Acorn (Atlas) shaper restoration

[Marine Man]

Hi Guys. Well here goes my first post about a project. A shaper was the first machine, apart from a lathe, that I trained on as a junior engineer and really loved the machine. As a result for most of my adult life I have yearned after a shaper, but could never find one that I could justify owning. In desperation a few weeks ago I downloaded some plans with a view to possibly building one in the distant future. Well imagine my surprise when the very next day I walked into a friends workshop to see a small shaper sitting forlornly in a corner, covered in grime and being used as a shelf for various items including a two way radio and battery. I asked the friend if he would consider parting with it and he said gladly so long as I replaced it with a shelf for his radio and shared the progress of the shapers restoration with him.
Deals like that don't come around very often so the very next day my friend was the proud owner of a new shelving system, and the shaper was sitting on the floor of my shop!
It is pretty much complete including the original vice and cast iron stand (the stand weighs nearly as much as the machine itself!) After rubbing a bit of the grime off I was pleased to find very little obvious wear and only a few patches of light surface rust on the table. It is in surprisingly good condition for its history and I'm really looking forward to rebuilding this beauty.
One thing puzzles me is that according to most of the literature I have read, these shapers are lubricated using oil cups, yet this one does not have a single one. They are all pressed-in oil nipples similar to what we have on Myford lathes. Now my question is does anyone know if this was this a conversion, or is this some factory variant? I know that the Acorn is basically the same as the Atlas, and that it was merely rebranded for the British market. Did this possibly include changing the lubrication system?

 

[master of none]

Hi Marine Man look in the shaper forum and you'll find some body there who rebuilt a Atlas 7b shaper with lots of pictures it help me lots when I rebuilt mine.

 

[Marine Man]

Baby steps so far. The clapper box, vice and stand restored and in prime position in the small shop. The stand weighs nearly as much as the shaper!

 

[Marine Man]

The rest of the machine awaiting my attentions
The problem is I have too many distractions, like paying work to get thru first

 

[brino]

The problem is I have too many distractions, like paying work to get thru first

You are not alone in that.

I am watching this thread, thanks for sharing it!

-brino

 

[Marine Man]

Managed to get quite a bit done over the weekend and thought I will share quite a few of the problems I've come across.
First off - paint! I don't know who the mad painter was, but I have never seen a machine so lathered in paint. Graduations, gib screws, feed screws, even the ways were covered in multiple layers of thick paint.


A general view before stripping
View attachment 368293
An example of the mad painters handiwork!

The main body half-way thru the paint stripping process
...after the paint job. Now to lightly stone the ways
The table is now also completely restored. Luckily it was in surprisingly good condition once the grime and paint had been removed


One of the biggest problems I have is that one of the bearing adjustment collars had picked up the thread and seized to the point I had to bore the whole collar out on the mill. I have to now clean up the internal threads as can be seen in the photo above, but without a tap I'm a bit puzzled as how to go about it. Any ideas would be welcome

 

[Janderso]

Nice looking shaper.
I’ll be interested to see how you clean up those threads, I have no idea.

 

[brino]

The cleanup is coming along very well!

-brino

 

[NCjeeper]

Looking good on your progress.

 

[Shootymacshootface]

You could try to scrape the threads clean with a tap the same pitch. Maybe weld some sort of a handle on a section of a tap that is not tapered.