Tenoner rebuild

[Mark Hennebury]

I recieved my second Wadkin JET tenoner this week. I have already stripped down the first one last year, and plan on stripping this one down in the near future. This will probable be a long drawn out thread, as i have just started rebuilding another Maka mortiser for a customer and have to get that finished first.

The ones in the brochure are shorter versions with a small dust collector around the cutterhead, and no cut off saw.
The ones that i have are larger models that have a cutoff saw and are therefore longer. plus they have a huge sheet metal cover, making them look huge.
Wadkin very very creative and innovative at this time, they made a lot of well thought out innovative machines, they were not super heavy duty but built well enough to handle the intended jobs and be reasonable priced.

The machine was designed for making window sash.
This machine has three adjustable tables for mounting your stock, one shaper that handles a stack of cutters. the shaper travels past the three tables, cutting different tenons in each of the three pieces in one pass

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[Patrick Walsh]

Holly smokes mark you are a glutton for punishment ehy...

[David Kumm]

This will be good. Mark, any idea if the machine is exactly Wadkin or if Jet spec'd some differences, good or bad, from the original build? Dave

[brent stanley]

This will be fun, do you have the full compliment of tooling with it? Did you hear that Jack got an ECA?

B

[Mark Hennebury]

Hi David.
I don't think that it had anything to do with Jet tools. Wadkin made a bunch of machines with just 3 letter names. the Wadkin PAR was the combo two sided jointer and two side planer. Maybe short for Planed All Round. The Wadkin SET was for the "Single End tenoner" The name Jet was probably "Jointing end tenoner" or some such thing.
I really like all three machines and would be quite happy to have all three.
But for know i have theses JET machines and i am quite excited to get one together as i have a couple of projects in mind for them.



This will be good. Mark, any idea if the machine is exactly Wadkin or if Jet spec'd some differences, good or bad, from the original build? Dave

[Mark Hennebury]

Hi Brent, i do have a couple of stacks of blades, i may be able to use some, as i have a lot of windows to do for my house, plus i have special project in mind that i will need to buy tooling for.
No, I didnt know that Jack got an ECA, he must be excited about that.



This will be fun, do you have the full compliment of tooling with it? Did you hear that Jack got an ECA?

B

[Mark Hennebury]

This is the one that i stripped down last year, the new arrival has a similar blade stack.

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[Mark Hennebury]

The new arrival has the 8' long aluminum fences and the clamps and posts. which i din't get with the first one.

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[Brian Holcombe]

Cool! Watching with interest.

[Joe Calhoon]

Nice Mark! This will be a interesting restoration. Always been curious about these myself. During those years Wadkin broke away from the old style push - pull tenoners with horizontal heads. Probably to compete with the tenoners coming from Italy and Germany. The long fence will be nice for slot and tenon work on large frames.
Tell me how the saw blade works on these? For example on a typical double hung there will be one tenon depth and 3 slot depths. Does the blade move in tandem with the fence for the different depths? Or Maybe a mechanical digital readout on the blade then you reposition the fence to that? That is how my Colombo tenoner worked but maybe Wadkin had a more clever solution since the UK market is mostly double hung or sash windows as they are called there.
Looks like 40 mm shaft.

[Mark Hennebury]

Hi Joe,

The saw travels together with the shaper head. At this point i am much in the dark as to how it works for setup and adjustments. there are mechanical digital readout on the table heights, rulers and pointers for the table in and out movement. there are stops on the fences are ruler and pointers, and there were a forward stop system which has been removed from mine, i may be able to reproduce it if i find it would be useful. It consist on a 1" rods that about 3' long that go through the tables it has a 90 degree arm on the front and a handle on the back, it was for a front stop, as opposed to using the fences back stop. it is a flip stop type thing; So you push the rod forward until it stops against a preset collar, then rotate it 90 degrees so that the stop arm is vertical, then slide your wood forward up to the stop, engage the clamp, then rotate the stop down and retract the rod to begin the cut. I am interested to get one of these machines up and running to figure out how to use it. Not sure of the spindle size, i will check.

You can see the long rods in these photos i found online. in the second photo you can see the stop bars on the end of the rods tucked in under the front of two of the table. One o the tables the stop bar is missing from the end of the rod.
In this video clip that i just pulled of the internet you can get the general idea of how it operates. Not sure why the speed is inconsistent on the video. The feed speed is variable on these machines. The motors have brakes. The video is taken from the back of the machine.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcnsO259-a0



Nice Mark! This will be a interesting restoration. Always been curious about these myself. During those years Wadkin broke away from the old style push - pull tenoners with horizontal heads. Probably to compete with the tenoners coming from Italy and Germany. The long fence will be nice for slot and tenon work on large frames.
Tell me how the saw blade works on these? For example on a typical double hung there will be one tenon depth and 3 slot depths. Does the blade move in tandem with the fence for the different depths? Or Maybe a mechanical digital readout on the blade then you reposition the fence to that? That is how my Colombo tenoner worked but maybe Wadkin had a more clever solution since the UK market is mostly double hung or sash windows as they are called there.
Looks like 40 mm shaft.

