Finishing strong- the story of the Porter-Cable finishing sander

Some time ago, a fellow member approached me about taking a look at a finishing sander, a Porter-Cable 509. At the time, it was determined that the sander was in poor shape. It had three failed pad posts, a counterweight that had long since worked loose and damaged the transmission shaft, and a bodged-together on/off switch that had been poorly soldered into a window hacked into the escutcheon. As the 509 doesn't really share most of those parts with any of the other sanders, I decided that the best move was to dig out a Porter-Cable/Sterling 1000 ( the sander the 509 is based on), rebuild that, and send him on his way with an objectively better sander. Problem solved, right?
Thing is, the 509 was now sitting in the tool morgue in my garage, and the decrepit remains were praying on my mind for all the world like the Tell-Tale Heart. I mean, 509 sanders are pretty uncommon, as most of them, if used to any extent, died a similar death to our boy here ( minus the truly awful switch "repair"). Sometimes, when I have a tool or machine that's really just plain shot, I could almost swear I hear a quiet, Ringo Starr-like "help" every time I walk by it.

Recently, I was rooting through my finishing sander parts, looking for a better pad for a 145, when I looked at a box of 106 pad posts. These posts are longer than the ones used on the 509, and both the stud on the top and the threaded hole on the bottom are different sizes, but the thought occurred to me that I could pick four damaged ones, cut them to the appropriate height by removing the stud end, drill and tap the female end for the larger 509 hardware, replace the upper stud with a sheetmetal screw going through the bearing plate... for the limited use the sander would see in the shop, and with my usual vigilance about keeping my workers healthy, I felt it would work well enough to bring the 509 back into the land of the living.

What about the counterweight? the stub shaft and the offset blind hole on a 509 have a very shallow fit, and are only held in place by one tiny set screw ( this system didn't last too long, which is fortunate because it's horrible), and the 509 had a great deal of wear from slipping. Still, I could knurl the stub spindle, press it into the counterweight, drill out the set screw hole deeper, and voila, a repair of reasonable strength is made. I may go back and actually weld the two parts together if it doesn't hold. I don't have anything to lose.

With these repairs, and the bequeathing of an original, unused Sterling switch escutcheon, the 509 was revived, and with it, my collection of Porter-Cable finishing sanders was complete.

Oh wait, I don't own a 105. However, those were terrible sanders, so no great loss, I suppose.

In 1949, Porter-Cable purchased the Sterling Products Co. of Chicago, Ill. in order to add a line of finishing sanders to their line of abrasive machines. Having had a great deal of success with developing belt sanders, it may seem odd that they wouldn't design a sander in-house, but the sanders in question ( at least, two of the three) were so beyond reproach that they were the only match to the likes of the A-3 and BB-10.

There are three Sterling sanders: the pneumatic 1512,

Heavy, a bit clumsy to change paper on ( using the same type of spring-and-bar retainer found on many an automotive DA sander), but essentially indestructible. There is also the comically inadequate 105, a "buzz-box" sander that looks better than it works. Most importantly, we have the progenitor of all Porter-Cable/Rockwell finishing sanders, the legendary 1000.

The 1000 is a truly remarkable design. Running a gear set in an oil bath ( the transmission of a 1000 is sealed in a heavy rubber cover, and oil is added through the cutest lil' fill cap you ever saw) and featuring both air filtration for the motor and quick-change pads allowing sandpaper swaps in seconds, the 1000 was forged by the Old gods in the heart of a dying star. Provided that the oil is topped off and the hardware snugged up now and then, there's every likelihood that this sander will join Keith Richards and the lowly cockroach at the heat death of our solar system.

However, the 1000 was extremely expensive to make ( the kit, with air filters, oil, extra pads, and a case, retailed for 142.00 in 1951, or 1,522.00 and change in today's coin), and while it couldn't be beat for production finishing, a less expensive sander that would be purchased in greater numbers was an attractive idea to Porter-Cable.

Enter the 106.

Appearing in Guild catalogs by 1950, this sander was essentially a low budget machine that differed from the 1000 in the method of transmitting motion to the pad, the complex but adamantine oil-bath design being simplified into the four-posts-and-a-counterweight system that every successive sander would sport. This system has a few drawbacks, the largest being dust ingestion into the bearings and, in the case of the execrable three-piece counterweight found on the 509 and early 106's, prone to shaking itself to pieces. Nevertheless, the 106 worked well, sanded a little faster, and cost a lot less, being 49.95 in 1954 ( a mere 517.00 or so today). As is often the case with Guildtool designs, this sander was built for economy but was so well made for the price that it would be the second most popular of the finishing sanders, being made in some form into the Rockwell years. Less successful was the ill-starred 509, new for 1953. While the 509 has a great deal more 1000 DNA than the 106, the replaceable pad design of the 1000 was dropped, and the new sander used a captive spurred roller to hold the paper. The 509 did, however, retain the air filtration feature, albeit with a lower airflow, but much stouter front grille. I've always felt that the 509 looks a bit like a short man in a jousting helmet, what with the eye-level slot in the grille. This gallant fellow retailed for a cool 89.00 in 1954, or something like 920.00 dollars if bought today ( if only you could buy such a machine now...).
Over the years of production, the 106 had grown up a bit, having had the counterweight system redesigned into a much stouter affair, with twin sealed bearings and none of the stub-spindled,expansion-wedged tomfoolery of the earlier layout. Power was still transmitted via a round belt, made by Hoover in a factory less than five miles from where I grew up, though the later 106a would be retrofitted with a timing belt arrangement that was less prone to slippage with age and wear.
The next step in the evolution of the finishing sander was dust collection.

Joining the team in 1953, the 127 was, in essence, a 106 with a skirt and a fanny pack. The addition of a dust chute above the base frame that led to a rear-mounted bag was yet another stroke of genius from Art Emmons, and adding a pivoting dust skirt that could be lifted up out of the way for paper changes completed a very tidy bit of retrofitting. The 127 worked as well as its sister sander the 106, and production only ceased in the late '60s.
The Post-war boom in home handyman-type activities led to the development of a number of lower cost, lighter duty tools, and the finishing sander was no exception. Bonus points were given to tools that could pinch-hit in a number of rolls, and Porter-Cable had ideas about that, too.

Just in time for Christmas of '55, the 145 is the logical conclusion of building a low-budget finishing sander; in fact, the 145 is such an ephemeral design that it only has one ball bearing, the balance of moving parts running in bronze bushings. It's not a bad sander for all that- the 145 is so small that ( like the A-2 belt sander) it lends itself to the sanding of surfaces that are already assembled, making it handy for furniture refinishing. In addition, it's a good fit for people of small stature, and ideal for the grade school-aged shop boy or girl ( one can't help but wonder how many birdhouses, doll beds and pinecars the humble 145 has smoothed out over the decades). This design, while hardly suitable for industry, was popular enough to be offered until April of 1964.

Then there's the Routo-jig.

Marketed as a router, jigsaw, plane, and finish sander, it was mostly a router. While it wasn't all that great at routing ( except for laminate trimming, at which it triumphed), failed to inspire much confidence as a plane, and was downright useless as a jigsaw ( equipped with a sort of burr bit, it cut through sheet goods in any direction, hence jigsaw? How this is different from routing through sheet goods escapes me at the moment), it actually worked just dandy as a finishing sander since the sanding attachment was just the lower end of the tried-and-true 106. While the greater height is somewhat annoying, the amount of speed and power is comparable, and the 140 gives a credible performance for something that looks like it should be mixing cake batter.

It wouldn't be until 1963 that the ne plus ultra of finishing sanders was reached. By the end of that year, the two longest-produced finishing sanders of all time would blow everything else out of the water becoming the gold standard for finish work in cabinet shops all over the nation in the era before random orbit sanders and gel stains. I'm speaking, of course, of the iconic 330/505 sander platform.

The first point of departure was pad size. Instead of the conventional 1/3 sheet pattern, Rockwell offered a choice of the 1/4 sheet 330 or the 1/2 sheet 505. With a change in size came a change in fastening hardware; the roweled roller that had been used since 1949 was upgraded to the mousetrap style, a spring-loaded clamp that made changing paper faster and tool-free ( there was a key for the 330 to improve leverage. While I've seen them wired to the cords of many a 330, I've never known anyone who used it habitually). Both of these sanders were instant hits, the 505 being especially prized for the great speed with which it could prepare a cabinet side or drawer front for finish.

While the ROS is king these days, it does have one drawback; due to the greater movement of the pad ( which gives the ROS its speed at sanding), it's often necessary to sand a piece to a much finer finish to remove the sanding marks of previous grits. This tends to affect the ability of the material to take stain, since the wood fibers are, in effect, nearly burnished. I own a ROS, and American -made Porter-Cable 333, and while I do use it frequently, it's almost always for something that is to be painted; for all else, the 505 is the sander of choice. While I generally prefer the products made before the Rockwell years, the 505 was an inspired design that took the best of its ancestors and supercharged them, and I can honestly say that after having worked on a couple of hundred 505 sanders, I've never actually seen anyone ruin one, not even kids in shop class.

Production of the 505 was moved to Mexico ( my guess is that they were assembled, rather than fully manufactured, but that's speculation) after Black and Decker sunk their filthy claws into Porter-Cable's flank, but production of the last Porter-Cable finish sander ( the 1/4 sheet attempts currently marketed do not count. Not in this shop) ceased in 2009.

