Most people do not know much about the now antique wood-working machines that were used to mill the lumber for their bungalows. Eric LaVelle is a master historic preservationist who uses the old machines that he rescues from 100+ year old abandoned mills to restore the houses in his care. I am a believer in having full understanding of a subject & believe that having knowledge of the machines that helped create your bungalow is intrinsic to this understanding.
When I could find them, I am including the antique versions of the old machines. Several of them are made by Eric & posted by klavelle. If needed, I also include the modern ones so that you can see them in action. They are listed here in alpha order of the names of the machines, not the manufacturers. Because there are so many of them, I have not included the images for each video, but just the links to each.
Before you click on these links, you might want to turn the sound down on your speakers. These are monster antique wood-working machines, filmed cutting large pieces of wood & the sound can be deafening! Even the modern ones make a great deal of racket & their manufacturers recommend wearing ear protection when they are being used.
Once again, Eric’s words are in quotes. Mine are just there, unadorned, though, if I’m rudely interrupting him, you’ll see me in brackets.
Rigging is the act of using equipment to lift or support a load. And when we’re talking a load here, many of these old machines weigh over a ton, like a small car.
Eric says, “… in order to bring home a machine to restore, I had to be able to move it. I was on a tight budget, so I had to learn how to do it by hand.”
Also, powered lift equipment simply would not fit into the mills or warehouses from which he removes equipment. Not to mention that the rotting floors he encounters, some of which have already collapsed, simply could not support the added weight.
Machines piled in the basement. Their weight has caused the rotting floor under them to collapse.
“These techniques can often be incorporated into old house restoration when heavy stone or timbers need to be moved and placed.”
There is an elegant simplicity to each of these tools.
HOW TO MOVE RIDICULOUSLY HEAVY STUFF
Don’t try this at home, or anywhere, really!
Drum sander moved out of a basement with no reasonable stairway by totally disassembling it.
“Sometimes a machine can be taken apart into much smaller, more manageable pieces if necessary. When I do that, I take an extensive number of pictures before and during disassembly.”
“…it’s really nice to have a second person to help. They don’t have to be big and strong, they just need to be able to place blocks or pipes as the machine is getting moved.
In fact, any attempt to lift this stuff by hand is really risky. A friend of mine who was in peak physical condition attempted to lift and pull a 2300lb piece of equipment, and ended up very sore and exhausted while the machine just sat still and laughed.”
Below are some images of some of Eric’s hand rigging tools. Please know that these are what he uses to move machines that weigh hundreds, even several thousand pounds each.
1. Johnson bar 2. Come-along hand winch 3. Burke bar 4. 1 1/4″ steel pipe 5. Long wedge 6. 3/4″ steel pipe 7. Regular 2-wheeled dolly.
“I’ve included a photo of some of my favorite hand rigging equipment: [Above]
1. Johnson bar or lever dolly, which will probably lift 5000lbs. [A Johnson bar helps provide leverage when needed to get underneath loads. The wheels provide a strong base, for secure leverage and safety.]
2. Come along/hand winch, a hand-operated winch [a hauling or lifting device such as this one] with a ratchet [a device with a wheel with teeth which allows motion in only one direction] used to pull objects. The drum [a cylindrical part of a machine] is wrapped with wire rope.
3. Long pry bar (specifically the Burke bar, which has become my favorite & can also probably lift 5000lbs)
4 and 6. Steel pipe in a couple different sizes. [Eric places these under the machines and rolls them along the floor and into whatever vehicle is waiting to transport them.] I’ve seen a machine that weighed 10 tons rolled through a building on a steel pipe, and the pipes did not crush. [Here’s a great story of a machine that was moved by the use of these steel pipes.]
5. A couple long wedges
6. A two wheeled dolly which is good for items under about 500lbs.
“Not pictured on the trailer deck are:
1. A chain hoist which will allow you to easily lift up to 5 tons. [You can see this handy little item in operation here.}
2. A low profile car jack which will lift 2 or 3 tons.
3. A pallet jack, which I call a poor man’s forklift and will lift 5500lbs for most models..
“I could probably buy this entire list on the used market for the price of renting a forklift for one day.
2200lb Greenlee 228 mortiser.
“The most difficult rig Claire and I have done is putting the 2200lb Greenlee 228 mortiser in the basement shop. We had to put it on 4×4 timbers with outriggers bolted to them for safety, unload it from the trailer, lay the machine face down with the chain hoist, lever it down two steps while going into a doorway, then stand it back up in the basement with a chain hoist.
