New to me Ammco 7" Metal shaper

[140mower]

Moving it manually in L or R, does not appear to be healthy.

In what way? Or better put, how doesn't it appear healthy.
It's pretty rare that I have hand fed horizontally, it is all in the timing and unless you give yourself half a mile of stroke on the back side it's hard getting a consistent feed, or at least for me.
But I do put it in neutral and wheel it back and forth during setup and it should move freely unless the locks are dragging or gibs are out of adjustment.
I also leave it in neutral any time I am cutting on the vertical or some angle and hand feed with the vertical slide. Shapers make nice dovetails...... Cheaply

 

[140mower]

Another question.

It seems to me that the ratchet in the power feed limits the feed rate settings to multiples of the pawl clicks. So the minimum feed isn't really the settings, it's one click which is about 15° or so. Does this sound reasonable? Would a slight gibb tightening change this?

I don't think a gibb adjustment is going to effect the feed rate. You have it right in that anything less than enough to engage a tooth isn't going to be able to move the table. So one tooth is your minimum advance. As long as your pawl can still engage it, I suppose you could cut a finer feed gear as mine aren't really a gear.

 

[Susquatch]

In what way? Or better put, how doesn't it appear healthy.

It seems like not a good idea to leave the feed engaged and crank on the hand wheel. I am thinking it might overstress the backlash, result in excess wear in the screw and nut, wear out the ratchet, or maybe even break something.

But I do put it in neutral and wheel it back and forth during setup and it should move freely unless the locks are dragging or gibs are out of adjustment.

There is the catcher. You put it in neutral. I said it seemed unhealthy to leave it in Left or Right and then crank it. I didn't say anything about neutral cuz I assume that's ok.

 

[140mower]

It seems like not a good idea to leave the feed engaged and crank on the hand wheel. I am thinking it might overstress the backlash, result in excess wear in the screw and nut, wear out the ratchet, or maybe even break something.

For ordinary setups etc, I agree that it makes no sense to have the pawl engaged. However I don't see any harm at all in, say you are squaring up a u type shape, between the two cut surfaces, winding the handle like crazy to just before the second cut with the feed engaged.
I wouldn't try going against the direction of rotation though.......

 

[140mower]

This is a pretty basic book on the operation, but answered quite a few questions for me when starting out.

This one is a little bit drier reading, but it too has its share of answers, and is a little more advanced.

 

[140mower]

This is the picture I used to create my shear tool....

 

[jcdammeyer]

You folks are awful. Here I'm trying to reduce the number of projects and along comes this thread on shapers which was #3 on the list after foundry and lathe.

The Metal Shaper

Build your own Metal Shaper. Exotic is a mild adjective when applied to this shaper. It will cut splines, keyways, gears, sprockets, dovetail slides, flat and angular surfaces and irregular profiles. And all of these with a simple hand-ground lathe tool bit. Obsolete in modern industry, of...

www.google.ca

And tonight I pulled out my book and started looking through it. Even have a print of an email posted to the Gingery_Machines Yahoo group on improvements to the shaper. (circa 2006)

And a hand written list of what to cast in what order...

Aarrrgggghhhh!

 

[Susquatch]

I don't think a gibb adjustment is going to effect the feed rate.

I had speculated that a tighter Gibb might act like a pawl. It was just speculation. It would probably stick both ways and be useless. And also accelerate wear.

You have it right in that anything less than enough to engage a tooth isn't going to be able to move the table. So one tooth is your minimum advance. As long as your pawl can still engage it, I suppose you could cut a finer feed gear as mine aren't really a gear.

Mine isn't a gear either. It's just an eccentric on the bull gear shaft.

 

[Susquatch]

This is the picture I used to create my shear tool....

Thanks for the two book references. I've been planning to look for a few good books. I'll start with those.

Thank you for the shear tool photo. It was perfect for me. Somehow or another my brain was fixated on a flat tool shape the same as I ground for my lathe. So stupid sometimes.

If the lathe surface is round and the tool is flat, then it makes total sense to reverse them so the tool is round when the surface is flat. Can't believe I didn't think of that.

I don't see why the big relief on the right side of the photo of the tool end view though. I don't see why that is needed.

Not an easy profile to grind either. I'll have to see if I can find a concave grinding wheel cuz I don't think my hands are that agile anymore.

 

[historicalarms]

View attachment 64036
This is a pretty basic book on the operation, but answered quite a few questions for me when starting out.
View attachment 64038
This one is a little bit drier reading, but it too has its share of answers, and is a little more advanced.

NOPE!! not even gonna go close to those books...every time I research something it become an obsession to own something I dont need