Thread: Wadkin machinery

Paul, here is the one that kicked it all off, 8 pages of great posting !!
Wadkin Time Warp Workshop - Kent : General Woodworking - UKworkshop.co.uk

Melbourne Matty.

Now just for all you Wadkin buffs out there a little Wadkin History followed by a Wadkin B & W Picture show,
And if I see any one sleeping down the back.....

A new company which was established three years before the end of the century was formed by Joseph William Wadkin (1862 1919) to manufacture his newly invented pattern miller. He is believed to have started in 1897 with seven men. A note-paper is still in existence dated 1898. This note-paper is headed with an illustration of his London Street, Leicester factory. Wadkin & Co. is first recorded in Wright’s Leicester Directory for 1900.

By 1904 Wadkin was making a range of single purpose machines presumably primarily so that he could completely equip pattern shops in addition to supplying his pattern milling machine and this, of course, lead to a wider market. He took out a U.K. patent inn 1901 and a U.S.A patent in 1907 for a machine he described as a “Mechanical Woodworker” which could do any operation in “Pattern Work also Joinery and cabinet work” outside conventional ripping, planing and thicknessing, due to its universal spindle and table movement.
A number of post cards are still in existence which he sent to members of his family from Brussles, Clogne, Basle and St Petersburgh between 1906 and 1909 whilst travelling on business. In the one form St Petersburgh (Leningrad) in 1906, he comments “I have just seen the Villa where at a reception by the Minister of the interior, 23 people were blown up by a bomb. The Minister escaped but his daughter was killed the centre of the Villa is a total wreck. This happened on a Saturday afternoon just before I arrived”.

Wadkin & Co. evidently promoted their mechanical woodworker over a wide area of Europe and the USA. The American franchise was given to the Oliver Machinery Company Grand Rapids Michigan in 1908. There is an illustrated article in the May 1909 issue of the American Journal in “The Foundry” describing the machine in considerable detail, which concludes “ this machine is made by Wadkin & Co., Evington Engineering Works, Leicester, England, and is sold by the Oliver Machinery Company Grand Rapids Michigan U.S.A.”. Wadkin was probably the first U.K woodworking machinery maker to actually promote sales of U.K woodworking machinery in the States and in Russia.

Joesph Wadkin is shown in the wright directory as being in Partnership by 1900 with Densil John Jarivs, who was married to his sister. Mr Jarvis is shown in late 19th Century directories as a shop fitter and builder of shop fronts for which he had his own company D.J. Jarvis and Co. By 1908 this partnership was dissolved and Joseph Wadkin left the Company which he had founded and went into Partnership with Thomas Scott-King they patented together a new machine to “produce irregular forms which will stand relative to all other single function wood working machines as the universal milling machine stands to all other metal working machines”. This machine was substantially similar in its outline to the present day Wadkin WX pattern milling machine.


In 1912 Densil Jarvis was lost in the Titanic disaster and the ownership of the original small Wadkin Company passed into other hands who built the Company up to be one of the world’s leaders in woodworking machinery.

Whilst Joseph Wadkin offered his machine with attachments for many varied operations, it was probably always mostly sold to pattern shops and shipbuilders. As a consequence Wadkin’s customers were not primarily woodworkers, but engineers who well understood machinery. For the first time therefore, woodworking machinery had to be built to satisfy enginners and this was the start of woodworking machinery built to machine tool standards. In retrospect this was probably more important to the long term interest of the industry than the invention of the pattern miller. Joseph Wadkin with Thomas Scott-King started a company in Nottingham known as Wadkin Mills, which after his death from pneumonia in March 1919 was sold to his original company.