“When we have to load a machine onto a trailer, we often strap it to a pallet jack and pull it up ramps with the hand winch. When a machine is on ramps, going either up or down, we wrap a large tie down strap once around the front of the trailer frame and tie it back to the machine. This allows us to instantly stop a machine with a light tug.
“To go across dirt or gravel, we lay a road of planks so the pipes or wheels stay on a firm surface. In a pinch, sometimes a simple 2×4 can be used as a lever. I’ve included a video Claire took where I was rotating a 1400lb planer with a 2×4.”
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This is some background on the machines that Eric is rescuing, making construction prior to electricity possible. The majority, if not all of his articles refer to what is covered here, so please read it so that you can understanding the following tales of daring-do.
Our bungalows are products of this old technology. All the wood in our framing, our siding, our shingles, built-ins, our wainscoting was milled by these machines. They are a major part of our homes’ histories.
THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
The Arts & Crafts Movement of the 19th Century was born as a reaction to the more mechanized world of the Industrial Revolution. This revolution increased production capacity by 1,000 fold in every industry. Instead of the artisan’s handcrafting of a beautiful chair, a factory churned out hundreds of chairs & fitted them with fancy gee-gaws. This had a major impact on people’s daily lives. Instead of working in a craft studio, or on the family farm, people swarmed to the cities where they went to work in a factory tending huge, whirring machines & earned the where-with-all to purchase these items- at least some of them did. Thanks to Charles Dickens we know that many remained ill-fed, un-housed & impoverished, orphaned & barefoot while some thrived, amassing great fortunes.
The grandfather of the Arts & Crafts Movement, John Ruskin had much to say on the matter. His statement, “Every increased possession loads us with a new weariness,” eloquently summarized the philosophy of the Movement.
(Looking at these images of children slaving to help feed their families makes me very weary. Oh, yeah. If they had families)
THE ENERGY THAT SUPPORTED CONSTRUCTION PRIOR TO ELECTRICITY
The key driver of the Industrial Revolution was the harnessing of energy. With this ability to control power, our old growth forests could be razed & milled. The logs could be turned into lumber for homes, furniture & indeed, into the factory buildings that held the mills, some of these being thousands of square feet in size.
However, even prior to the coal powered steam engine was the invention of the line shaft which allowed many machines to be operated from one energy source, be it steam, water, wind or even animal.
HOW THEY DID IT
A line shaft is a power-driven rotating shaft for power transmission that distributed power from a large central power source to individual pieces of machinery throughout a workshop or an industrial complex. The central power source could be a water wheel, windmill, animal power or a steam engine. Originally, most had probably been powered by steam but in later years they were powered by a huge electric motor. In many cases, the individual machines were still set up for and connected to the line shaft system, so rather than replacing the machines, they just updated the power supplier.
These machines were an OSHA nightmare. Loud and dangerous with no safety features, they exemplified Industrial Age technology during which time thousands of people left their farms & surged into cities to work in the factories & loose fingers, limbs & lives to these behemoths.
These machines factored largely in the building of our bungalows. I do not believe that construction prior to electricity would have existed on any scale without the use of line shaft.
LINE SHAFT CONSTRUCTION
Here’s how it was constructed:
On the floor, or on the ceiling, was the power source, attached to the main shaft which it propelled by a belt attached to a pulley.
Hanging from the wood ceiling beams was the counter (or intermediate) shaft , a long, thick heavy, (often hundreds of pounds) metal rod. This shaft was attached to the high ceiling beams by heavy metal hangers.
Attached to this counter shaft were round metal pulleys, ranging in size from around 6″ in diameter to 36.” Long belts made of leather or fabric (usually leather) ran across these pulleys, to pulleys on the individual machines giving each individual machine its power. This was all suspended over a great expanse, as high as 15 feet it the air, which Eric & his merry band would access by standing on ladders.
Here’s a video of one operating, though the size of it is much smaller than the line shafts rescued by Eric.
When you next admire the beautiful features of your house, consider the part that line shafts played. Observe a moment of silence in honor of those who toiled for so little in this cacophony, lost limbs & lives to create the materials that make your house so beautiful.
And then trot on over to Eric’s stories of rescuing antique woodworking machines!
READ ALL THE STORIES ABOUT ERIC’S ADVENTURES IN COLLECTING ANTIQUE MACHINES!
Master restorer, Eric LaVelle writes delightful articles about his work, which includes rehabilitating old buildings & rescuing antique machinery that he uses in his rehab work. He has graciously allowed me to include his stories in my blog. They include technical terms many of you (that includes my own self!) don’t understand, so I am including a GLOSSARY here for you so that you can most easily follow the bouncing ball.
