Acorn shaper

[Paul RothParticipant @paulroth79671]

A month ago I became the owner of an Acorn shaper and am currently restoring it to its former glory. Luckily once I cleaned the grime off and removed the multiple layers of paint (all graduations, gib screws and even some of the ways and feed screws were lathered in paint!), I discovered it to be in fairly good condition with very little obvious wear.

I am consulting the Atlas manual in the rebuild and see that the specified lubrication is oil via oil cups for the Atlas machines. My Acorn however does not have a single oil cup, but instead is equipped with what I initially thought were grease nipples. However when I stripped the machine I could find no evidence that grease was used and realise that these were oiler nipples like the Myford lathes have.

Now my question is were the Acorn machines factory fitted with oil nipples, or is this likely to have been a later conversion?

My thought is that possibly because the Acorn was the British variant of the Atlas, it may have been factory fitted with oil nipples but I'm not sure as I can find very little info on Acorn shapers. Any Acorn owners out there that could shed some light on this? Thanks in advance

[Paul RothParticipant @paulroth79671]

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

I use an oil gun on mine, the nipples were fitted as standard

I think a bit of grease can go on the main bull wheel bit from memory but the machine is 95% oil lubrication

You can clear blocked oilways by pumping air through

A worthy restoration, GL

Shaper folk are in this thread

[John HinkleyParticipant @johnhinkley26699]

When I was casting around for a small powered shaper and doing the required research, I downloaded the book "The Shaper Machine" by Ian Bradley, subsequently resetting it and producing it in pdf format. As an Acorn shaper owner, Ian covers the machine in some detail and included in the download were a couple of poor quality photos and a number of line drawings. Neither the photos nor the drawings show any evidence of oil cups on the Acorn. The manual I have for the Atlas 7" shaper has such appallingly poor quality photos, it's virtually impossible to make out the machine, let alone the provision of oiling points. However, there is a clear drawing of the machine under the heading of lubrication, within which I cannot find any reference to oil cups. Similarly, the exploded parts section doesn't show any oil cups, either. I'd be inclined to forget about them and just use the oil nipples with a decent oil gun, if such exists. I rely on the use of an ordinary oil can to lubricate my under-used Perfecto power shaper and that seems to suffice.

John

[BazParticipant @baz89810]

Like John I have a Perfecto power shaper, also an Elliott 10m, both get lubricated with chainsaw oil, it’s sticky nature helps it stay put a bit longer than normal oil.

[IanTParticipant @iant]

My Acorntools 7" shaper has a combination of oil cups and nipples – so certainly some Atlas shapers sold by Acorn Tools in the UK had cups fitted to them. I purchased a 20 litre can of ISO 32 oil some time ago and this gets used on all my machines except where something else is obviously required.

The front bearings on my Mk1 Super 7 uses a 'total loss' system and I believe that the ram on the shaper should be viewed in the exactly the same way – both getting daily doses of ISO32 oil.

Regards,

IanT

[Paul RothParticipant @paulroth79671]

Thanks very much for the indepth replies. It seems as if the Acorns were definitely factory fitted with mainly oil nipples in contrast to the Atlases which had cups.

John, I was lucky enough to download the Atlas manual and the exploded diagrams there clearly show cups.

Thanks once again for all the feedback guys. I'm really enjoying this restoration of a machine with captured my affection way back when I was a junior engineer.

I will post some before and after photos on the shaper forum

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