[Mark Hennebury]

Wadkin made a two machine system for making windows.
It consisted of the Jet end tenoner.
And the VIP Multi head profiler.

The Vip consisted on multiple shapers ganged together and tilted for running all of the profiles.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vm_VfRCV0j4

The JET tenoner.

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The VIP profiler

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[Mark Hennebury]

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[Joe Calhoon]

Mark, I talked to my friend in the UK that was a long time Wadkin employee. He worked in the Durham factory where these were made and said his brother is still running these machines in his works.
I asked him what advantage these would have over the typical stacked shaft tenoners the Germans were producing in the same era. He said 2 up on each table could be run at the same time. So in production the casement frame which requires 2 different tenons (one for sill and one for head) and 1 slotting cutter for sill and head rails could be made faster than a movable stacked shaft where only 2 parts could be run at the same time vs 6 parts on the JET. Than a change of cutters for the sash which requires only one tenon cut and one slot cut.
later the Germans and Italians went to 500mm plus shafts with top bearings so all the cutters for sash and frame could be stacked in one setting. I would think the Jet VIP machines would be more expensive to build than the stacked shaft machines.

All my experience has been with stacked shaft machine for tenon and profile, semi automatic and then CNC. They have the advantage of compact size in my small shop. In semi retirement trying to be a part time pro and more full time hobby builder I am happy using shapers for this type work.

Regardless of the pro and con this machine should be very capable to build windows!

[Mark Hennebury]

I was always quite impressed with the innovative drive Wadkin had at this time, they must have felt the pressure from the Italian and German companies who were pushing hard into the marketplace. I had that SAC tenoner in the shop a few years back, that was quite a bit heavier duty. T had two vertical shapers mounted in a common bracket and pivoted So you could swing one or the other into play, and there was a system of four vertical stop positions, effectively giving you eight machining positions. The motors moved in position hydraulically. It was a heavy duty machine and interesting. But i like the wadkin approach much better. I like the solid, fixed tables to mount the stock. and the fact that the head moves rather then the stock. I may play around with mine a bit, A will remove the large sheet metal covers, change the position of the electrical panel, i may remove the cutoff saw and shorten the length of the machine a couple of feet. Set it up like the original ones.

I have tried a few different tenoners but I have never produced windows and i don't have any experience with these machines, did you use the cut-off saw or precut your stock to finish size? Would you miss a cutoff saw if it was removed.

Looking at a large stack of cutters on a long skinny shaft with no top support is a tad unnerving at first, Its funny what you can get used to.
I wonder what the limits are on shaft diameter and length before they went to top supports. 500mm is a long shaft. Those stacked cutters are seriously heavy.

I have a bunch of windows to make for my old house. So maybe i will get around to doing them before the house falls down. I also have some furniture joints That i want to use the machine for, which I am really excited about. Anyway, it should all be fun.

The Sac tenoner that i had a while back, these are the photos from the auction.

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[Joe Calhoon]

I was always quite impressed with the innovative drive Wadkin had at this time, they must have felt the pressure from the Italian and German companies who were pushing hard into the marketplace. I had that SAC tenoner in the shop a few years back, that was quite a bit heavier duty. T had two vertical shapers mounted in a common bracket and pivoted So you could swing one or the other into play, and there was a system of four vertical stop positions, effectively giving you eight machining positions. The motors moved in position hydraulically. It was a heavy duty machine and interesting. But i like the wadkin approach much better. I like the solid, fixed tables to mount the stock. and the fact that the head moves rather then the stock. I may play around with mine a bit, A will remove the large sheet metal covers, change the position of the electrical panel, i may remove the cutoff saw and shorten the length of the machine a couple of feet. Set it up like the original ones.

I have tried a few different tenoners but I have never produced windows and i don't have any experience with these machines, did you use the cut-off saw or precut your stock to finish size? Would you miss a cutoff saw if it was removed.

Looking at a large stack of cutters on a long skinny shaft with no top support is a tad unnerving at first, Its funny what you can get used to.
I wonder what the limits are on shaft diameter and length before they went to top supports. 500mm is a long shaft. Those stacked cutters are seriously heavy.