Following the death of Densil Jarvis in the Titanic disaster as described (previously) the small Wadkin company was taken over by J.Wallis-Goddard, a manufacturing chemist in Leicester who owned the firm manufacturing Plate Powders. Mr Goddard’s eldest son, Joseph Holland Goddard. had emigrated to America via Canada and was in the process of becoming an American citizen, at this time when his father invited him to return to this country and manage the Wadkin Company. The invitation was accepted and until 1927 when J.W. Goddard died, the Wadkin letter heading showed the father and son as partners. Within two years after J.H. Goddard had taken over the management from the later Denzil Jarvis in 1912, the FIrst World War broke out. J.H. Goddard immediately joined up. He was commissioned and served the whole length of the War as a despatch rider in France. The business in the meantime was managed by senior employees. He returned to full management in 1919 to find the Company with enormous order books quite beyond their limited production capacity. Sub contractors were use to cope with the immediate situation; one supplier was the Preston Woodworking Machinery Co. of Canada. The two Goddard’s planned and built a new factory at Green Lane Road, Leicester. The factory was equipped with the latest single purpose machine tools for batch production. By 1922 the book following the First World War was over, and in 1923 J.H. Goddard started on a World tour to set p agents and build a substantial export business for their U.K machines, the principal one of which the Pattern Miller. The range included one or two specialist machines, such as the wood propeller shaper developed during the War, and a range of single purpose basic woodworking machines. This tour encircled the world and makes selling history because of its mammoth duration without his return, lasting two and a half years. The first country to be visited was India in November 1923. This was followed by visits to Ceylon, Singapore. Java, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Japan, Canada and the U.S.A. Some of the countries particularly Australia and New Zealand, were visited more than once. Agencies would be set up, machines ordered for stock from the U.K and then the country would be revisited to ensure that the stock was satisfactory and sales were being made. The last report from Mr. Goddard is dated April 1926 and was written from New York prior to sailing to England. He was back again in Canada and the U.S.A by September 1926, checking up on the agents performance and attending the Foundry Convention in Detroit, where the Pattern Miller was on show. He finally returned to England in January 1927 after selling several Pattern Millers during the final U.S.A visit.

Information Sources
Two hundred years of history and Evolution of Woodworking Machinery By William L. Sims



Wadkin factories.

Wadkin Shapers, assembly line.

Filing Room.

Testing Room.

Pattern millers, assembly line.

Bandsaw, assembly line.

Melbourne Matty.

Lets bring back that every man on the assembly line needs a shirt and tie.
Thats all I can say.

But wait ! There's More !

Wadkin pattern shop.

Wadkin Molders, assembly line.


Mill shop.

Fitting and turning shop.



Melbourne Matty.

Matty I love those old shots and history thanks for posting.


How about some pics of the interior taken this year?

the gate at Green lane

front door


doorbell

waiting room

board room

office


bridge hall to the factory works

exterior window frame.

moulder


next post
jack
English machines

courtyard






Jack
English machines

Have you been jumping fences, Jack? Industrial tourism?


That front entranceway should be transported to Canada!


Also ... Old thread - good pictures ...

https://www.woodworkforums.com/f221/w...nesser-114586/

Cheers,
Paul

Thanks for the pics Matty...

Seeing all those PKs and their piles of parts being fine tuned has given me hope that there must be some accessories out there, somewhere, just waiting for me...

Come on guys,keep the pics coming. this is a great thread. Cheers Greg

Originally Posted by J. Vibert

Thanks for the pics Matty...

Seeing all those PKs and their piles of parts being fine tuned has given me hope that there must be some accessories out there, somewhere, just waiting for me...

They pop up from time to time, imagine if you did find one of those PK's in the photo, wow !

Melbourne Matty.

Originally Posted by greggyboy

Come on guys,keep the pics coming. this is a great thread. Cheers Greg

Ok Greg you asked for it !!
Here are some shots from an earlier 1929 Wadkin catalogs.

First up is a factory shot of Wadkin, look how sparse the surroundings are !!






Melbourne Matty.

Thanks Matty , I knew i could rely on you for more pics. Cheers Greg

Matty's got the the old stuff covered and boys add it is nice to see. Can anyone name all the machines in the show room?

Wadkin did do other machines for the war like a propeller machine. they also had a small factory where they started out with The Encineer (the wadkin wood worker) 1904. this was before the green lane works location.

Wadkin and Co

what most may not know is wadkin made some real big machines like the Hunslet - Wadkin Vertical Miller/Borer


Photo taken c.1977 in the Gun Shop at Hunslet Engine Co, Jack Lane Leeds.

If the machine looks low it is because it is set into a pit 30 inches below the ground, as the height was constricted due to the overhead crane.

The machine was new in 1976 and the first of its type from Wadkin costing £750,000.

The photo shows the right-angle head with a milling cutter taking the edge off the frame of a Rack and Pinion Mines loco




jack
English machines

I wonder what software they used on that big CNC machine .

Hey guys this is a great post, just when I thought it had lost its steam (pun intended), Jack comes through with another great old picture.

Thanks,
Camoz