I am going to put it in alpha order because I am guessing that you’ll find these terms repeated in more than 1 post.
Each article also has links to videos about the machines that are discussed. I have tried to find videos that show the old machines & the tasks each on is able to perform.
Should I have missed any words, drop me a line & I will include them.
ERIC’S ANTIQUE MACHINES GLOSSARY
Axle/shaft
Some of the old books also refer to them as journals.
A rod or spindle (either fixed or rotating) which goes through the center of a wheel or a group of wheels. Every rotating shaft must be supported by bearings. Axles are used in machines & also in vehicles.
Babbitt bearings
A bearing is a device that supports, guides, & reduces the friction of motion between fixed & moving machine parts.
Babbitt bearings are made of certain types of alloys, which are melted down & cast to produce the bearing surface.
Band saw
A power saw that uses a long blade loop, like a ribbon, stretched between two wheels. The blade continually rotates along with the wheels. Take a look at the video to see what it can do.
Beds
Usually used in reference to molders, jointers & planers. They are the flat, usually cast iron areas that the wood slides over while being molded, planed or jointed
Box joint machine
Cuts the corner joints for wooden boxes.
Chain hoist
A lifting device that can lift large amounts of weight by simply pulling on a chain.
Circular resaw
A machine that makes two thinner boards from one thicker board using a circular blade.
Door clamp
A large clamping machine that pulls door components together tightly, keeping them straight and square.
Drum sander
A machine that uses a cylinder (drum) wrapped with sandpaper to give a very smooth surface while maintaining a constant thickness.
Heads Rotating pieces that hold the blades on planers, jointers, molders, tenoners, & others.
Jointer
A machine that cuts away the surface of a board to make perfectly flat, or the edge of a board to make it perfectly straight.
Knife switch
Used commonly in the past, a knife switch is used to control the flow of electricity in a circuit.
Line shaft
A long rotating shaft that connects to multiple machines, usually via flat belts, powering multiple machines with a single source of power.
Louver groover, also called a blind stile mortiser
Cuts the slots in the stiles, which are the side piece of the frames of a shutter to accept the wooden slats.
Lumber
Harvested wood, whether cut into logs, or wood cut to use in construction.
Matcher
A machine that cuts both edges of a board at once to give either smooth edges, a shiplap pattern, or tongue and groove pattern. A planer matcher does both at once.
Mill
A shortened version of “planing mill”, where they took rough sawmill lumber and turned it into either smooth dimensional lumber (lumber that is cut to standard widths and depths, but never specific lengths. Typical dimensional lumber is 2x4s, 2x6s, and 4x4s) or other finished products.
Millwork
Millwork is historically any wood mill produced decorative (rather than structural) materials used in building construction. It is often is in a deteriorated condition from the elements & must be repaired, recreated.
Miter
A joint made by placing 2 pieces of wood together at a 90 degree angle.
Miter trimmer
Shaves the end of a mitered board with a blade similar to a guillotine in order to make a perfect fit.
Mortiser or morticer
A woodworking machine used to cut square or rectangular holes in a piece of lumber.
Outriggers
Supports that extend out beyond a machine so it can’t tip over as easily.
Phase wires
The phase wires are the hot wires used in an electrical power system.
Phase converters
The majority of phase converters are used to produce three-phase electric power from a single-phase source, thus allowing the operation of three-phase equipment at a site that only has single-phase electrical service.
Three-phase electric motor
A three-phase electric motor contains four wires (three hot wires and one neutral wire) and uses three alternating currents of the same frequency.
THE STORY OF ERIC LAVELLE, HISTORIC PRESERVATIONIST EXTRAORDINAIRE
Eric LaVelle of Belleville, Illinois, is a master historic preservationist but takes it a step further. In addition to performing highly detailed work on houses that are extremely deteriorated, dangerous, ornate & enormous, he finds, salvages & repairs the antique construction machinery with which he works his magic.
Eric was kind enough to allow me to publish his fascinating & inspiring story, which starts with his childhood interest in old houses, his own first old house, & the trials & tribulations of collecting massive antique machines & moving them to his workshop- without heavy lifting equipment!
He is a wonderful writer & his passion for the tools of his trade is evident in his writing & in every dangerous stunt he performs to secure some of them!
I have also created a GLOSSARY. The words in the GLOSSARY are linked in the text. If you see any words here that you don’t understand, let me know & I will add it.
I have also created a playlist on YouTube on which you can see all the machines in action. Then, there’s also a page about all the simple tools that he uses when he’s rescuing the machines. Simple though they be, they utilize physics & ingenuity to wrestle hug machines from dangerous places.
