Photo Index - Crescent Machine Co. - Jointer off of a Universal Wood-Worker

Machinery Photo Index

Manufactured/Badged by:
Crescent Machine Co.
Leetonia, OH

Machine Specifications
Machine Class:	Wood Working Machinery
Machine Type:	Jointer
Machine Size:	8"
Submitted By:	Keith Rucker

Machine Specifications
Description/Model:	Jointer off of a Universal Wood-Worker
Date of Manufacturer:	1912 - late 1930's
Serial Number:	(View SN Registry Entry)
Last Updated	4/2/2003 8:49:45 PM

Comments:

This is a jointer that I recently purchased off of e-bay.

This particular jointer actually came off of an old Crescent Universal Woodworker. You can tell by the fact that the outfeed table has a table that extends behind the jointer and has the small round hole in it. On some of the older Universal Woodworkers, they used this table as a shaper, which came up through the small hole.

After I got the jointer home, I completely disassembled it and cleaned and sandblasted each part. While it was still in pieces, I primed each part and then re-painted it with Rustolum Smoke Gray paint. The handles and letters were painted with a gloss black enamel.

The motor that came on the machine was a three phase, 2 HP motor. After asking around to a few folks that I knew about a single phase motor to replace the three phase one with, I found a guy that had an old Dayton 1 1/2 HP motor. He asked what I needed it for and when I told him it was for a old piece of woodworking machinery, he asked if I had a planer. I told him yes and he then said that he would trade me the motor if I would plane a small stack of boards for him. Sounded like a good trade to me so we shook hands and off I went with the motor.

The biggest headache on this jointer was the old bearings and the cutterhead. The original jointer was equipped with Babbitt bearings. At some point in the life of the machine, the original Babbitt bearings were cut off and were replaced with ball bearings. At the same time, a replacement cutterhead was also put on the machine. The cutterhead was actually in pretty good shape but the bearings scared me a little. While they seemed to turn OK, they were very old and had way too much grime in them. I could not help but think that while I may have gotten away with them for a while, they did not have much life left in them. The replacement bearings were originally a four bolt flange with the bearings in the middle. Being so old, the internal bearings could not be easily removed and replaced. I ended up getting two new four bolt flange bearings and cutting the two upper bolt holes off on a metal cutting band saw to make them like the original replacements - a two bolt flange type bearing. After quite a bit of work, I finally got the cutterhead back together and back on the machine. Smooth as silk.

I checked the tables for flatness and they were practically perfectly flat - to my surprise. I had the knives ground down some (they stuck up about 3/8" off of the cutterhead) and sharpened. I then aligned the knives to the outfeed table. Once this was done, I raised up the infeed table to check to see if the infeed table was parallel to the outfeed. A 5' straight edge and some feeler gauges determined that one side of the infeed table needed to be raised up about .019" and the other about .039" - both at the mouth of the jointer. Using a sacrificial feeler gauge, I shimmed the infeed table to make it practically perfetc. I really thought that this was going to be worse than it was but actually was pretty easy to fix!

The next step was to mount the motor and belt and give it a try. After a trip to the motor shop, I was finally able to get the motor running in the right direction and the moment of truth had arrived. It took the motor a couple of seconds to get up to speed and it apeared to be ready for a try. I grabbed a short piece of rough cut hard maple off of the lumber pile and first ran the edge down the jointer. The results were smooth as silk - better than anything I had ever seen on my old made in Taiwan 6" jointer. Next, I tried the face of the 7" wide board. The first thing that I really noticed is that once I got the board completely over the cutterhead and reached down to pick it up - it was hard to pick up. The bottom of the board was so flat on top of the flat outfeed table that it created a suction between the two pieces like two pieces of glass. It was not a super strong suction but it was a suction none the less - I put it back down to try it again and again several times. Now that board was FLAT and SMOOTH. What a difference!

My restoration is not totally complete at this point. I have a switch that is ordered to go on the machine and I also need to put a heaver gauge wire on it. I also want to make a new cutter guard as that big 8" cutterhead is kind of scary to look while I am working away. The home-made cutter guard that was on it when I got it works pretty good but could stand some slight improvements. Any suggestions on how to make a cutter guard?

I also am going to want to build a dust chute for this jointer so that I can hook up my dust collector to it. Some of the later Crescents actually had a sheet metal chute to do this. I have a drawing of one of these in a Crescent jointer manual and while it does not have any measurements, I think it is enough to either make or have made a chute for my joiner.

The Serial Number on this machine is 24355.

Photo 1:

Comments: Photo of the jointer as it was when I picked it up.
Source: e-bay auction.

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Photo 2:

Comments: The restored jointer.
Source: My digital camera.

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Photo 3:

Comments: Another view of the restored jointer.
Source: My digital camera.

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