Restoring an early Silver bandsaw sold by Mcphersons

[tony_A]

Picked up an old badsaw that had been advertised in gumtree.

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Thought it may have been a Macson based on what we could read on a heavily painted tag in the back of a dark shed. Not so, No name cast into the frame and the only indication is this tag.

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The saw has babbitt bearings which makes it quite old but didnt realise how old initially. The McPherson tag above suggest is is pre 1913. The company name changed to McPhersons Pty Ltd in 1913 when William entered politics.
Does anyone know if McPherson & Sons were making their own machines that early or does this badge simply say that they were the selling agent?

A photo of the stripped back saw
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Tony

[L.S.Barker1970]

Hi Tony, I think your Bandsaw is a Silvers Manufactured in the US and imported by Thomas McPherson.

http://www.woodworkforums.com/f163/pics-thomas-mcphersons-bandsaw-166977?highlight=Scrounger+Bandsaw

Melbourne Matty.

[Vann]

Hi Tony, I think your Bandsaw is a Silvers Manufactured in the US...Hi Matty. Does that mean it's a Crescent Machine Co. product made for Silver Manufacturing Co. or actually made by Silver?

Silver made some of the nicest looking post drills around (I have several) and their bandsaws are also classic - so good find :cool:.

Tony, I can't see your first two attachments. You may need to reload them (or I may have to take to my computer with a stick :~)

Cheers, Vann.

[tony_A]

Thanks Matty / Van
Can see a couple of differences with the Silver bandsaw but this may be due to differences in age / model. Will be interesting to see if there is any manufacturers marks when I get it sandblasted. Some of the members from across the Pacific may recognise the make and age of this machine
The slides on the post that supports the top wheel faces the blade guide on my machine and is bolted to the main frame.
Will post some pics of a few more bits when I get them cleaned up. May be able to pick up part numbers etc that help in ID.

In trying to find information on when McPherson's started making this type of machinery I found a link to archival material on the McPherson Company which includes a photo from 1915 labelled the first Macson lathe.
http://gallery.its.unimelb.edu.au/im...media&irn=1679 (http://gallery.its.unimelb.edu.au/imu/imu.php?request=multimedia&irn=1679)
The first evidence of Macson woodworking machines I could find was in 1923 from an advert in the SMH.
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Did find reference to a book that may contain some information., A review of McPherson's Proprietary Limited, Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Perth : 1860-1944.


Its hard to imagine that they started from nothing to produce lathes.




Life is too important to be taken seriously. (Oscar Wilde)

[tony_A]

Couple of progress photos

It appears that the original colour was dark green, then black then about 50 shades of grey. Paint is flaking off in places so will strip everything back to bare metal.

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Hand made thrust bearings, the larger one off the bottom wheel with the name Hoffmann, England and the smaller off the raise and lower screw

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Top and bottom bearings only have a mm or so movement with plenty of shims so that's all good.
Bottom wheel needs a new tyre, the vulcanising glue has gone soft. will get them both redone and crowned.

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A previous owner has run an angle grinder over the table, presumable to remove rust, obviously not a craftsman. With all the rust on the table I didn't even notice it until I started cleaning. Couple of hours with sanding discs and its starting to look better but will never be perfect. They'd also drilled a couple of holes in the table close to the insert. Oh yes and they had welded a metal insert into the hole in the table. That's added a bit of a complication but think it can drilled / ground out.


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[tony_A]

Wadkin owners beware, you may need counselling after reading this.

It's been slow work, but progress has been made. The table took weeks to flatten. Big job with gouges perhaps 0.25 mm deep from a previous owner using an angle grinder (see photo on earlier post). Also 8 holes that had been drilled for whatever reason and then there was the metal plug that had been welded into the hole in the middle of the table. Whatever this machines past entailed, no German engineers were involved.

Started with the plug in the table. Lots of drilling and working around the edge. Fortunately it had not been welded well and the cast iron had not been melted during the weld. Wouldn't have been able to drill the weld metal if it had fused to the cast as the weld metal will pick up carbon out of the cast iron and form a very hard brittle deposit. The metal plug pretty much came out in pieces when it has been drilled away to a thin ring.


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Had a few more photos but lost them copying from camera to computer.

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Ended up using cast iron welding rod to fill the holes that had been drilled in the table. Not a perfect result but servicable for my purposes. The large holes were 5/8 and one in particular close to an edge so I shied away from threading and using threaded rod. Can see the filled holes in the photo above.


