material.

Bursgreen were always a sheet metal firm and made very few all cast iron machines, so you may be surprised to learn that the BZB had a sheet metal cabinet. The design was an updated and enlarged version of what was originally a Sagar-Bursgreen bandsaw family (the 16in MZ and MZF) which went into production in the very late 1940s. The bigger BZBs went into production (mainly at the Bursgreen plant in Co. Durham) in the late 1950s and was far lighter in construction than the cast frame, Leicester-built DR and DS saws which it effectively replaced. The "B" series handsaws (e.g. B600, B700 etc) were introduced to replace the BZBs in the early 1970s upon, I believe, the opening of the Scarborough bandsaw factory and were lighter still. The "C" series, a more square looking bandsaw family still in production today, had replaced the "B" series by the early to mid 1980s

If you wanted a cast frame bandsaw after the DR and DS ceased production in the mid-1960s you would have needed to look elsewhere, to Robinson, White or Dominion, and even White's went to sheet metal in the very late 1960s but the other two made cast iron frame bandsaws until their ends in the mid 1980s. My understanding is that the only firm left making a cast iron frame bandsaw in Europe these days is Agazanni (Italian)

 

[Deleted member 174758]

I wonder if SCM, Altendorf the massive German panel saw specialist are all going strong. Why can the Italian and German continue their legacy of high quality woodworking machinery that's sold all over the world.

SCM are still going strong and have purchased a number of competitors, including CNC competitor Morbidelli and bandsaw specialist Centauro. They also own the Samco (now defunct) and Minimax brands. These days they, too, manufacture in multiple countries.

Altendorf are also still going strong, unlike most of the German woodworking machinery industry (e.g. Bauerle Frommia, etc) who have either disappeared or are much diminished. Altendorf also manufacture in Brazil and China these days and whilst they specialise in panelsaws they do own a CNC company as well

I think the difference between the survivors is that many smaller ones retreated into a single specialist area (e.g tenoners, panel saws, etc). The bigger firms adopted CNC from the 1970s onwards (Wadkin was initially one of those) but they kept investing in new plant, machinery, manufacturing techniques, product development, etc. Wadkin, alone amongst British woodworking manufacturers, invested heavily in CNC manufscturing machinery (with three multi million pound manufacturing cells at Green Lane) and in sheet metal forming (at Evenwood in Cleveland), so they had the technology to manufacture volume in the 1980s.

A problem with Wadkin was that by the early 1980s their range was very expensive against imported kit here in the UK, even the lower cost Bursgreen stuff, whilst abroad the at times high value of a wildly fluctuating pound didn't help sales either (the need for currency stability to aid manufacturing was something the Germans have long understood, but here? No chance!). I can say this partly based on the experience of getting a shop up and running in the early 1980s where we had a few Wadkin machines (bought new) but where most if our new kit was Italian, Belgian, Portugese or French - all of which were either far cheaper for the same spec, or a bit cheaper for a higher spec. Wadkin was not good value for money.

In the real growth area in the mid to late 1980s, CNC manufacturing, Wadkin started to fall behind due to lack of development investment. That, plus reduction in sales due to high prices, etc surely spelled the decline of Wadkin. The rest is history.

 

[teaboyjim]

Bursgreen were always a sheet metal firm and made very few all cast iron machines, so you may be surprised to learn that the BZB had a sheet metal cabinet. The design was an updated and enlarged version of what was originally a Sagar-Bursgreen bandsaw family (the 16in MZ and MZF) which went into production in the very late 1940s. The bigger BZBs went into production (mainly at the Bursgreen plant in Co. Durham) in the late 1950s and was far lighter in construction than the cast frame, Leicester-built DR and DS saws which it effectively replaced. The "B" series handsaws (e.g. B600, B700 etc) were introduced to replace the BZBs in the early 1970s upon, I believe, the opening of the Scarborough bandsaw factory and were lighter still. The "C" series, a more square looking bandsaw family still in production today, had replaced the "B" series by the early to mid 1980s If you wanted a cast frame bandsaw after the DR and DS ceased production in the mid-1960s you would have needed to look elsewhere, to Robinson, White or Dominion, and even White's went to sheet metal in the very late 1960s but the other two made cast iron frame bandsaws until their ends in the mid 1980s. My understanding is that the only firm left making a cast iron frame bandsaw in Europe these days is Agazanni (Italian)

Have you heard if some of the older firms in Eastern Europe are still making cast iron heavy duty machines?

 

[Diver Fred]

A manual star delta by the sounds of it.

Still common on quite new machinery.

My dad's first plane had a Manual Star Delta switching; knock to Delta to soon and it would blow fuses.

Replacement machine has automated Star/Delta switching - think it makes the switch on power load reduction. 12HP motor to drive a 24 inch cutter width.

Table saw (a T. Robinson) has Star Delta switching but the Delta switch function has been disabled as a means of controlling blade speed. 10HP motor to drive 24 inch blades - biggest blade I use is 18inch.