Mark, using the cutoff saw or not depends on the tenoner and how many different widths of scantlings you are working on. My Colombo tenoner had electronic shaft position of a 40X 230 shaft but the saw was mechanical digital readout and the fence had to be repositioned for any change of tenon or slot depth. The fence was not handy to change so I ended up replacing the saw blade with a aluminum disk and just using that as a bump stop with precut scantlings. Just like you would with a shaper. Another good argument for not using the saw is scantlings have to be precut to at least 1” over when using the saw and with the same amount of labor they could be cut to finish length saving one operation on the tenoner. However, with a machine where all the axis are controlled electronically- shaft height, fence stops and saw position it is better to cut on the tenoner. Some of these machines like the Soukup’s I’ve had will imput cultists from cad cam programs with all the settings automatic.
i will be interested to see how the fences on the Jet adjust. Possibly the tables adjust laterally to achieve adjustment. If it is a positive easy adjustment might be better to use the saw. I see they also have a shoulder stop and that can add another dimension.

As far as stacked shafts they are very sturdy. The general rule is 40 mm will be max around 250mm length, 50 mm max about 330mm length and 50mm at 500mm plus length will always have a top bearing. The big disks can be intimidating at first but usually the tooling on sleeve is well balanced and only turning at 3000 rpm on the stacked shafts with tooling diameters 320 to 350mm.

This is all becoming old technology in Europe with some of the lineal machines Weinig, SCM and Working Process make now. And the heavy Pod and Rail CNCs are another option.

[Joe Calhoon]

Here are some low tech solutions for shaper bump stops that could possibly be adopted to tenoners. If the saw blade adjustable with a readout probably best to rig that up though. My shop made stop on the T23 looks bad but actually very repeatable.

And building double hung windows using shapers
https://www.instagram.com/p/B4pMVj7gv7y/?igshid=4xsmwh812ax1

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[Mark Hennebury]

Thanks Joe, you have some interesting solutions for the stops. I am looking forward to getting one of these together and seeing how everything works. It will be interesting to check out the adjustments and see how they hold up. I wish that my machine had the forward, stop rods, I doubt that they are difficult to make though. With the spindle moving past the tenons, the forward stop, has to be moved out of the way after clamping. So i am interested to see try it. I have never made more than a couple of windows at a time before, and didn't have equipment to do so, so this is new territory for me, so I really appreciate your input. I mostly made furniture and precut all of the parts to finish size. I used a Balestrini mortiser and tenoner, which are perfect for chair parts. Although the tenons are simple, single square shouldered tenons, the parts are mostly curved and compound angles. So it was interesting work, but different than this machine and the more complex window joints. Its always fun to be heading into something new. Lots to learn.

[David Sochar]

Mark - I just bought, surprisingly, a Sac T-4 in an online auction for $1100! I did not really intend to buy it, but no one else jumped in, so it is mine. I gotta figure out how to get it here, and then where to put it.

This will be a good machine for our shop, freeing up the shaper, and taking some of the load off the Powermatic tenoner. However, there is no room and the thing is a beast. I may have to store it until there is room in a new shop space.

[Mark Hennebury]

Hi David, Congratulations on the score, that's a lot of machine for that price. Sac made some seriously sturdy machines. You should be very happy with this machine. The one i had was quite heavy.

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Mark - I just bought, surprisingly, a Sac T-4 in an online auction for $1100! I did not really intend to buy it, but no one else jumped in, so it is mine. I gotta figure out how to get it here, and then where to put it.

This will be a good machine for our shop, freeing up the shaper, and taking some of the load off the Powermatic tenoner. However, there is no room and the thing is a beast. I may have to store it until there is room in a new shop space.

[Mark Hennebury]

David, i have a manual for a Sac T6 which may or may not be of help. Its for a a double spindle machine similar to the T8 , Its old and difficult to see the photos, but, i can send it to you if you don't have a manual with your machine. let me know if its of interest to you.

[Joe Calhoon]

These are good machines Dave. I had a SAC P 3 profiler for a while. A mate to the P series tenoners. You will need a manual, the computer- numerical controls on these are not intuitive. At least it wasn’t for me. This will run circles around the powermatic tenoner especially if you work with multiple profiles. Only downside is tooling for these type tenoners is expensive. Shaft will be 50 mm by 320 or 500 plus. These had the option for automatic saw and cross fence positioning.
here is a link to sales brochures

https://wtp.hoechsmann.com/en/lexikon/20797/t_4_tl (https://wtp.hoechsmann.com/en/lexikon/20797/t_4_tl)