The vital statistics-
1000-8 lbs, 3/16" orbit, gear drive ( oil bath), 5,000RPM,1/3sheet
1512 ( Speed-Bloc)-8 lbs,5/8 stroke ( reciprocating), 3000SPM, 1/3 sheet
106-6lbs,1/4" orbit, belt drive, 4300RPM (idle), 1/3 sheet
509-8 lbs,3/16" orbit, gear drive, 6,000RPM, 1/3 sheet
127- 6 lbs, 10 oz, 1/4" orbit, belt drive, 4300RPM (idle), 1/3 sheet
145-5 lbs, 6 oz,3/16" orbit, gear drive,3500RPM (idle),1/3 sheet
140 (Routo-Jig) with 5026 sander attachment-6 lbs,1/4" orbit, belt drive,5,000RPM (idle),1/3 sheet
505-9 lbs,1/8" orbit, direct drive,10,000RPM ( idle), 1/2 sheet
330-3 3/4 lbs,5/64" orbit,direct drive, 12,000RPM (idle),1/4 sheet

While the cost of these sanders was a consideration in their ultimate demise, another factor is skill. For decades, people did their stock removal/heavy lifting with a belt sander and finishing with, well, finishing sanders. However, both of these tools require some experience to operate well ( the belt sander more than the finishing sander) and get the best results. The impulse of most users is to rush through finish sanding, but a slow, steady pace works much better, leaving less in terms of swirly little trails of scratches to obliterate with finer paper later. In the hands of an experienced user, any of these sanders can make a glassy smooth surface in a short time and still leave some pores in the wood to soak up the finish of your choice. I know several people who prize these sanders; I'm one of them, and I bet if you try one, you'll be too.

Long live the locomotive-the story of the Porter-Cable Take-About sander-Part five

The last stop on our tour concerns two sanders that, much like their ancestors the B-4 and B-5, were more or less the same machines save for scale. They were introduced the same year, and while one of them didn't survive the Pentair buyout, the other would keep the A-3/504 company to the end of the line. It's time to introduce the 503 and 500 Take-Abouts.

In early 1952, Porter-Cable introduced a pair of dustless belt sanders that summed up everything they had learned in the last twenty-five years.
February brought us the heroically proportioned 500 (Seen here in 'mid-'50s 500G2 Secret Agent Man government contract livery).

It’s the late ‘50s, and you’re on base serving your country in the war against roughsawn lumber. Your weapon? The porter-Cable 500G2.

The more svelte 503 joined the party in May.

The 503 as it appeared in 1952. A mainstay of Industrial Arts programs throughout the Midwest, I can’t begin to tell you how many 503’s I’ve rebuilt over the years.

The 500 is one impressive machine, combining many of the best traits of the BB-10 with the belt size and power of the T-4. The 500 was a slower sander than either, being 1440 fpm ( the BB-10 was 1475, the T-4 an absolutely ludicrous 1650 fpm); this was by design because the speed a belt is moving at must be juggled with the width of the belt/size of the platen to arrive at a compromise that removes material quickly without becoming uncontrollable, and the 500 is the most manageable 4"x27" sander in the family ( the B-4 only loses out due to the balance issue, but the lowset handles of that model go a long way to keeping it gritty side down on the work; the T-4 will do a very sincere Hemi under glass impression if you don't maintain a good grip on the front handle). Dust collection is very nearly as good as the BB-10, and the 500 is very stoutly built, with only the exhaust louvres ( Iknow, I know, it should be louvers. Porter-Cable called them louvres, take it up with them) being particularly delicate ( in all fairness, the T-4 had the same problem with both intake and exhaust grilles being easily smooshed). I really can't think of a downside to the design worth griping about, though the sander’s a little loud and the rear handle is a little small in diameter. I do appreciate that the toggle lever arrangement of the BB-10 was retained because I'm left-handed, and it makes for an ambidextrous sander. I suppose it would be nice if it were a bit quieter, but these are minor details- if you need a whole passel of something sanded down, you could do a lot worse than the 500.

The 503 is literally a 500 that got shrunk in the wash.

This level of compactness is due chiefly to the use of die castings; whereas the 500 is mainly sand cast ( you really can't build a reliable belt sander of that class any other way), the 503 owes a debt to the A-2 and A-3 sanders for the slim profile and light weight- it would be next to impossible to make the design the old fashioned way without it being far larger and a good deal heftier.

The 503 is the sander I have the most experience with, as it was far and away the most popular sander in this area for Industrial Arts classes, and teenagers are not known for being respectful of school equipment. It was very common for years to receive several boxes of these fellows before the beginning of the school year,in need of TLC to correct the various and sundry bent supports arms, stripped gears, and abraded cords (seriously, the cord goes over your shoulder, guys. Keep it off the table, for crying out loud). Not that the sander was a lightweight- few people that used them with any kind of sense ever wore them out. It's just that, if you locked a teenage boy in an airtight rubber room with a wooden mallet and two stainless steel ball bearings, in one hour he would have broken one and lost the other.

The ivied halls of academe can be a dangerous place.

The 503 is an excellent sander, fast, light, and capable of hard work. However, the light castings don't lend themselves to a knock-around life on job sites, and it's not uncommon to see this sander in a shop-built, wooden case for protection. It's like I always say, a tool case is cheap insurance, and while Porter-Cable offered a case for the A-2, the other sanders were left to their own devices.

The 500 made it as late as 1977, and while I've never seen a Pentair era, Porter-Cable badged example, it may very well have survived a few more years. The 503 fared better, being offered with the 504 until Black and Decker decided to become anti-worm drive extremists and pull the plug on the locomotive sander once and for all between 2009-2011. Parts were available for several years afterward, and I could kick myself for not buying more worm gears when I had the chance- the 30 of them I did get didn't stretch very far.

Finis:
500:4"x27" belt,1440 fpm,25lbs
503:3"X24"belt,1100 sfpm,15lbs

Today, these sanders command prices that may sometimes rival the original MSRP. I scout local flea markets for them, check used tool dealers and craigslist, but some of my favorites were scouted out by friends. I dug my treasured T-33 out of an aluminum scrap bucket,. My cherished B-10 was intercepted by a friend on its way to the scrapyard. My prized A-3 was given to me by a customer who was too old to use it anymore. Every one of them is a valued tool, an admired objet d'art, and an irreplaceable part of the story of a company that changed the way work was done.

If you should run across one of these sanders, I encourage you to bring it home. Blow the dust out. PUT OIL IN IT. Then find a piece of lumber that looks like the bottom of a shoe, or a table that really needs refinishing, or even a workbench that has a warped top and one too many nails in it for a plane to contend with, and watch the magic happen. You'll be glad you did, I think.

Just don't be surprised if you wind up with your own roundhouse someday.

C’mon, everyone get in the shot!

After all, what's more important than family?

Long live the locomotive-the story of the Porter-Cable Take-About sander-Part four

I'd like to shine the spotlight on a sander that shouldn't have to share the stage equally with another model in this little history because it has no equal. The Take-About in question wasn't the biggest, or fastest, or longest made, but it was the most well-rounded design in all the years Porter-Cable offered worm drive sanders; great for stock removal, but controllable enough for finer work, with superb dust collection, excellent balance and surprisingly little noise, and virtually indestructible in the hands of any higher primate.

I give you the BB-10, or, as Porter-Cable called it, the Tool of Tomorrow.

The BB-10 was the best belt sander ever built. Fight me.

First encountered in 1942, the BB-10 was the result of lessons learned from the B-10, of which it is the only close descendant. The BB-10 kept to the basic layout of a 1hp, 3"x27" sander with dust collection, but the issues with heat that plagued the B-10 were firmly dealt with in the new design. The BB-10 has both a fan for keeping the motor cool and an impeller for moving the dust which allows each part to do its job well, instead of one compromised component struggling to do either task. Because of the care taken in construction ( the motor fan is an axial squirrel cage affair and the dust impeller is a cast aluminum, balanced job), the BB-10 has better dust collection than any of its littermates, and rarely breaks a sweat under even the heaviest tasks. The intermediate gear was also replaced by two sprockets and a leaf chain fully 3/4" wide, which helped lower the amount of noise.

Ain’t it a beaut?

The new sander in town also did away with what I refer to as the goblin shark profile of the B-10, opting for the distinctive concave face that gives it much of the look of a streamlined locomotive engine, complete with cow catcher. This isn't just for looks- not only does it beef up the front of the sander frame to better withstand the rough and tumble life of a belt sander, it also lends itself to a modified grip for using the sander on the vertical plane; simply hold the front knob in the web of your hand between thumb and index finger, keeping the heel of your hand away from the idler pulley, and the BB-10 can be held against a wall or other vertical surface comfortably.

Speaking of using the sander at an odd angle, the BB-10 could use the B-10 bench stand, which converted it into a species of edge sander.

I have the good fortune to not only have one of these accessories but to own a BB-10 with a special order rubber-coated front roller to use on it; this allows the user to sand inside curves smoothly, which doesn't always work well with the bare aluminum pulley found on most examples.

The BB-10 had four known running changes during its nine-year run, most of which were cosmetic- the forked switch lever became a capped one that could be removed without dismantling the switch cover, the front knob stud went from having a hexagonal post to a round one, then back again, and the wooden handle was discontinued by 1944 or so, being replaced by the bakelite loop shared with the later 500 ( the A-2 would keep its unique smaller wooden handle until 1958, but the larger maple grip would only be found on the BK-12 saw and RC deck crawler after '44- it would never reappear on another Take-About). Where it counts, the BB-10 never changed, and never had reason to, being an irreproachable machine and a home run from the word go.

The BB-10 retailed for 148.00 in 1945, or about 2,200 dollars. It was worth every penny to the person with a lot of sanding to do, and while I reserve specific tasks for each of my Take-Abouts I will admit that I reach for one of my BB-10's (Yes, I own four of them. No, they're not for sale) for the majority of sanding jobs.