 

[teaboyjim]

SCM are still going strong and have purchased a number of competitors, including CNC competitor Morbidelli and bandsaw specialist Centauro. They also own the Samco (now defunct) and Minimax brands. These days they, too, manufacture in multiple countries. Altendorf are also still going strong, unlike most of the German woodworking machinery industry (e.g. Bauerle Frommia, etc) who have either disappeared or are much diminished. Altendorf also manufacture in Brazil and China these days and whilst they specialise in panelsaws they do own a CNC company as well

It sounds like a similar situation occurred in the German woodworking industry to what happened in the UK

 

[Deleted member 174758]

Have you heard if some of the older firms in Eastern Europe are still making cast iron heavy duty machines?

I very much doubt it. Most communist bloc machinery came from Russia after WWII in part because the Russians came in and removed factories wholesale especially from East Germany. That is certainly what happened to Kirchner or Leipzig who in the 1920s and 30s were one of the world's biggest woodworking machinery producers. Cast iron it's far more expensive to produce than sheet metal is to fold (for the body parts) which is why industry everywhere started to go down that path after WWII (and here it led to statups such as Multico, Startrite and Bursgreen who were all keen to make new generation machines). Indeed, SCM, a new Itslian startup in the late 1940s made s great success of these new techniques which reduced stockholding of castings (only the top was cast iron and had to be produced in volume then the "green" castings weathered for months to stabilise them before final machining) whilst the folded metal bases and fences could be produced more cheaply more or less on demand. This is a more effective use of capital.

I've a feeling that the bandsaw that I'm trying to remember the name of might have been much older than I imagined. I had a feeling it was a BZB but it was grey and totally cast iron. I thought it was a Wadkin - I wouldn't have thought it was from the 60's I imagined it was perhaps 20 years old so perhaps made in the 70's or 80's.

Both Wadkin and Bursgreen kit was grey until the mid 1960s. I understand that the change to green came about because the Germans insisted that machines shown at the big show in Germany be colour coded - grey for metalworking, green for woodworking. So Wadkin changed colour, but so did Bursgreen (appropriate considering their name), Robinson, Wilson, SCM (who were previously a desert sand colour), etc. By the late 1970s Wadkin bandsaws were sheer metal and boxy looking, whereas the BZB was a more rounded style. Are you sure it wasn't the Robinson EY/T bandsaw? These looked superficially similar to the BZB but had a cast box frame and fibre glass door.

There was also an EQ spindle moulder wasn't there that was quite well known and quite liked. Wasn't there a famous Wadkin Panel saw called an SP something or other?

AFAIK the EQ replaced the earlier (pre-WWII) EP as the top of the line Wadkin spindle moulder in the early 1950s. It wasn't alone, though, in that Cooksley, Sagar, Robinson, White and Wilson all produced all cast iron spindles of comparable quality in the 1950s and 60s, but with the merger of Wadkin with Sagar in 1954(?), Bursgreen - by then a Sagar subsidiary - came into the fold, and Wadkin realised that there was far more profit and higher volumes in these "new generation" sheet metal base/cast iron top machines. Given their head Bursgreen (as Wadkin Bursgreen) went on to dominate the market by the late 1960s. Wadkin did attempt to replace the EQ in the 1970s with the BEM spindle moulder (possibly the finest spindle they ever made) which looked modern, but had a cast iron box base. It was not a roaring success and the EQ was therefore still being made to special order as late as the mid 1980s (I remember seeing a small batch of them going through the Cooksley factory in Surrey in 1984, shortly before they closed).

The panel saw you are thinking about might be the Wadkin Bursgreen SP12, a derivative of the redesigned AGS table saw of the 1980s. They were fitted with a scoring unit and featured a rectangular sliding carriage with a 4 or 5 foot stroke, so technically neither a full panel saw nor a heavyweight saw. The "proper" full stroke panel saws were the Panelmaster saws of the 1970s which in the 1980s were replaced by the CP range (CP12, CP25 and CP32) which had a sliding box beam arrangement with a true outrigger supported on a articulating arm (as you see on Altendorf panel saws and Feldwrs, etc). CPs were expensive, and having used them as well as having owned several Altendorfs I can tell you that they weren't a patch on the German originals, but then neither were the SCMs

I often wondered though that did the classic old heavy duty machines suffer from lack of precision at all? Whereas the modern machines had finer tolerances?

In many ways modern machines have useability advantages over older kit. For example modern spindles (I.e post-1980 designs) have far better dust extraction than machines of the EQ generation. They also feature micro adjust fences, which can often be removed from the machine and be replaced without losing their settings. Modern machines have ele trically efficient motors using flat belt drives so cost less to run, and they feature rapid breaking mechanisms (mandatory since the 1990s). On the downside they aren't built to last 100 years. So there are pluses and minuses

Would there have been a Wadkin grey cast iron bandsaw that had the code Wadkin DZ? or just D?

Any money it was a DS. Cast iron frame, sheet metal guards, produced from the early 1930s (possibly a bit earlier). They were 24in wheel bandsaws, a sort of reduced size DR. Not common, and certainly in the 1950s they were being manufactured under licence at the Royal Ordnance Factory (in Nottingham). I suspect that being expensive they weren't great sellers and that Suez killed them off. That, or the introduction of the lower price BZB.