Recent content by JHuston

LALALA CAN'T HEAR YOU -James Huston

Well...I'm not saying that another metal lathe will pass through here, but it's not staying; I ran out of room five machines ago. - James Huston

I added a third ( and final ) vintage lathe, It's a Porter-Cable Hi-production lathe from the late '20s or so. The Hi-production was the first power tool Porter-Cable ever made, and this model would have started its career running off of a lineshaft. I plan to reconstruct the optional...

The Carbo-Lathe was developed around 1932 by Porter-Cable to use early carbide tooling. It's essentially a larger, faster version of their 1914 Rapid Production lathe. Porter-Cable sold the design off to Lipe-Rollway in 1937; I suspect this lathe was involved in war work at first. Thank you, I...

I moved shop about a year and a half ago to our new house; while my new shop building was going up, I rescued a 1940 Lipe-Rollway 14" Carbo-Lathe that was ready to go to the scrapyard to supplement my 1918 Mulliner Enlund 14" engine lathe. After a year of sitting, I restored the Carbo- Lathe and...

Boy, do I ever. I was a power tool repairman for twenty-three years, and have been collecting Porter-Cable tools for most of that time. I have somewhere North of 140 power tools build from 1926-1965, including seventy-five circular saws. That's in addition to forty nine stationary machines...

Forgot all about it. I'll try to dig one up tomorrow. -James Huston

Porter-Cable abrasive machines were always the most common stationary machine encountered, but even hat series had its share of unicorns. The G-4 ( direct mounted belt sander ) was made in enormous quantities, the AG-4 ( coupling driven version ) less so, and the DG-4 ( direct drive belt/disc...

Neatly done! My Porter-Cable universal head is mounted to a J E Costilo milling machine, and uses a separate step pulley running off the overhead lineshaft. I've been quite pleased with the performance of the head, and actually prefer it to my Rockwell vertical mill for small jobs. -James Huston

That's an astoundingly rare machine! Porter-Cable had two combination machines, yours and an earlier design called the BD-1. To find a War Finish example is about as rare as it gets! -James Huston

The saw was originally equipped with a 1/2HP Master motor, either three phase or repulsion induction single phase. RI motors work well in this application because they excel at starting under a load due to their superior starting torque- those solid cast iron wheels have a lot of inertia. -...

Count yourself fortunate- you have the entire drive system, save for the original 1/2 ho Master motor; that's almost unheard of! When you get into it, let me know if you need any help. I've rebuilt a few of them at this point, and would be happy to help. Matter of fact, I can get you any...

That's a wonderful example of the Porter-Cable BS, made between 1925-1935 or so. Your guards are OEM with the addition of sheet metal; the originals were open ( since the saw has solid wheels, there's less need to protect the operator- no spikes to stick an appendage into while the saw is...

Not tracking, or no power? The 136 was generally a reliable sander. - James Huston

Thank you for the kind words! Always glad to help a fellow appreciator. I buy cords by the 100 count at work, but for smaller amounts I've been pleasantly surprised by the quality of Voltec cords, might be worth a look. I wrote a pretty exhaustive history on Porter-Cable drills on owwm.org, but...