Vital statistics-
BB-10: 3"x27" belt, 1475 fpm,23 lbs, , 1 hp motor

By 1950, the success of the 503 ( which we'll discuss next time) prompted Porter-Cable to develop a larger version, the 500, and for one short year, the two juggernauts stood cheek to jowl in the catalogs. The newer sander would ultimately win out and go on to be offered until the Pentair years, but the curtain fell on an absolute masterpiece by the end of 1951.

Long live the locomotive- the story of the Porter-Cable Take-About-Part three

We've discussed the G-3, the Guildtool belt sander that escaped obscurity by leading to the development of the modern worm drive belt sander. Now it's time to turn our attention to the Guild sander that no one liked but people, and the descendant of the G-3 that still defines the belt sander to generations of woodworkers to this day. I refer to the 2-A/A-2 and A-3/504 sanders.

I've mentioned that the Guildtool line was directed at the home hobbyist as an affordable line of power tools at a time when there really wasn't such a thing ( other than the drills that everyone and their maiden aunt cranked out-those were legion). A belt sander is hard to cheapen up without sacrificing quality ( not that this has ever stopped anyone, Black and Decker), and while the G-3 tried to reduce costly hand finishing by being rectilinear, the 2-A approached the issue from a more cutting edge (in 1936) standpoint.

The original 1936 Guildtool 2-A, loved by everyone but the W.P.B.

This little fellow ( 2"x21" belt) is chiefly made from die castings, which had been pioneered in everything from appliances to ashtrays but was largely uncharted territory for a power tool at the time. What few tools that used this technology were lackluster at best, but the 2-A was quite a different story.

Die castings made the sander lighter (9lbs) and more compact, but the greatest advantage accrued was the dramatic reduction in labor required to turn a raw casting into a finished piece. The 2-A was still hand fit (that would be the case with most Porter-Cable tools until the development of the 346/315/368 platform of saws in the early '60s), but the castings came out of the machine with a much finer surface, which took less time to polish up.
Additionally, the 2-A ( or, as it soon became known, the A-2) forewent the separate worm of the earlier sanders , having it cut into the end of the armature shaft. This feature (I'm using the term loosely) would not be repeated in other sanders, but it saved labor, machine time, and space, all of which made the petite A-2 thirty dollars cheaper than the T-33 by 1947 ( that's about 350.00 in today's money). Being such a felicitous combination of inexpensive, well constructed and of handy size for smaller projects, the A-2 was hugely popular, so popular that Porter-Cable had to have two motor manufacturers producing fields and armatures to meet demand (should you disassemble an A-2, a brown armature and field were made by Dumore; a motor with blue laminations was from Robbins and Myers. Don't mix and match, they aren't compatible). In fact, the only hiccup in the entire twenty-two-year production run was the period in 1944 when manufacturing of the A-2 was halted by order of the W.P.B. for the duration of WW2.
By 1953, the A-2 was incorporated into the main line of products, where it would stay until 1958 when the first belt-driven sanders were introduced. Unable to compete, the A-2 was discontinued. While the belt drives were cheaper and used wider belts, they had poor balance and were less robust as our little fellow, whose only true drawback was the need for the worm drive oil to be kept topped off. The concept of a compact worm drive sander would be revisited during the 2000s in the form of the 371, but let's face it, those kinda sucked.


Meanwhile, a new sander would see light during the war that married the technological advances of the A-2 with the innate durability of the T-33, and did it so well that it would outlive all the other Take-Abouts, including the ones that came after it.

Say hello to the iconic A-3.

The A-3, c. 1948. The gold standard of belt sanders for the next 67 years or so.

Appearing in 1944, the A-3 is, in essence, a T-33 sander stripped down to its fighting weight. The A-3 was die-cast throughout, which gave it the weight and labor savings of the A-2, but it retained the T-33 performance envelope and even shared a gear set with its predecessor (at first). The A-3 wasn't a winner right out of the gate, though. The earliest version was somewhat lacking in ventilation, requiring lower air slots to be milled into the front endshield.

There is also the small matter of the expansion plug fitted into the frame to access the gearbox. This system works well enough if snugged up judiciously, but is easily deformed by being cranked down, and many early A-3 sanders bear a layer of silicone or JB weld slathered over this plug like margarine on a cornbread biscuit.



The A-3 was quite popular. There was even a version made with an air motor ( for the factory where air lines were more frequently encountered than 115 volt receptacles), the 61-E, made for them by Rockwell's Buckeye Tools division in Dayton, Ohio,

The equivalent of your vegan aunt, the 61-E eschewed the usual diet of electrons.

While several minor details changed throughout its production run, the basic blueprint was sound enough that it survived through the Rockwell years ( renumbered as the 504) and the Pentair period, only to be felled five years later like a mighty oak by the bloodstained, money-grubbing hands of those unmitigated bounders who make everything out of yellow plastic. Production would cease after sixty-seven years, making it the longest-produced handheld power tool of all time.

There are better sanders than the A-3. If I'm honest, it doesn't even make my top five. A-3's are easily damaged if they get dropped. They were built so lightly that later versions had additional wear plates scabbed on to counteract the effects of a poorly tracking belt. They're prone to loose brush holders, oil leaks, and derangement of the idler pulley support arm if dropped. Think of a T-33, take away the impressive airflow and ruggedness, and you have an A-3.

That being said, I've easily repaired a hundred of them in the last twenty years, they're fast and light, and I've seen them survive abuse that would promptly murder a modern belt-driven sander.

Then, of course, there's my personal experience with the breed.

My A-3 was bequeathed to me by an old customer who has long been in his grave. He purchased it in '48 when he got out of the Army. He used it and a K-75 circular saw to build homes for decades, and when his oldest went to work with him in the '60s, the son went and bought his own, which saw just as much use. They even went so far as to buy a third in the late '80s. I repaired a number of tools for this man over the years, and when he brought the sander in for service and we talked about what a great sander it was, how much he used it and how it put food on the table for his entire working life, he slid it across the bench to me and said that he wanted me to have it. I'm a fairly stoic fellow in general but damned if I wasn't misty-eyed. I rebuilt it, of course, and while it isn't my go-to sander, I still take it off the shelf for the odd sanding job. I'll never part with it on this side of the river, and I hope someday I can pass on Mr. Sherman's act of kindness to a fourth generation of admirers.

So yeah, I like the A-3 well enough.

The team:

2-A/A-2: 2"X21" belt, 600 fpm,,9 lbs, Dumore or Robbins and Myers motor
A-3/504:3"X24"belt,1600 fpm14 lbs,3/4hp motor

Nothing succeeds like success, and these two sanders were very, very successful. But they stood in the shadow of their contemporary (literally, it was quite a bit bigger), which I maintain is the all-around best worm drive belt sander ever made, the big, beautiful BB-10.

Long live the locomotive-the story of the Porter-Cable Take-About sander-Part two

The next part of our story is a bit complex. You see, by the mid-'30s, Walter Ridings' instincts for the burgeoning power tool market had been proven correct, and he now turned his attention to the home market.

Enter the Guild line.

Before WW2, power tools were the province of heavy industry ( Milwaukee had been saved from bankruptcy after a factory fire chiefly by a large order for drills from Henry Ford), and even home builders rarely had more than a RAS or a circular saw ( I mean, a singular circular saw; it was not uncommon for one worker to cut the lumber and everyone else to busy themselves nailing them up). Handheld power tools were almost unheard of in the home shop. This isn't surprising when you consider that a B-5 would set you back 78.00 in 1936, or roughly 1,400.00 in today's coin- you would have to be awfully busy in the garage or basement to justify spending that kind of scratch.

Ridings, however, saw a future in providing a small but comprehensive line of low cost, high quality power tools to the avid home shop man ( and the contractor that could squeeze a nickel until the buffalo had bruises). For reasons that doubtless made sense at the time, this line of tools was kept far apart from the commercial Speedmatic and Take-About line. The company was known as Syracuse Guildtool, and it was located at 1720 N. Salina Street. The Porter-Cable Machine Company building was located between 1710 and 1720 N. Salina, so it's fairly obvious that GuildTool was not that far away from the apron strings. There were only ten tools known to be sold under this name: the A-4, A-6, and A-8 circular saws, 1000 router, 106 finish sander, 103 hedge trimmer, HT hedge trimmer, E-6 rotary flooring edger, and two belt sanders. The more often encountered model, The A-2, will be discussed a bit later; the one we're interested in at the moment was known as the G-3.

I have mentioned that the products offered by Porter-Cable were taken from raw castings to mirror-polished tools almost entirely by hand, and close examination of a given tool made before the mid-'50s will often reveal numbers written in red grease pencil to keep the castings together throughout construction, as the individual parts were actually faired into each other, making them hard to interchange. This level of fit and finish makes for a superb machine, but it isn't cheap, and the two belt sanders sold under the Guildtool aegis approached the issue of economizing hand-finishing from different angles. The A-2 ( or, as it was originally known, the 2-A) made use of die castings, a fairly recent development at the time but one that allowed a casting to be made with an accurate, smooth enough surface that sanding and grinding weren't necessary, leaving only minor snag grinding and a trip to the buffer before assembly.

The G-3 reduced finishing by being shaped like a brick.

The complex, organic shapes of the B-series sanders were eschewed for a slab-sided, trapezoidal body. This rapidly sped up the process of sanding the surfaces smooth because the parts could be locked into a jig and crammed into the waiting maw of a belt grinder ( if you peruse a Porter-Cable abrasive finishing machine catalog of the '40s, you will see a number of familiar castings- the G-8 belt grinder was even available with a lever-feed table to increase the production of small parts). As a result, the G-3 and its descendants are immediately recognizable for their angular frames.

