Photo Index - Alexander Dodds Co. - Dodds Table Saw

Machinery Photo Index

Manufactured/Badged by:
Alexander Dodds Co.
Grand Rapids, MI

Machine Specifications
Machine Class:	Wood Working Machinery
Machine Type:	Table Saw
Machine Size:	16" Blade - 1" Arbor
Submitted By:	Keith Rucker

Machine Specifications
Description/Model:	Dodds Table Saw
Date of Manufacturer:	?
Serial Number:
Last Updated	1/13/2012 1:51:52 AM

Comments:

This saw was donated to the Georgia Agrirama Museum in Tifton, GA by the Art Institute of Chicago in the summer of 2004. After the gift was made, the museum had me restore it for use in their steam powered, line-shaft driven woodworking shop.

Fortunataly for me, the saw was really in pretty good shape when I got it to my home to restore. The Babbitt bearings were in good shape and the saw had been pretty well cared for. For the most part, all that was really needed was a good cleaning, a new paint job and to reassemble everything.

The only real challenge that I ran into while restoring this saw was that the previous owners had taken the flat-belt pulley that powered the saw and cut four vee-belt grooves into it. While this was probably a good plan to convert the saw to a motor driven machine, the museum wanted to run it from it's original configuration using a flat belt powered from a line shaft. The vee-belt grooves had to go.

Thanks to the help of members of the OWWM discussion forum, I finally decided that the best way to go about fixing the problem was to put a sleeve of thick wall tubing over the old pulley and re-machining it. The first step was to cut the old pulley down to size so that a sleeve could be put over it. This was done on my small metal lathe. A piece of thick was tubing was donated by a list member from his scrap pile. I first bored the center of the tubing out on my lathe to assure that it was true and the same size throughout the cylinder. I then cut the old pulley down to it's final size - about 0.001" larger than the inside diameter of the tubing. The tubing was then pressed onto the old pulley and pinned so that it would not ever rotate. After all of that was done, I put the whole arbor assembly back on the lathe and cut the pulley to it's final dimension and then put a slight crown on it so that a belt would run true on the pulley. All in all, this took the better part of a day on the lathe.

The saw is very interesting if you are not familiar with how these old saws work. There are two large cranks on the front of the saw. Like more modern table saws, the function of the two cranks are to adjust the depth of cut and the angle of cut. However, rather than raising and lowering the arbor to adjust the depth of cut, on this saw, the arbor stays still and you instead raise and lower the entire table. To make an angle cut, again, the arbor stays still and you instead tilt the entire table! Pretty cool. I don't know how comfortable I would feel making a 45 degree cut on the saw though...

Remarkably, the saw was complete with all of it's original accessories. These included the original fence, two miter gages and even the original wrench to remove the blade. Speaking of the blade, I have not actually tried different size saw blades on this saw but according to my measurements, it appears that this saw can handle up to a 16" blade!

Note - this entry was edited to update the machine specs by adding the blade size (listed as probably up to 16" per Keith's writeup) in the "machine size" data area. The original entry date was 4/4/2005. DG

Photo 1:

Comments: The restored saw
Source: My digital camera

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Photo 2:

Comments: The saw installed and belted up to the line shaft in the museum.
Source: My digital camera

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Photo 3:

Comments: The arbor and newly machined pulley
Source: My digital camera

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