ERIC SPEAKS
As a child, I was fascinated with 19th century houses, but it wasn’t until 1996 that I bought and lived in one. My wife and I moved into an 1880’s two story house in a small town. Most of the interior woodwork was intact, as were the ornate front and back doors.
I was fascinated with the woodwork, and wanted to be able to reproduce it, but I had no idea how they had done it, or the equipment they used to do it. I began reading Old House Journal and Old House Interior magazines to learn more about these houses, and how to restore them. The internet was new to me, and there wasn’t a great deal of helpful information on it at the time.
In order to gain the skills to reproduce this millwork, I bought a few small, second hand machines at local auctions. My budget then was extremely small, so in order to get lumber, I resorted to salvaging it from buildings being torn down. The largest of these salvage projects was a dairy barn made mostly of oak and hickory, about 35’x50′ in size, and 30-40ft tall. I spent some time analyzing that structure, and ended up disassembling it from the top down, in a manner that was the reverse of how it was built. Some of my friends helped me do it. It was a physically punishing and dangerous job. To haul the barn lumber, the farmer sold me a 16ft double axle trailer to haul away the lumber.
It was 2001, and I had mountains of salvaged lumber, so I needed machines to work with it. My budget was still extremely small, and I could only look at the catalogs of the larger modern machinery with longing. I simply wasn’t ever going to be to afford a shop full of those machines. I tried working some of the wood with hand tools, but found it to be much more frustrating than inspiring. My small machines would simply burn up doing any serious work.
THE FIRST MACHINE
In 2002, I stopped crying over the new machines I couldn’t afford when I got on eBay and found very old machines for sale for very little money. The first thing I decided I needed was a large bandsaw to resaw barn timbers. This one was 36″, much larger than those I saw in the catalogs. After having the high bid, I set out on a 4 hour drive to pick up the machine with my van and trailer. My Dad went with me. I filled the gas tank just before leaving, which took us all the way there with some gas to spare.
36″ bandsaw
I had never seen a 36″ bandsaw. I was shocked at the size of it. It was in a machine shop, and they were using it to saw aluminum. They loaded it with a forklift, but they didn’t really know what they were doing, and tried to lift it by the table, which promptly cracked. I didn’t know enough to tell them any different.
It was loaded sideways to the wind, and had some plywood guards built onto it, so it caught wind like a giant sail. Paying little attention, I filled the gas tank on the way out of town, figuring we’d have plenty to get home. I hadn’t even bothered to watch the gas gauge when we ran out of gas on the interstate about 30 miles short of making it home. It was then that I learned lesson #1: a loaded trailer, especially with an enormous amount of wind drag, burns a lot more gas than an unloaded one.
After hitch hiking to the gas station and filling up, we got the saw home safely. As I was going in and out of the driveway, there was a dip in the pavement, and I bent the cross bar that held the jack on the trailer. I drove to a local welding shop where they could cut it out and weld a new piece in. The giant saw was still on the trailer. The owner of the shop looked at it and started talking about “3 phase motor” and something called “babbitt bearings”. I had no idea what those were, so I just nodded my head, and looked them up later. These would lead to the development of skill#2: building a phase converter, and skill #3: pouring babbitt bearings.
We had just bought another house with a garage, and were moving there, so I wanted to unload the saw at that location. I had no idea how to move a 1500lb saw without any power equipment. This would require skill #1: rigging heavy machinery with hand tools. My Dad showed me that I could use my 48″ crowbar, the same bar I used to disassemble the barn, to slowly inch the saw off the trailer. It took me a very long time to move it that way. Since it was taller than the garage door, and I didn’t know how easy it was to remove the top wheel, I hooked a chain around the top of it, which was attached to the framing above the garage door, and tipped the saw so it was leaning into the opening of the door. I then stood it up by prying the base forward, and the saw stood up inside the garage.
At this point I had a long way to go. I still didn’t know how they made the millwork in my first house, and I didn’t have electricity in the garage, which was 130ft from the house.
This article was written by Eric LaVelle, a master restorer of historic houses. He makes the woodwork with a shop full of antique machinery in Belleville, Illinoise. You can visit him on Facebook here.
READ ALL THE STORIES ABOUT ERIC’S ADVENTURES IN COLLECTING ANTIQUE MACHINES!
It was summer of 2002, and I had a bandsaw, but I knew that I would need more than that.
By this time I recognized that the internet was both the biggest library and market place ever known. I began to study the woodworking process. I learned some things from my uncles about woodworking, but I needed to learn much more. I also needed to learn about the machines themselves. I began to search and read both Vintagemachinery.org, and the Yahoo group that would become OLD WOOD WORKING MACHINES.