The G-3 shared a drivetrain design with the B-10, using an intermediate gear to power the drive pulley ( the A-2 used a silent, or leaf chain, a design that would prove popular. This, I think, was largely due to the space constraints of such a tiny belt sander). Unlike the sophisticated system found on the B-10, where a helical gear ran on twin magneto bearings, the G-3 used a straight cut gear running on a bronze bushing, making the G-3 a simpler, if louder, sander.

Unfortunately, the G-3 proved to be unpopular with the average home handyman, as it was hardly as cheap to make as an A-2, and at some point in 1935, the G-3 was added to the commercial line and rechristened as the T-3.

The T-3. Not the most successful of designs, but one that taught Porter-Cable a number of lessons.

The T-3 was offered alongside the B-5 for only one year before the matriarch of the family was dropped from production and within a few years the T-3 was upgraded to a chain drive, making it somewhat quieter and a bit more reliable. However, Porter-Cable kept their finger on the pulse of the tool market, and it was soon discovered that the 1/2 hp T-3, while adequate, was somewhat lacking in performance, and the sander tended to run a bit on the hot side when used for long periods, as the ventilation was inadequate. The decision was made to develop more powerful sanders along the same lines. While one of them hit the mark so well that it laid the groundwork for worm drive sanders into the 2000s, the other was such an overpowered titan that it barely made it five years before being discontinued.

The T-33 in stock form was a thing of Art-Deco beauty.

New for 1939, the T-33 was more or less right from the beginning. Merely one inch longer and a pound heavier than the T-3, it was fully a 1/4hp mightier, and while the belt size and speed didn't change ( 3"x24", 1350 fpm), the added grunt makes the T-33 better suited for heavy work, while the mass and shape make it an easy belt sander to master- I call my T-33 the world's fastest finish sander because you can do surprisingly fine work with it with some practice.

The airflow was improved on the T-33 by the addition of what amounts to a hood scoop. Unlike the T-3, which has a solid front endshield, the T-33 has an endshield that is more or less just a cast bearing hanger, with massive openings around the armature's end. This, combined with a stamped cover that gives the sander something of an art deco look.

The air intake of the T-33 was massive. No overheating for this guy!

This gives the T-33 airflow that a Dodge Superbee would be proud of. The earlier, thumbscrew adjustment for tensioning the belt was replaced by the lever type action that all later Take-Abouts would rely on. As a result, this handsome fellow ( I mean, look at those fluted edges!) was well suited for heavy use and is by far the most commonly found Take-About sander of its time. The stout build and commendable performance made it a hit with everybody, from contractors to Industry to the Armed Forces, and while all Take-Abouts could be had in any voltages required, the T-33 is most frequently found in other voltages ( all made by General Electric), from 110 and 220 single-phase models to a three-phase motor designed and built for the Army Air Corps (shown on the right in the photo below).

220 volt, 11 volt, or three phase, the T-33 could solve the user’s sanding problems.

This Goverment contract oddity incidentally makes the T-33 the earliest known example of a brushless power tool.

While the T-33 was a hit, the last of our T-series family was a solution that never found its problem. What can we say about the T-4?

You didn’t buy the T-4 because you loved sanding, you purchased it because you hated wood.

Appearing in catalogs by 1937, the T-4 is 29 pounds of overkill. Powered by a motor making a whopping 1-1/4hp, the 4"x27" belt makes using this big chungus for any length of time a feat of strength, and anything less than 80 grit will cause the T-4 to behave like an excitable rottweiler, pulling on your arms for all its worth and requiring both hands to keep at heel; in fact, a T-4 will do a drag strip worthy wheelie if the front handle is released ( there's a reason the T-4 doesn't have a front knob, no one short of Popeye has that kind of grip). I've found my T-4 indispensable for handling rough sawn and reclaimed lumber, as no amount of dirt, bark or buried hardware even fazes the big lug. The simple lines of the earlier T-series sanders have been bulked up until this powerhouse resembles a scale model of a brutalist apartment building. The T-4 is gargantuan, strong as an ox, and ( how should I put this) as short on looks as it is long on moxie.

The T-4 was originally offered with an integral aluminum grip, just like the first B-5's, but this was swiftly changed to the tried-and-true maple handle. Another peculiarity of this sander was that it could be purchased with or without dust collection; this was also true of the B-10, but while the B-10 was only given a different fan and the dust nozzle was blocked off, the T-4 had an entirely different rear endshield.

An additional idiosyncrasy of the T-4 is the tendency of the aluminum frame castings to discolor; I've repolished my original T-4 at least three times, only for the finish to dull in a matter of months. I don't really mind, though.

Ever see a belt sander with a skin condition?

I feel that the T-4 may relish in its brutish appearance. As a boy, the Thing from the Fantastic Four was my favorite superhero, and I can just picture this equally hulking New Yorker looking at an unsuspecting board and bellowing, "it's clobbering time!".


The cast:
T-3:3"X24"belt, 1350 fpm,15lbs, 1/2hp GE motor
T-33:3"X24"belt, 1350 fpm, 16 lbs, 3/4hp GE motor
T-4:4"X27" belt, 1650 fpm, 29lbs, 1-1/4hpGE motor

While the T-3 and T-4 would take their last bow by Jan 21st of 1942, the T-33 would soldier on (literally, in many cases) until 1944, when it would pass the torch to the longest-produced power tool of all time, the immortal A-3.

But that's a story for another day.

Long live the locomotive- the story of the Porter-Cable Take-About sander- Part one

Some time back, I was discussing Porter-Cable belt sanders with an acquaintance when it dawned on me that, unlike the history I reviewed at length in my thread about owning way too many circular saws (no, I don't really think that), I've never really put the belt sanders in anything resembling chronological order. This is an oversight on my part; after all, the belt sander was every bit as much a part of the company's bedrock as the saws. Moreover, the handheld belt sander was invented by Porter-Cable's own Art Emmons, who reimagined the circular saw and came up with an entirely new type of tool before he was thirty years old. His ingenious solution to one of the most laborious shop chores would span eighty-three years and would become the standard by which all later derivatives would be measured, and far and away, found lacking. This mighty bloodline would go from strength to strength for the better part of a century, to only meet their demise at the hands of a company that never mastered the concept. I speak of the Take-About sander, in its manifold forms.

Let's meet the family, shall we?

left to right: 500, 503, T-4, T-33, T-3, BB-10, B-10, B-4, B-5, A-3, A-2

Our story starts in 1906. Porter-Cable was begun as a jobbing concern, wherein a customer could have an item manufactured if they didn't have the means to make it themselves. Originally, this was often automotive in origin- Hannah acetylene starters, jacks, steering wheels, and even a parking brake for Ford cars designed by inventor/businessman/dieting guru George G. Porter himself. By the 'teens, they had struck out on their own as a manufacturer of in-house designs and were making a number of tools for the machinist, including vertical heads that could be retrofitted to older horizontal milling machines, a lathe designed for high volume operations and even a line of endmills and a boring head. by 1916, the firm was sold to Walter Ridings, a visionary who had cut his teeth working for Syracuse Supply and acting as president of the Manufacturing Association of Syracuse. He established himself at the helm of the firm as president, and though the Porter brothers and Mr. Cable were savvy businessmen in their own right, most of the advances the company would make until the end of WW2 were the result of Ridings' acumen. For starters, he purchased the site on Salina Street that would be Porter-Cable's home for decades; he purchased Mulliner Enlund for their lathes, Syracuse Sander for their sanders and band saw, and, most importantly, hired Art Emmons.

Walter Ridings had taken notice of the growing demand for handheld power tools, and couldn't help but notice the success Skil was having with their worm drive saw. He foresaw Porter-Cable taking the lead in this fledgling field of manufacturing, and he couldn't have picked a better engineer to bring his conception to life than the young man who was tasked with developing strategies for easing the burden of the worker. Focus was directed towards two of the most onerous tasks- sawing and sanding. Emmons hit the ground running by developing a saw that was so well balanced it could be operated with one hand, then batted one out of the park with the first portable belt sander( or, in company parlance, a Take-About) ever, the brilliant B-5.

The original article, kinda; this “Mark 2” B-5 was made around 1928.

Compact, robust and just plain handsome, the B-5 was a remarkable design, using the technology of the time to great effect. Tools of this period were made from sand castings, and as a result required a great deal of handwork to finish the parts to a high polish, making them, in effect, nearly hand crafted creations the equal of a quality firearm. By mounting the motor vertically, Emmons powered the drive pulley without any chains, sprockets or intermediate gears- the drivetrain is a worm drive system in its purest form. The only true downside of the design was the inherent poor balance due to the offset motor, which was countered by a rear roller and made up for by an extremely low operating grip, making it handle quite a bit like a hand plane; mastering a B-5 is child's play, and it is pleasant sander to use if a little sketchy on edge sanding. Original models had a rear handle that was aluminum and an integral part of the frame casting, but issues with users being shocked led to the replacement of this feature with the maple handle that would go on to be used on half of the B-5's successors ( and even a saw or two). The B-5 is found in three main versions, the original aluminum handled version, the more commonly seen wooden handled style with the polished finish, and the later painted surface. My version is what may be regarded as a "type 2", and incorporates a heavier casting around the front handle mount and wear bar area. Oddly, my B-5 bears an early tag, but was made about two years or so after the original design, possibly due to the factory finding some old tags laying around.

Art Emmons was twenty-six years old when he invented the B-5. Let that sink in a second.

