Photo Index - Athol Machine Co. - No.54

Machinery Photo Index

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

Machine Specifications
Machine Class:	Metal Working Machinery
Machine Type:	Grinder, Bench
Machine Size:	14x1 3/4
Submitted By:	Marc Wirth

Machine Specifications
Description/Model:	No.54
Date of Manufacturer:	1900
Serial Number:
Last Updated	10/21/2023 10:24:07 AM

Comments:

Hello, my English is very bad, so I translated it with Google.
I found the whetstone in the yard of a traveling scrap dealer in Germany 20 years ago. He loaded it up somewhere and didn't immediately throw it into the scrap metal.
We were already wondering how such a device found its way here to Germany, the scrap dealer just said: "definitely by ship..."

Condition as found: Completely rusted, only a bicycle crank with a pedal was attached to the shaft, the lower pedal/foot plate was missing.
There was little left of the stone.

Everything was carefully disassembled and the cast parts were removed from rust using a flex/braided brush.
I scraped off the rust in the trough with a long scraper.
The tread plate was newly made from checker plate and a small axle was welded underneath as a rocker bearing, which sits in the two small cast shells.
The connecting rod is welded together from tubing.
I welded a crank made of bent round steel to the shaft of the grindstone.

The sandstone was a problem, a new stone couldn't be found, and the stonemason couldn't cut/hew one for me either.
So I made a stone out of an old grinding stone from scrap, it was the German standard model for sharpening cutter bars with a set angle gear and crank for two-man operation.

Problem: The width wasn't right, and I also wanted a straight grinding wheel.
After some hesitation, the sandstone was clamped onto the lathe and the stone was worked as desired using a blunt square iron made of mild steel as a chisel.
Finally, everything was painted thickly with Hamerite Black High Gloss.

The stone runs very precisely and grinds well enough.
I have the device in the kitchen because there are always blunt knives there.
I also prefer to grind the triangular scraper on the sandstone.
Advantage: The pedal drive means you can sand alone, a motor drive is not necessary.

I didn't find the catalog sheet until much later, I'll still make the tool rest for clamping/moving and also attach a rod for the Tormek system.

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