Day 34, A Delta Jointer from the 1950s
Okay, I'm jumping the gun by publishing two entries of the my garage series on the same day, which might make up for a day or two when I don't make it out to the workshop on a particular day in the future. But in any case, the 34th entry in this series is another of my "old iron" power tools that I got and have restored to good working order.
It's a 6" Delta Jointer. Jointers are used to accurately flatten a piece of lumber. The usual technique in preparing lumber is to "joint" one edge and one face of a piece of lumber, then plane the opposite sides to be parallel to the flattened face, making the overall piece of lumber both flat and square. Preparation of lumber is actually a big fraction of the effort in many woodworking projects. In the days before power tools, this was usually done by longer hand held planes (also called jointers). This 6" model is a good size for an amateur shop.
My recollection is that I bought this more or less site unseen: that I sent Carmen out to pick it up. I am not sure how she got this thing loaded: it's quite heavy. When it came to me, the bed and blades were fairly rusty, it obviously hadn't been used in years.
It still may not look like much, but I made several improvements to it. First, the wiring was without a doubt original to the machine. It's power switch was a toggle that was operated via a small loop of wire that pulled the switch up and down. It used an unpolarized plug without a ground, and the extension cord was decaying and wrapped in cotton. None of those things screamed "safety" for me, so I went ahead and replaced the cord with a modern three plug switch, added proper grounding, and wired one of those big emergency stop buttons to it.
The bed was also kind of a mess. I disassembled it all. Getting the bolts that held the fence casting separate from the bed took an actual impact driver to loosen them up, as well as a lot of PB Blaster to loosen the parts. I hit the bed with lots of WD40 and steel wool, and also used some phosphoric acid to remove some staining on the bed. It came out pretty well. There is a fair amount of additional surface rust. I briefly investigated the possibility of having this thing stripped and powder coated, but this didn't seem like a worthwhile investment, and frankly, I kind of like the old patina. I also cleaned and polished all the handles, and applied oil to all the places that seemed to make sense.
The aluminum serial number plate identifies it as post 1947. Using the serial number page on vintagemachinery.org, it appears that this particular unit was manufactured in 1953, making it somewhat older than I am, definitely eligible to draw Social Security.
I cleaned off the motor housing. I believe it to be original, it's a 1/2 horsepower motor, wired for 115V. I did open it up and check the wiring which seemed to be as expected. I added an additional case ground to the grounded plug wire, so that if any shorts occur they will get properly grounded. The motor says that it can draw about 7 amps, which is about 800 watts of power.
Here is the original badge. I should probably clean this up a bit to get rid of some of the rust.
I actually have used this very little. If you are thinking of buying a jointer, you should examine what you think you
are going to do with it. There are alternatives to having one, and frankly they take up a fair amount of space
that perhaps could be put to use. That being said, restoring it (even to the relatively rough but entirely
functional place it currently is) was one of my more serious tool restoration projects, and I had a lot of fun.
I do have a new set of knives for it that I should probably install, and I have also looked into replacing the
bearings in it. But for now, it's just a cool item. I hope somebody out there enjoyed seeing it.
Still Tuesday. Still wishing you all the best.