The B-5 was followed closely by the larger B-4,

Give a B-5 the Charles Atlas Dynamic tension method handbook, and you have a B-4.

a 4"x27" sander that was essentially a B-5 on steroids. This sander benefited from the wider belt, being less prone to rocking, though the rear roller was kept. While both sanders were designed to be regreased without being dismantled, the B-4 used a grease cup from the circular saws to grease the idler pulley- just remove the belt, remove the slotted screw in the face of the pulley, thread in the grease cup and refill the bearings. This should give some idea of the level of work these sanders were intended to handle, and it's no surprise that the average B-5 or B-4 is still functional if any attempt was made to keep the oil topped off.

Both sanders were very popular ( the B-5 being helped by having a captive audience- early B-5's have no model number on the tag because there wasn't another model of belt sender on earth at the time), and survivors invariably have a lot of mileage on them. There were two other variants, the B-44 being a B-4 with a small idler pulley, allowing it to sand floors up to the shoe molding ( a concept that Black and Decker tried, and failed, to repopularize decades later), and the even more ephemeral G-44, a version of the B-4 referred to as a sander-grinder. I have seen a picture of the G-44, and cannot determine what the difference is; confusingly, the other photo in the catalog of the G-44 is clearly an early B-5. I've yet to see an example of either sander in the wild, and I probably never will.

The other sander of the period was the B-10.

The B-10. Turns out that longitudinally placed motors are where it’s at.

Appearing in 1932, the B-10 complete departure from the original platform. The B-10 incorporated dust collection, which was the deciding factor in the design. The motor was mounted horizontally on the long axis of the frame, necessitating the worm drive being redesigned to use an intermediate gear to run the drive pulley. This gear is a work of art, being a helical cut affair rotating on a stud via twin miniature magneto bearings, and the drive system is very stout. Additionally, the B-10 used an idler pulley that had a rubber coating just like the drive pulley, making it excel at sanding inside curves and improving performance when used as an edge sander with the optional stand. However, the B-10 suffered from one serious fault. The system used one impeller to collect dust and pull air through the motor housing, an idea that Rockwell would resurrect in the 337 sander of the late '60s. On a belt-driven sander, with the fan/impeller close to the armature, the system works fine. On a worm drive sander, this isn't possible due to the dust collection being mounted at the rear of the machine, and the B-10 fan is a good 4" away from the motor, on the wrong side of the gearbox. Airflow is through twin crescent-shaped openings in the casting (the B-10 is a marvel of the patternmaker's/foundryman's art if nothing else), and the B-10 simply can't breathe as well as it should. Don't get me wrong, I love my B-10 like a child, and often find myself gazing lovingly at its goblin shark profile, but a flaw is a flaw.

The B-10 was made for eleven years, but surviving examples are hard to come by due ( in my opinion) to the chronic overheating of the design when used as hard as the earlier sanders. The early B--10 used a pair of adjustable casters at the rear, much like a floor edging sander, but later versions deleted this feature. Balance of the B-10 is excellent, and it can sand with the best of them. Just let it cool down once in a while, okay?


Our players:
B-5: 3"x24" belt, 1250fpm,14lbs, 1/2hp GE motor
B-4:4"x27" belt, 1650 fpm,23lbs, 1hp GE motor
B-10:3"x27" belt, 1475 fpm,21lbs, 1hp GE motor

These three sanders were very innovative, and Emmons had explored the concept to such extent that the later Skil A and B sanders actually made use of one of his patents for a gear train. Skil would become the only real competition in the world of worm drive belt sanders Porter-Cable would ever have, but Porter-Cable did it first and, if you ask me, did it best.



Join us next time, when we discuss the short-lived but influential T-series sanders.

I own sixty-eight circular saws, and that’s utter lunacy, part seven- A worm drive/ Rockwell double feature

Welcome back, everyone. Today's discussion is a double feature: we'll be covering a peculiar family and one of the few times Porter-Cable followed someone else's lead, the worm drive saws, and wrapping up the family tree with the last of the Mohicans, so to speak.

Porter-Cable started out as a jobbing company. In other words, you could ( if you were alive 114 years ago) go to the firm with a set of drawings under your arm, walk up to the sight of George Porter pigging out on a baby carrot, and have a widget made to order. The company made any number of non-tool related items, from pencil sharpeners to automotive steering wheels, but they were mainly manufacturing metal lathes and milling machine attachments ( and forging the occasional vise) until the hiring of Arthur Emmons, a young fellow who would prove to be the most prolific power tool inventor of all time. As I have previously mentioned, this bright young fellow would invent the portable belt sander and the first helical geared circular saw, the K-9 ( the K-8 was of similar appearance but had no gearing at all, being directly driven). Porter-Cable president Walter Ridings knew a good thing when he saw it, and the company made some genuinely great sidewinder saws, as we have seen. The day would come, however, when Porter-Cable would try their hand at making a line of worm drive saws. Not small trim saws, like the well-regarded A-4; these machines would be intended to compete ( East of the Mississippi, at least )with the Skill 77, the original hand-held circular saw design. I'm speaking of the 533, 567, and 568.

Left to right: 568, c. 1963 , 533, c. 1960

In 1959, Porter-Cable introduced the 533. A worm-driven, pivoting foot left-hand circular saw, it owed much of its design to the extremely popular Skil saws of the past thirty-seven years ( I'm not sure who was responsible for drawing up the plans, but they definitely looked over Skil's shoulder, a far cry from the times when Skil had to pay royalties to the NY boys in order to make the A and B belt sanders). The blueprint was followed so closely that some Skil saw parts, such as adjustment knobs and even the base, can be persuaded to fit the Porter-Cable. The Porter-Cable differs only slightly, being made with off-the-shelf bearings and seals, making rebuilding less of a task. The 533 is a bit stouter in some aspects, but the two saws are neck and neck in terms of performance.

By 1961, the 533 had been supplanted by the 568, which differs in being slightly slower and a half pound lighter and being one of the first saws to adopt the beautiful, exciting putty gray and satin black painted finish Rockwell would slather on any number of tools in following years to avoid firing up the buffer. The family would be rounded out with the addition of the 567 in 1964. This saw used a 6 3/4" blade and was a bit lighter still, but the three saws are very closely related, diverging only in scale and finish.

On the whole, the three saws are excellent machines, very rugged and plenty powerful, but they didn't do anything that the contemporary Skil saws couldn't do better, and even though the 567 and 568 were on the books up to the Pentair buyout of 1981, they just weren't that popular. They remain a curious decision on the part of a company that had no business deviating from the role of trailblazer.


It's time to conclude our brief history of Porter-Cable/Rockwell circular saws. There are a number of places we could end the story; when Rockwell purchased the company in 1960 or when the last saw to feature a grease cup ( the 315-1 and its ilk) debuted in the late '70s. For my part, I'll stop in the middle, with the last aluminum-bodied saw to be introduced and the standard bearer for future generations of users. Let's look at the remarkable 315, or (as I think of some of the examples that have come through the shop) the saw of Theseus.

Appearing in the April catalog for 1964, the 315 was the bare bones version of the well appointed 597, which was itself the logical evolution of the highly successful 115 platform. The castings are tumbled rather than polished, lending them an "orange peel" finish, and the fit and finish is not as precise ( the castings are designed to allow for some misalignment, making the 315 an easy saw to Frankenstein back together from multiple donor saws). Accuracy and power are still respectable, and the wraparound base, inherited from the 115a provides plenty of support, although it precludes cutting up to a vertical obstruction, such as making a pocket cut for a floor grate near a wall. The 315 has two sister saws, the 346 that debuted at the same time, and the larger 368, welcomed into the fold later that same year.

The 315 and company have a few minor faults. The two wrench system of the 115 has been retained ( somehow, people always lost the jackshaft wrench- they are now lost to the ages like all the Unisaw dust doors), which is a bit awkward, and several saws left the factory with a base that does not properly align with the cut, making it difficult to saw to a line without a guide; I've seen too many examples with this problem for it to be anything but a manufacturing fault. The only other real issue is the tendency of the handle to bow under the repeated stress of being used to push the saw, resulting in a noticeable gap between the outer handle half and the handle base. This is due to the lighter castings and is an issue shared with all of the saws in this family ( the 315,346,368, 596 and 597).

As I said earlier, the 315 had a sort of harbinger in the form of the 596,

and the larger 597, which first arrived on the scene in early 1963. These saws are the deluxe version of the same concept. These two saws differ in having more powerful motors, a mechanical brake that worked against the fan ( a larger, cast aluminum affair with a pronounced outer rim) , and a sort of micrometer adjustment for depth. The 315 would share the same basic castings ( although the handle is different, not having provision for mounting the brake button and linkage) , and the later 368 would use the same armature as the 597, but if the 315 is a base model work truck, the 597 is the version with powered windows and heated seats- it's a very luxurious saw, at least in comparison to the more spartan 315.

There are variations of the 315, but they're limited mainly to cosmetics ( and the fifteen-minute window when the saw was known as the 215, for reasons only Rockwell understood). The basic design was by far the most popular saw Rockwell would ever make, being constructed for thirteen years, and the 315 survived in enormous numbers due both to being a durable design and being easily repaired; there are saws brought into our shop for repair that have had every single part other than basic hardware replaced over the decades, a testament to how well-liked the design is. For my part, the 315 is the P.C/Rockwell tool I have the most experience with- I've probably repaired or rebuilt seventy or eighty of them in my time, and my boss, Dave, has likely worked on hundreds of them. To this day, I still regularly see them, almost always in the hands of someone 40 or under who inherited them from their father or grandfather. It is a comforting thought that the remarkable bloodline of innovative, robust, hardworking saws that stretches back to the brainchild of a twenty-five-year-old named Art Emmons still commands some respect, even now.

