The Old Machine

1920 American Mortising Machine

December 16, 2006 – 5:31 pm

American Wood Working Machinery Co. - No. 25 Hollow Chisel Mortising Machine
Circa 1920

I wasn’t really looking for a mortising machine when I came across this one. I had posted an ad in the paper mentioning that I am looking for old rusty woodworking machines, etc, and I got an email from a gentleman in Nipomo who said he has this giant old mortising machine and I could have it for free if I wanted it.

Never being one to miss out on a great opportunity, I drove down to look at the machine. It looked very sad sitting out in the corner of the guy’s front yard - I guess he had been using it as yard art. All of the unpainted/machined surfaces were very rusted and there was even greenish moss covering some of the surfaces. After writing down the model/serial number details I bid him goodbye and went off to do my research.

What I turned up was that this was a very old machine made by (at the time) the largest woodworking machinery manufacturer in the world. At the time of my research there was not yet a single AWWMC mortiser listed in the photo archived of the owwm site, so I knew I had something relatively rare. I could tell at least one part was missing, the chisel holder, but decided that even if I had to have it cast and machined the deal was definitely worth it.

Fast-forward about a week, and I was riding down to Nipomo in the passenger seat of my good friend William’s 2006 Tacoma Pre-runner. I knew from the dirty paper I found on the owwm site that the machine weighed in a little over 1000 lbs and had checked toyota’s site to make sure the load compacity of the truck could handle it. Everything seemed good, even William was excited, although I think he was expecting something a little smaller being loaded into his freshly purchased truck.

After we arrived, William conversed with the benevolent tool-giver as I got started on tearing it down as much as I could so we’d have a chance at lifting it into the back of the truck. Off came the upper pulley and shaft, table, table assembly, motor, and foot pedal. After that we pulled off William’s tail-gate and got my scrap boards lined up to lay underneath the machine.

Thankfully we had the owner still there and he was able to help us lift it. Basically we layed the top down so that it was slightly in the truck then all 3 of us men lifted at the base and slid it in. Sounds easy eh? After we loaded in the parts I had removed, we realized there was not enough room for William’s tailgate to fit back on, since the mortiser was pretty tall. So, it ended up sitting the back seat of the truck. Thank goodness for extended-cabs!

Next we were directed into the guy’s backyard where sat a very rusted assortment of tooling and attachments that supposedly came with the machine. Now, event to my novice eyes I new most of these could not for this machine - many looked different in style/color (from what paint was left) and others looked like metal-working accessories. I told the man so, but he insisted - so we went ahead and piled on as much as we could fit into the truck bed. By now the truck was sitting a bit low and I could see William sweating a little - even though the sky was overcast and he was wearing shorts. Note to self: next time take my own truck. Wait, I don’t have one - buy one then! (2001 Tundra was purchased in February 07 -ED.)

The drive back to the Old Machine shop was uneventful. A friend (thanks Peter) met us there and helped unload (ok, drag and drop) the machine out of the back of the truck. William was overwhelmed with joy at this point, I think because the whole event was over and his truck could be babied again.

Partially Disassembled - after unloading
Table, Top spindle, pulley, and other parts

Side Shot

So thats the acquisition story, stay tuned for updates as I restore this beautiful machine.

-Luke

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The following scans from an old catalogue were posted on the owwm site recently and I decided to post them here for posterity. It’s encouraging to see what my machine can look like when finished - even in grainy black and white.

My exact model is on the upper left. Same as the one on the right but with the more expensive table option.

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A fellow owwmer just sent over 2 photos he took of catalogue pages he has. I’ve cropped one and shown it below.

I love the details of the hand-wheels and little faucet-style knobs. I am missing many of these (mine only has 1 handwheel right now) and will either hopefully find a parts donor machine or have them cast at a foundry.

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Ok, I’ve officially started the restoration of this machine. I spent today disassembling the machine and taking photos of the assemblies. There was a host of dead spiders and cobwebbs everywhere in this machine. Following are some photos of it all torn down. The main casting sure looks bare now!

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I’ve made quite a bit of progressing on cleaning and de-rusting the parts. Here is a shot of my electrolysis setup. I’m using a couple buckets (each with their own power supply).

For long parts that won’t fit, like the door in the shot below, I simply do half then flip it over. This part came out totally rust and paint-free.

Here is a shot of some of the parts after being cleaned. For some reason my camera makes some of them look a little rusted still but in reality they are very clean.

When they come out of the tank I spray the part off with compressed air and it looks like this:

After that I hit it with a wire wheel or steel wool to remove the black powder. I probably have another 1 or 2 weeks of this left to do then I’m going to tackle the main casting. After that, time to prep for paint!

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Ok, it’s been a month or two since I’ve updated this page. I’ve made significant progress on the restoration, even though I havn’t had much time at all to work on it.

Here is the final pile of cleaned parts waiting to be polished and degreased/prepped for paint.

The couple last pieces that need to be cleaned are pretty big so I found a couple 55 gallon barrels to use to expand my electrolysis capacity.

I decided to tackle the main casting in sections, focusing on one of the four sides until it was totally down to bare metal. So far so good, only one more side to go!

The letters where by far the hardest and most time consuming. Caution was taken to not damage the faces of the characters.

Thats it for now.

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It’s been a few months now and I’ve got little to show as far as the restoration goes. I did get the table dipped and cleaned off. If you look closely you can see the original milling marks from the factory.