Woodfast Universal Woodworker

[Brett C]

I recently acquired one of these machines, and was wondering if anyone has any experience of them, or know anything of their history?

Just to prompt memories (and for those who have no idea of what I’m talking about!); The Universal Woodworker is in many ways typical of the combination machines that were around in the 1950/60’s, if a little better quality than some. It has a 12” blade and 6” buzzer 1hp (nominal output) motor that would rate over 2hp with today’s rating methods. It also comes with a slot morticing table and a couple of 12” sanding discs and table that are driven of the buzzer end of the arbor.

More unusually it also comes with a 10” Woodfast “Junior” bandsaw and a Jigsaw (large scroll-saw, I believe it uses coping saw blades) that are also driven of the arbor. A substantial out rigger support for sawing panels is also included. A horizontal moulding table also came with it, but not the cutter head.

Other options that appear on the brochure I have, but didn’t come with my machine are; a thicknessing attachment for the buzzer; and chuck, tailstock, tool rest etc to convert the out rigger support into a lathe. The motor has an infinitely variable drive from 1000 to 3800rpm to cope with different demands of the attachments.

If anyone is interested I will try to scan some pictures out of the brochure. The machine itself was used regularly and is in well-kept original condition, but some of the accessories haven’t been used for a while and need a bit of TLC. I haven’t had a chance to play with it much yet, but I ‘m looking forward to getting every thing working properly and at least making a pile of sawdust :)

[ozwinner]

With all those accessories you will need a 3ph 10hp motor to run them.:D


Al

[echnidna]

They had a very good reputation in their day.
1 hp is really inadequate for a 12" saw, you really need 2 genuine hp though 3hp would be better. You may be able to adapt a separate motor to the bandsaw so it becomes a stand alone machine. 1/4 to 1/2 genuine hp is adequate for a 12" bandsaw which is big enough to be a very useful machine. Even the jigsaw woulb be worth sticking a separate motor on as it is in modern terms a scrollsaw.

[Brett C]

I agree with you about 1hp for a 12"saw, but I've got to say that this is one mother of a 1 hp motor! It is enormous and has a 6.5amp rating, an older engineering friend tells me that at the time these were built, electrical motors had to be able to withstand a constant 50% overload to gain thier nominal rating.

Two obvious drawbacks with the machine that I forgot to mention is that there is no tilt, and the table elevates rather than the arbor dropping making infeed and outfeed support more challanging. I'm going to also have to extend th table and fence to cope better with sheet material.

[echnidna]

You can live without a tilt table. There is a tilt sawing accessory for a triton bench which wouldnt be hard to clone for your saw. As you have such a big blade you could sacrifice a little cutting depth and make up a new bench top of your desired proportions that just fits right on top of the original (screwed down of course). Infeed and outfeed could be part of the new top so they always align no matter what depth the saw is set at. If you sheet the new top with flat gal sheet say 1.5 mm you wont have any rust problems.

The oldtime motors are good so time will tell if its adequate.