The 315 is often considered to be one of the best circular saws ever made, and are so sought after that I've had every 315 I've repaired for myself begged from me over the years- it wasn't until fellow OWWM'er Mike Levine sent me this example that I stopped allowing myself to be talked out of them! Personally, I would argue that there are far better machines in the family, with more power, greater accuracy, and better looks. That said, nothing succeeds like success, and the 315 was a highly successful design.


Later designs would be developed to make a double insulated version, known as the 315-1, a good saw in its own right but as dull as a beige living room. The artistry of the power tool ( for me, at least) did not survive the transition to plastic, making the 315 the last of a very distinguished family.

Our saws:
533: 4,500 rpm, 7 1/2" blade, 17 1/2 lbs
567: 4,800 rpm, 6 3/4" blade, 14 lbs
568: 4,200 rpm, 7 1/2" blade, 17 lbs

596: 5,800 rpm, 6 3/4" blade, 14 lbs
597: 5,800 rpm, 7 1/4" blade, 14 1/2 lbs
346: 5,800 rpm, 6 3/4" blade, 12 lbs
315: 5,800 rpm, 7 1/4" blade, 12 1/2 lbs
368: 5,250 rpm, 8 1/4" blade, 13 1/2 lbs


Epilogue- when I started this thread, I thought I was being a bit obsessive about collecting Porter-Cable power tools. Today, I know I am. I've had a great deal of enjoyment in doing so, from the thrill of the hunt and the challenge of resurrecting some truly rough examples, to the gratitude for the efforts of fellow OWWM members in helping find so many of the missing puzzle pieces ( many of my most prized workers were not the result of my vigilance; rather, a number of them were handed to me, almost on a platter).

I currently am the owner/caretaker/foreman of 57 circular saws. Some of them were purchased by home handymen and barely used; others bought by contractors or industrial concerns and used to hell and back. A few of them served their countries, like my USAF K-89. All of them are highly prized, carefully used, and lovingly maintained. I will probably never have an example of every saw, and I've come to terms with that ( but I'll still going to try).

There are 12 known saws that I have yet to find:

K-8
K-9
K-12
K-65
Kwik saw
168a
76
177
567
592
597
597a


Some are hen's teeth, and some are inevitable finds. A few are legendary, and some are notorious. All are fascinating components in a very long story of one company's influence on how work has been done for decades. I'm hoping I've given some explanation of why I find them so interesting, and perhaps you'll find them interesting, too.

I own sixty-eight circular saws, and that’s utter lunacy, part six- The Standard duties

I had mentioned previously that by the 1950's, Porter-Cable had divided their circular saws into three levels of build quality: Standard duty, Heavy duty, and Super duty. This distinction was a sensible one, as the very best of the saws were enormously expensive and designed for extremely hard work, and buying one for home use would be the equivalent of owning a full-sized, four wheel drive diesel pickup truck for commuting to your office job- and who does that?

The Standard/Heavy/Super duty designations were the logical extension of the "ABC" system of dealer levels adopted in the very early '50s: "A" dealers were purveyors of the highest quality equipment only, selling to industry, the "B" dealers provided the middle range products to contractors, and the "C" dealers handled the homeowner quality tools. In practice, a high-end dealer could get you whatever you wanted- the "C" dealers were likely to be hardware stores, selling to the fellow that wanted to cut a board in half before falling asleep in front of the TV, to paraphrase Eddie Izzard.

We've met the Heavy and Super duty saws, but what of the standard duty?

Left to right: 178 c. 1964,125 c. 1957, 66 c.1959

While the terminology was first introduced in 1956, the original standard duty saw of 1954 was the 125, a 6" saw that, in the words of Porter-Cable's ad department, " includes, at a very low price, many features of professional Porter-Cable saws”.

A Volkswagen Rabbit has the same number of tires as a GTO, but that doesn't really make them equal, now does it?

The 125 isn't a bad saw, really. In fact, it's no worse than most homeowner-level offerings of the time. Our lil' pal is entirely made of very light die castings and features ( if that is the right term) a pivoting base made of stamped steel, an integral thumb lever for opening the lower, telescoping guard, and is a very small, nimble wisp of a circular saw ( 8 lbs, which is impressive in a saw that has no plastic parts other than the brush caps). I'm rather fond of the 125, as it lends itself to sawing at shoulder height or overhead, but there is a distinct East German car feel to this tool; everything feels flimsy in comparison to the reassuring mass of a 528 or BK-10. It's important to recall that the A-6, a saw designed specifically for the home hobbyist, required you to visit at least a "B" dealer, making it a heavy-duty in all but name by the standards of the early '50s ( the A-6 was offered for the first few years of 125 production, but was replaced by the less expensive saw by 1957).

By 1956, the 125 gained a sibling in the 160; a saw that is literally a 125 that ate its vegetables. Bearing a 6 1/2" blade and weighing in at a half pound heavier, the 160 is a bit of apple polishing, offering nothing except a slightly deeper cut and an all ball bearing construction, as opposed to the few bushings in the 125; in fact, the only way to distinguish the difference between the saws is the round cartouche on the upper guard- a 125 has a 6, the 160, a 160.

By 1959, someone at Porter-Cable finally noticed they were making the same saw twice, so the 125 was discontinued, and the 66 was introduced, which is even more like the 160 than the 125 was.
This is called marketing, I understand.
The 66 was a 125, bushings and all, that could accept a 6 1/2" blade, it being known for some time that a 6" saw can't always make it through a two-by-four at a 45-degree angle.

There matters would stay until 1961 when the family expanded- there were no less than four models offered by then, including the new 76, which was a 66 that could count higher, our familiar 160, and two 7" saws, the 170 and 177 ( you guessed it, the 170 had bushings, the 177, all bearings). These three new models had wraparound bases which differed in how they were affixed to the body, but the design was essentially still the same configuration introduced by the departed 125.

The last of the saws germain to our conversation appeared in July of 1962. The Porter-cable/Rockwell lineup included the 170 and 177, but new to the family were the 176 and 178, a 6 1/2" and 8 1/4" saw, respectively. The 176 is, in essence, a 66 with the bronze bushings replaced by needle bearings, but the 178, though notable for being the first P.C. saw to offer an onboard blade lock, represents the limits of how big the design could be made without collapsing like a dying star, and most 178's that have seen much use have upper guards that rattle, as the small rivets holding it in place are nowhere near equal to the task. This would not stop Rockwell from developing one last saw of this lineage, the 592, basically a 160 with a thyroid problem swinging a 10 1/4" blade, which is lunacy. I'd love to find one, if any survive, if only to hold it out in front of me like Yorick's skull and ponder the folly of '60's engineers who must have had someone do their physics homework for them.



Almost forgot: the vital statistics are-

125 : 3,300 rpm, 6" blade, 8 lbs
160:3,500 rpm, 6 1/2" blade, 8 1/2 lbs
66:5,000 rpm, idle ( load speed no longer listed by 1959), 6 1/2" blade,8 1/2 lbs
76:4,500 rpm idle, 6 1/2" blade, 9 1/2 lbs
170:4,500 rpmidle, 7" blade, 9 3/4 lbs
177:4,500 rpm idle, 7" blade, 10 lbs
176:4,500 rpm idle,6 1/2" blade, 10 lbs
178:5,800 rpm idle,8 1/4" blade, 12 lbs
592:5,250 rpm idle,10 1/4" blade,18 lbs

All in all, the vast majority of these saws will still cut to a line, even if they don't exactly inspire confidence in the user. They were the last attempt of the company to offer a low budget tool ,s an area where Porter-Cable never quite found its touch, and on that level, they are interesting.

If, you know, you collect saws like a weirdo.
-James Huston

I own sixty-eight circular saws, and that’s utter lunacy, part five-the heavy/super duties

By the mid-1950s, the Porter-Cable lineup had shifted from the Speedmatic/ Guild dichotomy to a single product line with three designations: standard duty, heavy duty, and super duty ( also known as homeowner duty, contractor duty, and holy cow, you do a lot of sawing duty). Standard duty tools ( 125, 160) are a subject for another time, and we have already seen the heavy duty saws ( A-4,157,146,115,108). Today, we'll discuss the heavy/super duty family.

In 1956, the super duty tribe consisted of some familiar faces; the 507 and 508, BK-10, and BK-12 are all known to us, but a new kid on the block appeared in 1956, a saw that would become an instant classic and herald the further development of new 10" and 12" saws, and go on to a nearly twenty-year career.

Enter the 528.

This example is a type 2. The original, short-lived version ( made, it seems, in the early part of 1956, but already superseded by October of that same year)uses the same K-series handle as the 507/508 saws, complete with an embossed switch plate.

The 528 is, in essence, the logical evolution of the 508, differing in the respects of speed (6,300 rpm no load, versus the 508's 7,000), being an 11 amp saw ( as opposed to the 508 at 9 amps), running an 8-1/4" blade instead of an 8", and of course, the telescoping guard. The swing guard was referred to as a safety guard by the 1950s ( and it is a bit safer when cross-cutting 2"x4" lumber since it doesn't have to move and expose any more of the blade), but it was a bit outdated by the time Ike Eisenhower was winding down his first term. Other companies had already gone to a telescoping system decades ago, and the 115/146/108 saws had proven it to be a perfectly sound system, so the 528 sported the newer design from the beginning. This particular version was heavier than the ones on the 146 and 115 and held up much better; I've had to weld many a 146 guard back together, but I haven't ever seen a 528 guard that was bent, much less broken.

The 528 is the first of what I consider the fourth generation ( the standard and heavy duty saws deviate from the original K-series saws in too many respects to be direct descendants of the K-series saws). A nuclear family of only three saws perhaps, but the series that would survive longer than any of its predecessors, from the white socks and buzzcut era 'til the end of the bell-bottomed '70s.

