I found something that has kept up with inflation

[peternap]

I was loading Sacrete today and realized it was an amazing deal.

80 pound bags weigh at least twice as much as they did 20 years ago. What a deal! 

[considerations]

Yeah, and I've noticed the days are shorter as well 

[Gary O]

   .....and giddyup is getting hard to find these days.
But I've noticed giddydown is still quite plentiful, and pays dividends immediately if compounded daily.

[Redoverfarm]

Yep Peter did the same thing.  I had some fence post to replace  from loading the cattle last fall.  The ground has been so wet I doubt that I could get it solid so I opted for the city folk method.  But I had my son to unload it from the truck.  Now if I could just get him on a free day to put the post in I would be set.   

[Don_P]

Driving home one evening several years ago I passed a 1928 Vonnegut moulder loaded on a trailer headed for the scrap yard. In a moment of weakness I became the proud owner of 10,000 lbs of early iron, boy was I popular when that got dropped off  . It's worth $250 more than I paid as scrap at the moment, I think it's the best investment I have going.

[rick91351]

Is it a profile machine? 

The plainer mills around here where I worked, the big wide head machines like 24 inch wide were also call molding machines.  However they could not run profile stock.  They did not even have side heads.
   
Babbitt Bearings or has it been modernized?

What is it going to take to power it?

Photos?

[Don_P]

It sounds like I have an interested party 
I have a weak spot for these, I ran what in the early 80's was a state of the art 5 head through feed machine making patterns and cabinet stock. We had several historic districts, a large part of the business was grinding knives and running nice wood to replicate molding patterns in historic homes, fun stuff.
When Webb furniture failed this old one went at auction for weight, I knew the guys that had it on their trailer. By the time we got it unloaded here we had their dozer and knuckleboom loader hoping we didn't flip the old girl into the mud.



It is a 6x12 4 head push feed machine. It can have straight knives on the 4 heads to make square stock in any size up to 6"x12". Or it can have profile knives inserted in any or all heads to make a pattern, like a crown molding, tongue and groove, or a round closet rod.  The drink can is in front of the feed rolls, the big wheel sets their height. Behind that is the top head, right then left sides, then bottom. The switch handles on the front control forward and reverse on each head and feed. This also had a "doubler", instead of buying new machines the maintenance shop built frequency doublers for some older stuff. It doubles the electrical frequency thus doubling the speed of the equipment... my "investment" is actually worth even more, there is several hundred pounds of copper in that beast. The Vonnegut here is Kurt's grandad, he built woodworking machinery. The bearings are a mix, the motor and spindles were a new improvement at the time and are ball bearing, feeds and drives are in babbit. I've built rotary phase converters but this would take a very large one to produce the 3 phase power this thing needs. I quizzed the power co engineer and he thought we might be having a real serious conversation if I throw the switch. As I've gone over it, this one is too heavily damaged for me to get her up again, it's a great parts machine which is where I'd love to see it go. But it's also good scrap.