These sites gave me access to photos and catalogs of machinery starting in the mid 1800’s. It also allowed me to correspond with, and read conversations between all types of woodworking professionals, with combined experience of hundreds of years.
In order to run anything at all, I was going to need electricity in the garage, 130ft behind the house. Originally the machines ran on steam, but had been retrofitted with 3 phase motors. I bought an entire spool of electric wire on eBay, and proceeded to dig a 24″ deep trench across the yard. It would have been nice to rent a trencher, but I doubt it would have made it through the 2ft deep packed gravel of the driveway, the bricks, rocks, tree roots, and the 500lb chunk of concrete with the bottom of a clothesline pole embedded in it.
After running the wire and hooking up a sub panel in the garage, I knew I needed to build something called a phase converter to convert the single phase residential electricity that I had into something that would run the industrial motors. I found information online about how to build it, then bought an old 20HP 3 phase motor, which I would spin up to speed with a small single phase motor, then turn on to provide the third leg of the power. This was called a pony start rotary phase converter. When I first hooked it up, the big motor wouldn’t run. Feeling defeated, I went back in the house, with that little voice in my head telling me I couldn’t do it. I imagined a face behind that voice, then imagined myself punching it square in the nose before going back out and figuring out the motor was configured for 440 volt operation instead of 220v (lesson #2: never assume the wiring is hooked up the way you need it). A little reconnecting according to the chart on the side of the motor, and I was up and running with 3 phase power.
ALMOST!
My first jointer, “Munch,”made by John White Machine Co. in about 1878
I knew from experience that lumber that was almost straight and almost flat made parts that almost fit. I learned that the jointer was the machine to make parts that actually fit.
I again consulted eBay, where I bought a 16″ jointer that happened to have a square head. After reading about the increased danger of square heads in a jointer, my morbid sense of humor compelled me to refer to the machine as “Munch” for its propensity to munch fingers.
The biggest problem with this machine was that the beds were shorter than normal. I’d later replace it with another machine that was not much newer, but had longer beds and a round head. I bought that machine from an elderly man named Max, who owned 35 forklifts.
SO MANY TOOLS, SO LITTLE TIME!
It’s a goldmine of information on tools used in manufacturing.
On the Vintagemachinery.org site, I found a link to something called the 1880 Census Report. This report was illustrated, and gave an accounting of the technological advances in various fields, including woodworking. It had drawings and descriptions of the woodworking machines available at the time.
I used it to make my shopping list. I now knew exactly what machines they used to produce the millwork in my 1880’s house.
Drawings of how the cuts are made on a 4 head molding machine, from the 1880 Census Report.
This article was written by Eric LaVelle, a master restorer of historic houses. He makes the woodwork with a shop full of antique machinery in Belleville, Illinoise. You can visit him on Facebook here.
READ ALL THE STORIES ABOUT ERIC’S ADVENTURES IN COLLECTING ANTIQUE MACHINES!
Once again, Eric’s words are in quotes. Mine are just there, unadorned, though, if I’m rudely interrupting him, you’ll see me in brackets.
This is some background on the machines that Eric is rescuing, making construction prior to electricity possible. The majority, if not all of his articles refer to what is covered here, so please read it so that you can understanding the 
The key driver of the Industrial Revolution was the harnessing of energy. With this ability to control power, our old growth forests could be razed & milled. The logs could be turned into lumber for homes, furniture & indeed, into the factory buildings that held the mills, some of these being thousands of square feet in size.
Master restorer, 
Eric LaVelle of Belleville, Illinois, is a master historic preservationist but takes it a step further. In addition to performing highly detailed work on houses that are extremely deteriorated, dangerous, ornate & enormous, he finds, salvages & repairs the antique construction machinery with which he works his magic.
This article was written by Eric LaVelle, a master restorer of historic houses. He makes the woodwork with a shop full of antique machinery in Belleville, Illinoise. You can visit him on Facebook 
It was summer of 2002, and I had a 
In order to run anything at all, I was going to need electricity in the garage, 130ft behind the house. Originally the machines ran on steam, but had been retrofitted with 
Most people do not know much about the now antique wood-working machines that were used to mill the lumber for their bungalows. Eric LaVelle is a master historic preservationist who uses the old machines that he rescues from 100+ year old abandoned mills to restore the houses in his care. I am a believer in having full understanding of a subject & believe that having knowledge of the machines that helped create your bungalow is intrinsic to this understanding.
ERIC LAVELLE, MASTER HISTORIC PRESERVATIONIST, Part 1