Several years ago I bought a used Wirth machine. It is a heavy duty design with very nice X-Y table. While I did use it for some mortise/tenon work a couple times, I always found some other machine I gravitated towards. More than once I tried to sell it, but it generated little interest. During a recent shop cleanout and re-organization I need to decide what to do with it, so asked myself why nobody was interested in this machine, and then asked myself why I myself didnt use it more. It is very similar to a panto-router or a Multi-router setup. Although the 1.5hp Baldor motor/spindle setup on the Wirth, imo, was better (less noise!! and should run pretty much forever). For me it came down to a couple items: I did not like the setup for clamping to the table (an easy fix, more on that to come). And I found the template/followers tedious to use.
Decided to take a shot at upgrading these - and I have a dresser project that needs some dovetails so thought I would use that as the 'test' on design upgrades.
Some pics of the overall machine:
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The workpiece clamps to a moving table in front that runs on tapered V rail bearings. Quite tight/smooth. Then the cutter swings up/down on an arm while a stylus traces a template mounted on the back of the machine:
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Those aluminum and plastic pieces are the templates that the stylus traces around to cut tenons. They mount on the back plate. Tedious to mount, and with the ones that came with the machine were designed around fixed diameter mortise (to match bits - 1/2, 1/4 dia for the most part).
And I see every dang one of these pictures are rotated! my apologies, this seems to be random and Im still not sure how to fix
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