The 528 was joined in 1959 by the 510,

A saw which was similarly evolved from the highly successful BK-10, but the BK-12 still held sway as the largest of Porter-Cable's telescoping guard saws until 1962, when the 542 debuted.

There are two versions of the 542 design; the 542 itself, and the 512, a version made to meet a government contract for a 12" saw fitted with a suppressor to prevent radio frequency interference. My example is a 512 (though someone has removed the model tag on the base) and was likely made right around '62, as later versions would exchange the Porter-Cable name with Rockwell in the upper guard cartouche.

This family would survive into the late '70s, with the 510 and 542 making it as late as 1978. The running changes to these saws were largely confined to the cosmetics, with the original polished finish being replaced by the peace sign era putty gray paint and black cartouche fields after 1975.

While the fit and finish of these saws were better in the early years, there really is no such thing as a bad fourth-generation saw, and I wouldn't be without my three examples ( well, strictly speaking, five examples. I own three 528's, and no, you can't have one), although the 512 is the one I've piloted the most, being an ideal machine for contending with barn beams and larger slabs. I would consider any one of this trio an excellent choice for the person who wants a classic saw but also plans to use it a great deal; the design is about the easiest to change blades or adjust the cut while retaining the build quality and power of the older designs. There are few poor Porter-Cable saws ( although we'll be mentioning some of them in our next installment), but these saws are some of the best.

Next time, we'll take a look at the flimsiest of the bunch, the Arnold Stangs of the Porter-Cable world,the standard duty saws.

I own sixty-eight circular saws, and that’s utter lunacy, part four- the 100 series

We’ve met the first, second, and third generations of porter-Cable saws and familiarized ourselves with the Guild lineup; now, we'll be taking another trip down memory lane in more ways than one as we put the spotlight on the family of orphans that was founded on the first power tool I ever owned, the model that sold me on Porter-Cable for life, the 100 series of saws.

Left to right: 157, c. 1958, 108, c. 1956, 115 c. 1954, 115 c. 1956, 146a c. 1960. Photobomb by 596, who wandered into the wrong family reunion.

When I first laid eyes on the saw that would change my life, it was sitting in a wooden box of organ donor power tools at work. The fellow who did the power tool repair before me was known for ( how shall I put this) unreliable attendance, disappearing for days on end. I was tasked with becoming the new tool repairman, both due to my mechanical abilities and my peculiar habit of showing up for work, whether I wanted to or not.

My first action was to clean the Augean stables that passed for a scrapyard. Dozens of boxes of power tools, not sorted by anything but brand, were crammed on every available shelf. I cleaned and organized for days, but above all, I pruned mercilessly. It was in the midst of a purge that would have made Marie Kondo wince that I unearthed the 115.

It was love at first sight.

To this day, I have no idea why it was scrapped; perhaps the owner didn't want to pay for the basic maintenance it needed. I used a buffing wheel on a spare motor, some bearings, brushes, a cord, and a touch of paint ( this family is one of the last made with cast in "cartouches"- most later saws used stickers)to breathe new life into the 115 and lo, there it was, fully functional, pleasingly shiny and smooth as silk. I was proud of my success, fascinated by the looks and fee,l and just plain happy about my neat saw.

Needless to say, I was hooked.


In 1953, the 115 stepped into a crowded but booming post-war marketplace; everyone and their aunt Tilly were snapping up modest ranch homes that cried out for fir plywood built-ins, porches converted into sunrooms, and all manner of limed oak furnishings and the power tool made the leap from an industry-only frill to being found in every neighborhood ( if not every garage) in one great stride. There was no limit to the number of manufacturers making power tools by the mid '50s, some good, some bad, some truly feculent. In addition, people wanted their money's worth out of a tool purchase.

The 1950s brought us phenomena such as The Drill That Does Everything, using your radial arm saw to rip/launch southern yellow pine projectiles at the wall, and the belief you could somehow learn to frame an addition on your salt box from a three-page article with five pictures. There was a niche to be filled; the public wanted a circular saw that had the power and build quality to do serious work at a price that would allow you to buy, say, a drill or jigsaw as well. The 115 answered that need, and it did it so well that it was produced virtually unchanged for nearly a decade.

The 115 was marketed as a 7" saw ( marked prominently on the integral upper guard, between the screw holes), which seems odd but made perfect sense in a time when Black and Decker made saw blades with a 1-1/8" bore. Proprietary sizes of blades and belts ( Skil was guilty of that one) increased the sales of accessories by forcing the buyer to come back to the manufacturer ( you may sell only one razor, but if you design it right, you'll sell that person a lot of razor blades. At least, you did before disposables were a thing). This was less objectionable in the era before big box stores; your local hardware probably carried only one or two brands of power tools, and department stores that sold a bit of everything were just getting into the handyman act. Rationale besides, the 115 can actually accept a 7-1/4" blade with room to spare, and most users do just that. The later 146 was committed to using a goofball blade size, but more on that in a minute.

The earliest 115 saws can be recognized by the old-fashioned narrow base and the black "Guild style" tag on the motor housing, but the distinctive feature is the flat recoil spring that operates the lower guard, looking for all the world like a miniature drill press return spring. This feature is shared with the 108,

an 8" saw that bears some cosmetic similarity to the 115 but differs in several respects. The 108 was a companion of the 115 from the word go but never really took off ( it was only offered for four years, though the successor model, the 168, limped along until 1962 ). The lack of popularity is understandable, as the 108 is truly the Edsel of Porter-Cable's 1950's saws; the closed-loop handle was a reversion to the K-8 and in offering a grip for ripping and crosscutting, did neither very well- the ergonomics aren't quite right. Add this to a conical motor housing that didn't allow setting the tool on end ( the later K-series saws didn't, either, but they made up for it in a number of other ways. The 115 and descendants had a bakelite, or plastic ring mounted to the motor housing to correct that failing, but the 108 never got one) and the captive lower guard required the jackshaft to be dismantled to clean the guard spring, and it's easy to see why the 108 had no progeny ( the 168 is essentially a 108 in everything but name). Both the 155 and the 108 were sold as "contractors Specials" in a case that was thus marked.

The next development appeared in 1956 when Porter-Cable made what is basically a slightly smaller version of the 115. The 146 was a 6-1/2" saw, which is nonsense ( the A-6 was considered a 6-1/4" saw. Horsefeathers!) and is nearly indistinguishable from the 115. The 115 had been retrofitted with a wrap-around base and the torsion spring that every Porter-Cable and most other manufacturers would use afterward ( some makers went in for the less reliable Don't-Slam-The-Screen-Door expanding spring system), but the 146 started out that way. Later versions of these saws had a smaller guard lever fitted, with a protrusion for the thumb to catch. Production of the 146b would cease in 1962.

The final member of the team was what may be the first left-handed helical geared circular saw, the anachronistic 157,

The 157 is a series of firsts; the first left-hand Porter-Cable, the first saw with a stamped steel base ( excepting the peculiar special order K-88a I rebuilt a few months back), the first heavy-duty saw to use a drop base design. As it sits cheek to jowl with a number of Porter-Cable's earlier saws, the 157 is almost jarringly modern in appearance, and it proved the wisdom of offering a lower profile saw with a rear-mounted handle more suited to cutting sheet goods ( the early saws have their handles on top for a reason. They were designed mainly for cross-cutting framing lumber, an action more easily performed with the saw underhand than out in front (remember, generations of carpenters considered their left knee to be a species of sawhorse, and cutting with one hand while holding the board in the other was common practice). The 157 is a bit unwieldy, as the saw, though left-handed, must be used right-handed due to the proximity of the upper guard ( my wife, who has hands the size of an average fifth grader’s, doesn't have that problem, so it may just have been designed for carpenters with baby hands). The user winds up with his arms almost crossed, standing in the path of the blade and dust. Despite the odd handle configuration, the 157 layout would reverberate down the decades, even though the saw itself was discontinued by 1960.


Our players:
115 ( 115a, 115b): 4,500 rpm, 7" blade,12-1/2 lbs
108: 3,400 rpm, 8-1/4" blade, 13-1/2 lbs
146 (146a, 146b): 3,670 rpm, 6-1/2" blade, 11 lbs
157: 3,675 rpm, 7-1/4" blade, 13 lbs

The 100 series saws are, as a class, highly practical saws, lighter and easier to use than their predecessors, with some of the best lines of the entire lineage ( even the 108 is good looking if a trifle ungainly). By far, the best of the breed was the 115, and future saws did well not to stray from such successful DNA. This saw is praiseworthy for the surprisingly compact frame, substantial power, and sleek contours. The 115 is still a common sight and can usually be found at a reasonable price. If you're in the market for a good circular saw, I highly recommend picking one up.

I'm very glad I did.

I own sixty-eight circular saws, and that’s utter lunacy, part three-the Guild saws

Previously, we’ve seen the development of the K-series saw from the engineering prodigy of the K-8 to the hugely successful K-88. We’ve delved into the 507/508 saws that would influence the next generation of heavy-duty models, bringing us up to the early ‘50s regarding the commercial level, or Speedmatic, saw lineup. Let’s take a moment to familiarize ourselves with the saws of another line, one meant for the sawyer on a budget. I speak of the Guildtool line, and the A-4/A-6/A-8 saws.

In 1936, Porter-Cable decided to set up an alter ego aimed at the home handyman, known as the Syracuse Guildtool Company. Located at 1720 N. Salina St., Syracuse, NY ( the Porter-Cable Machine Company was at 1714 N. Salina Street if you're wondering, so no one was really fooled; the mental image of George G. Porter taking time from his dieting regimen to put the equivalent of Groucho glasses and a trench coat on the new business never fails to crack me up). The Guildtool line was never very extensive, with only eleven known tools made under the Guild aegis, and would be brought into the Porter-Cable fold by the '50s. The earliest tools to surface were the 2-A sander, the HT hedgeshear, and the 4-A circular saw.

