Photo Index - Millbury Machine Co. - LT200

Machinery Photo Index

Manufactured/Badged by:
Millbury Machine Co.
Millbury, MA

Machine Specifications
Machine Class:	Wood Working Machinery
Machine Type:	Tenoning Machine
Machine Size:
Submitted By:	Cliff Sommers

Machine Specifications
Description/Model:	LT200
Date of Manufacturer:	Early Sixties
Serial Number:
Last Updated	11/20/2005 4:43:01 PM

Comments:

This machine has some history. The guy I bought this from is a contract furniture manufacturer who sells to corporations; Marriott's Hotel chain, for example. He used this machine soley to perform one milling operation producing all the little footstools used by salespeople for the now defunct Kenny Shoe Co. When Kenny folded, he no longer had any need for it.

The first photo shows the beast still on the truck before any work. Notice the unusual belt and pulley setup. Two of the pulleys are run off the backside of the dual belts.

The next photo shows it looking pretty again after refurbishing. Note that I replaced the pathetically disfunctional stock hold down supplied by Millbury with some decent DeStaco type clamps affixed to helper fence. Shifting the clamp mount locations from some dados to the top of the helper fence accommodates the range of stock thicknesses this machine will handle.

The last picture shows the machines' unusual angled cutterheads with flat blades, a funky configuration that has long since disappeared from the market. For good reason! Those blades are affixed via bolts through sloppy fitting blade slots that result in endless trial and error fiddling to reset the blades once removed from the head. There's an article on this site describing the involved sharpening process required. The lower head has the spur cutters removed for replacement; you can see part of one on the upper head. Note also that if you don't set the heads at different angles realtive to one another they will collide with each other!

Getting the machine home proved to be a challenge. It arrived at a local freight terminal that has no loading ramp - meaning it had to be picked from above, run out over the end of the dock, and lowered into my truck bed. This is not easily accomplished as this machine is both top heavy and disproportionately heavy to one end, plus there is really no convenient means to get a hold of the beast from the top. These facts sent me home sans machine on my first retirieval attempt - a Friday evening - to scratch my noggin.

Turned out I had plenty of time to think about how to solve this problem. Hurricane Katrina struck the following Monday. No power for about a week, most everything closed as we all spent most of our time in endless lines scrapping for food, ice and gas (no power to pump most of what was sitting uselessly in below ground storage tanks). At any rate, there was no point going back to the terminal anytime soon as their forklifts are all electric.

Two weeks later I did go back with an H-shaped lifting frame knocked together out of 2 x 4's - which I slipped through the upper part of the cast base lengthwise, then reassembled. The frame was several inches longer than the machine. Lifting eyebolts on the ends on the H piece's allowed us to pick the machine up using a boom attachment on the forklift. Chains were wrapped around the boom to catch the eyebolts. Problem one solved.

The next problem was that the pallet the machine was bolted and strapped to was too wide to fit between my little pickemup's wheelwells, a snafu easily remedied by slipping two junk pallets under it. Such made it tippy to haul, but liberal strapping and driving slow got it there ok. However, when I arrived home, it was now too high to go through my garage door. So I had to take it off the truck in pieces, instead of simply driving it under my chain hoist to pick it off the easy way. Grrrr!

Photo 1:

Comments: Pulley and Belt System
Source: my camera

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Photo 2:

Comments: After Restoration
Source: my camera

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Photo 3:

Comments: Cutterheads
Source: my camera

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