Did i mention that flattning the table was the big job. Needed to remove a lot of metal from the table to remove the majority of the gouge marks. Started out way too conservative with a orbital sander then disc sander and finally (German engineers need read no further) an 9" angle grinder with grinding wheel. The grinding wheel was well used with a rounded edge so work with a light touch and sweeping action. Check for high / low spots and go again. Removing metal off a large flat surface is suprisingly slow and sanding discs, flapper discs were not up to it. Once the bulk of the metal had been removed I found that a grinding stone used like a hand plane worked to remove my grider marks and level high spots. Belt and disc sander to remove grinding stone marks, fine oil stone to lower subtle high spots and remove coarse sanding marks.

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Still needs fine sanding to remove some scratches and a final polishing, but will be OK.


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The swirl marks are from boshield, applied to stop rust. Not a good photo but thats all for now.

Next step is the sandblasting and re-tyre the wheels.

Tony

Edit: reloaded photos, dont know what went wrong there.

[Vann]

Nice work Tony. I like that you had the holes welded.

I'm having trouble viewing the photos again - 1st & 3rd photos not showing (all photos in your 1st post are now showing).

Cheers, Vann.

[wallace1973]

Nice work on the table Tony

[tony_A]

Based on the comments from Matty in one of the earlier posts, this machine was most likely made by Silver Manufacturing in the US. So I actually have a piece of Australian retail history rather than a piece of Australian manufacturing history.
In looking at pictures of Silver machines on the internet I haven't seen an identical model but nothing else looks similar.
One bandsaw that looks similar is from a grainy old photo from a monastery workshop in WA in the really old benches thread under work benches.
http://www.woodworkforums.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=397383&d=1476590005

[L.S.Barker1970]

Hi Tony,
Glad to see you had the courage to take this bandsaw on.
Once up and going you'll never look back.
The work your doing is very thorough, the cast top is a great example. Impressive !!
I had a look through some of my early McPhersons catalogs earliest being 1933
and your machine is a no show, so an earlier date may be possible.
The silvers brand being imported by McPhersons is very possible as there are other manufacturers such as J.sagar & Co mentioned in the early catalogues.

Keep up the great work !!
Melbourne Matty.

[tony_A]

Have doctored up an image showing my saw next to the vintage saw mentioned above. The image of the old saw is rather grainy and slightly out of focus, only marginally better than a UFO photo, but the two saws have a couple of features in common.
1 The reduced neck between the top wheel and guide adjuster
2 The guide post that supports the top wheel faces towards the blade guide, many bandsaws, including a number of later Silver's face towards the wheel.
3.Small pulley for the counterweight that balances the blade guide.

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I know this wouldn't stand up in court but is as close as any image that I have been able to find. While the old photo isn't dated, the era it is suggested to come from in the early 1900's.

[tony_A]

Have asked about the ID of this machine on both the Canadian site and OWWM. Below is a copy of an answer from a member of OWWM and is the best information I have been able to find. Am happy to accept that anyone who knows patents' designs from 1905 knows their bandsaws.

"The tension and tracking mechanism looks like Crescent's 1905 patent, US Patent: 779,158 - Upper adjusting device for bandsaws (http://www.datamp.org/patents/displayPatent.php?id=4739). Everything else looks Silver. While there was a lot of design coordination between Silver and Crescent, I don't remember seeing this particular combination before."

Based on this I'm happy to say the old saw is a Silver.

Tony

[CBaulds]

How did this bandsaw restoration turn out?

[Charlie_6ft]

I am fairly sure I have one like this (yet to be restored & currently in pieces). No name on the castings either. It's still has the flat belt pulleys and belt which I may need to replace.

[tony_A]

How did this bandsaw restoration turn out?

Not finished yet, needs a motor and thought it would be nice to make a wooden pulley in keeping with its vintage but not got round to it yet. Think I will also need to get the babbit bearings re-pored.

[tony_A]

I am fairly sure I have one like this (yet to be restored & currently in pieces). No name on the castings either. It's still has the flat belt pulleys and belt which I may need to replace.

Keep the wooden pulleys, they are classics. I had a flat belt made for an old thicknesser by a local industrial rubber supplier. They also glued rubber tyres on the bandsaw wheels.

[Vann]

...thought it would be nice to make a wooden pulley in keeping with its vintage but not got round to it yet...No pun intended :q.

I think it's great you're considering sticking with flat belt drive. Somehow it's just part of the vintage feel...

Cheers, Vann.

[CBaulds]

I never knew they had wooden pulleys. Interesting! Sounds like you've almost got it up and running. Best of luck