A Key To Dating Vintage Woodworking Machinery

Chronicle of the Early American Industries Association, Inc., The, Mar 2004 by Batory, Dana Martin

How to determine the age of old woodworking machinery is a frequently asked question. Sometimes an individual, after swinging a sweetheart deal at the flea market or auction, wants to know just how old a machine is. Very seldom does a machine actually carry a date of manufcture; however, there are several clues that when strung together will yield a general idea.

If the purchaser is fortunate enough to have some kind of paper associated with the machine-a shipping label, sales sticker, manual, etc.-an approximate age can more easily be worked out by considering the following facts:

* Postal zones in the United States were added to business addresses after 1943.

* The five number zip code dates from 1963, and the nine number zip code was added in 1976.

* A telephone number with fewer than seven digits dates from 1896-1945.

Usually a machine will carry a patent number, which can date a machine to within a few decades, but not precisely since any machine was probably manufactured for many years. Patent number 1 was issued in 1836. Patent numbers 1 through 550,000 run to 1895, and 550,001 through 2,300,000 to 1945. Patent numbers were nearing 4 million in 1976 and now exceed 4.5 million. The best and most accessible guide for looking up the exact year a patent was issued is Schroeder's Antiques Price Guide, which includes a list from 1836 through 1970.The popular book can be found in any fair-sixed public library. (See also at "Patent Searches: Step-by-Step" in The Chronicle 55, no. 4 (2002): 161-165).

Machine construction itself can be of help. However, one must remember that woodworkers, like other craftsmen, are continually modifying equipment. Retrofitting is far from a new concept. Beginning in the 1930s, Baxter D. Whitney & Sons of Winchendon, Massachusetts (established in 1837), supplied Babbitt-bearing-to-ball-bearing conversion kits for its early planers. And since many of us don't follow the maxim, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," a machine's original flat belts or square cutterhead may have been replaced by V-belts and a round head later on.

A square cutter head could indicate pro-1908 construction. The patent for the round safety head in the United States dates from 1908 when Oliver Machinery Company of Grand Rapids, Michigan (established in 1890), introduced it for the first time. Companies were quick to design their own variations. However, many companies would not only supply replacement round heads but continued to furnish square heads for die-hard customers well into the 1930s.

The hall bearing had originated about 1877 but was not widely used in America until the bicycle craze swept the country. By 1890, ball bearings were universally used in the self-propelled vehicle.

The emerging automobile industry of the early 1900s also required free-running, high-capacity hall hearings mounted in dirt-proof housings. These trouble-free hearings quickly caught the attention of production woodshop operators, who began requesting them in woodworking machinery.

Even so, hall hearings were slow in appearing in American woodworking machinery. After a century of designing equipment with Babbitt hearings, manufacturers had become quite expert at maintaining an oil film between cutterhead spindles and the hearing material. Many engineers still considered it the best way of supporting a spindle. As late as 1929, engineers were still claiming that at high speed and on load Babbitt bearings worked just as well as ball bearings.

Like the round cutter head, ball bearings were used on wood working machinery in Europe for some years before appearing in this country. It's reported that ball bearings were first offered as a special order on American jointers as early as 1908. The first manufacturer to use them on a regular basis was the Buss Machine Works originally of Marlborough, New Hampshire (established in 1847).

Buss pioneered the use of high speed ball bearings in 1909, but they generally did not appear in woodworking machinery before World War I. In 1911 a group of ambitious ball bearing manufacturers advertised in the trade journal The. WoodWorking offering to retrofit any type of woodworking machine, old or new.

The Sidney Machine Tool Co. of Sidney, Ohio (established in 1905), in 1916 offered its new no. 1, 36-inch handsaw with ball bearings made by SKF Industries. P. B. Yates Machine Co. of Berlin, Wisconsin, (established in 1876), in its circa 1917 catalog, carried seventy-three basic machines but only three with ball bearings. The Oliver Machinery Co. was also offering various ball bearing machines by that time. By 1923, they were available as standard equipment on most manufacturers machines, while a few still offered them as options.

Like wooden-framed machines, Babbitt bearing machines continued to be sold alongside their more sophisticated offspring, to satisfy traditionalists and provide cheaper machines for a market where cost rather than quality was important. Also between 1920 and 1930, nearly all woodworking machinery was finally redesigned for direct motor drives, belted motor drive, and hall bearings.