Left A-4, to the right, the original 4-A

The 4-A is a far cry in every respect from the Speedmatic first and second-generation saws, being made of much finer castings and using ( gasp) bronze bushings for the arbor, a design that seems reprehensible in the era of inexpensive ball bearings but was, and is, completely acceptable in this class of tool. A bronze bushing, properly lubricated, can take an exceptional amount of stress, as thousands of metal lathe headstocks can attest. The 4-A was a reversion to the worm drive design Skil had developed in the early '20s, save for scale. The 4-A introduced the concept of the 4 1/2" blade, making it very handy for trim and sheet goods. A common application today for these saws is the breaking down of plywood, and I've found mine to be indispensable for making repairs to damaged clapboard siding, allowing (with the addition of a scrap clapboard, turned upside down) a cut that is accurate enough to go through the board without sawing the tar paper underneath.

The 4-A would be followed by the A-4, which seems like apple polishing nonsense. However, the A-4 differs mechanically in being an all-ball bearing saw. The switch was also replaced with a beefier trigger, necessitating a change to the handle casting. There are three known variants of the saw, almost undetectable at a glance. The A-4 is an excellent if somewhat fragile saw, better suited for delicate work than heavy carpentry ( why a dado set was available for it we may never know), and it soldiered on until 1956. Rockwell would introduce a much stouter version, the 314, in the '70s, but the elegance of the earlier saw was lost.

Left to right (deep breath) A-8, c. 1949, A-8 c. 1950, A-8 c. 1952,A-8 c. 1956, A-6 c. 1950, A-6 c. 1952, A-6 c. 1952.

The next (and last) Guild saws would debut in 1947. The A-6 and A-8 were an attempt to offer a circular saw at a cost that the home handyman, serious hobbyist, or frugal tradesman would find more agreeable. Costs were cut in this case by eschewing the traditional gibbed dovetail depth slide and angled segment, producing a saw that retailed for 65.00. This was a considerable saving, as a K-75( the smallest Speedmatic line saw of the time) was 110.00.

The A-6 was quite popular, both because of the lower cost and because of the handiness of a 6" saw for trim work; the biggest downside is that the original A-6 and A-8 weren't capable of anything other than a 90-degree cut, the base only having provision for adjusting depth. This was changed by loosening the twin knobs at the front of the saw and turning the captive thumbwheel in the handle to the specified measurement. This deficiency was remedied almost immediately by a clever retrofit, as seen on this early A-8,



The tilt attachment is simply a pair of plates, joined by an integral piano hinge and incorporating twin wingnuts to hold the chosen angle. The metal strip at the front that appears to be a rip guide is actually the marker for lining up the saw, as the hinged base geometry doesn't keep the edge of the base constant in relation to the saw blade. This worked well enough, although there was an extra adapter plate required to mount an early A-6 to the saw table.

Did I mention the saw table?

The Guild saw table was designed to offer an option similar to the Speedmatic 5500 saw table available to owners of the smaller K-series saws. After finding this particular unicorn and trying it out a bit, I think the Guild is better in certain respects, as it comes standard with legs ( they were an option with the 5500), has a rather clever guard arrangement, and is lighter to carry. The only real failing is the difficulty in changing the blade ( the 5500 table flips up for blade changes) and the somewhat rickety push rod for the switch, a less costly design than the switchable outlet of the professional model.

By 1950, the A series saws had been redesigned to incorporate a conventional angle bracket and base, the depth arrangement being converted to a screwless slide locked down with a bakelite knob. the notch in the handle for the depth thumbwheel was covered by a new Guild tag and was deleted from later handles ( though the earliest of this second type have both the notch under the tag, and the helical inserts for the front knobs, being old stock items used until depletion ). During this time, the aluminum thumbscrew that locks the angle bracket was replaced by a largish wingscrew, but the greatest change ( other than the tilting bracket) was the upper guard. Originally, these saws had what I refer to as a fender skirt, which wins several points for style ( now, tell me that isn't straight out of Detroit), but serves no practical purpose and strikes me as potentially being done to compete with Craftsman power tools of the period, which tended to be very streamlined. It doesn't make it any harder to change blades; the threaded jackshaft and blade nut were still king on N. Salinas, and the upper guard had to be removed to swap out blades for any of the A-6s or A-8s anyways.

Around 1952 or so, the fender skirt idea fell by the wayside, and a newer upper guard appeared.This shaved off the "-6/8 Porter-Cable" found on the earlier guard. By 1954, the whole affair was looking a bit dated, and both saws were redesigned to use the "kick proof clutch" blade screw and washer of the 507-508 saws, while the distinctive, prow-like handle was replaced on the A-6 by the 115 style handle which allowed the cord to exit the side instead of the back. The last year for the A-6 was 1955, and the A-8 made it until 1956, having undergone a lesser facelift, including a kicky new metal tag, available with red or black lettering ( I have no idea when, or why, this change was made, but several examples exist). The A-8 kept the original handle to the bitter end.


For those of you playing at home,

A-6: 3,200 rpm (load), 6" blade, 12 lbs
A-8: 2,700 rpm (load), 8" blade, 14 lbs


The A-6 and A-8 were considered economy saws, but they are far from cheaply made, being quite a bit more robust than the same fare from other manufacturers. Guild saws can be found at flea markets and garage sales to this day, as they were made in large quantities and held up very well to the level of use most of them experienced. These saws had few faults ( once the lack of tilt was corrected), and most of the changes throughout production were cosmetic, essentially attempts to disguise how dated the saw looked. The development of these saws, and the further evolution of the design, taught Porter-Cable a lot of valuable lessons in design. Several of those concepts would find their way into our next group, one of which was the saw that got me started collecting and restoring, the unimpeachable 115.

I own sixty-eight circular saws, and that’s utter lunacy, Part 2- the ‘50s

We’ve seen the starting lineup for one of the most successful circular saw lines of all time ( truly, only Skil and Black and Decker could compare, and let’s face it, they really didn’t) , and we’ve seen the generation that took those designs lessons to heart. These saws were incredibly well made, and they’ve survived the intervening seventy-plus years in droves. They were used in every capacity from home building to the war effort ( remind me to tell you the story of the circular saws headed to the Pacific theater, a fogbound airport, and a truck driver that must have read about Balto as a kid ) to immense satisfaction. They would be sold from 1926 to 1952 in gigantic quantities, and set a standard for quality, that Porter-Cable would live up to for decades. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, it is 1952, and we're about to meet some mid-century classics. Let me introduce the third generation- the fabulous 500 series of saws.

Left to right: my beloved extended arbor 508, an early 507, and the late version 507.

The smaller K-series saws were superceded by a group of machines that may have lacked the genteel luxury of the older models but compensated in speed, lightness and economy; if the K-88 is a celluloid collar, the 508 is a porkpie hat. The 507 and 508 ( or , as they were confusingly referred to in the catalogs, the 521 and 522) can be regarded as a K-series saw made with modern technology, and the immediate difference to the viewer is the large bakelite knob in front of the handle that replaces the time honored adjustment screw of the earlier saws. This knob merely loosened the depth slide, and the ability to finely tune depth of cut became a bit more hit or miss, although the adjustable gib was still present. The other easily spotted change was to the swing guard, which shed the distinctive ring for opening. The newer guard gives these saws a square jawed appearance which is recognizable at a glance.

There are other differences, one being the introduction of the "kick-proof clutch", which is in essence the replacement of the arbor and nut of the first and second generations with a bronze washer and screw. This screw incorporates a spring washer, and the whole affair is merely snugged up, allowing the saw blade to slip in a bind and reducing the chance of kickback. This system works quite well when done properly; the problem is, no one ever does it properly( the washer is supposed to be very lightly greased, and the screw is tightened just enough to bow the integral washer. Everybody, and I mean everybody, cranks it down dry like a lugnut on a tractor trailer rig, and now my eye is twitching).

Then 507 and 508 were immensely successful, and while the 507 disappeared by 1957, being outsold by the lighter smaller 115 (that's a story for another day), the 508 would be produced until the early '70's, making it the longest lived circular saw model of all time ( I know, I know, the Skill 77 has been around since the rocks were soft. That's a long lived model number, the 77 has constantly changed through the years). The saws only changed in cosmetics , the stickers on the handles and upper guards being altered by moving the model number to the end of the print, and the K-series style handle with the peculiar embossed front cover would be modernized to the standard clamshell handle found on the 528.



507 : 4,500 rpm (load), 7 1/2" blade, 15 lbs
508: 4,500 rpm (load), 8" blade, 17 lbs

Next time, we'll meet the only Porter-Cable saws with fender skirts the A-6 and A-8. see you then.

I own sixty-eight circular saws, and that’s utter lunacy

As you may have surmised, I have amassed a rather large collection of power tools and machinery. Lots of people collect stuff, and tools are no exception- many a suburban dad has puffed out his chest while holding forth on how many big-box store plastic dinguses festoon his garage. However, people tend to give you funny looks when the tools are old, and there is a sliding scale of just how unhinged you the collector are perceived as being. F’rinstance, When I tell someone I own four floor sanders, They generally are surprised. If I cop to the fact I have eighteen belt sanders ( worm drive ones; the belt-driven ones don’t count ), eyebrows go up and my wife gets a worried glance.

Should I tell them that I own nearly seventy circular saws, and have no intentions of parting with any of them, some folks will actually start backing away.

Thing is, one of the biggest advantages of having such an assortment ( aside from the fact that there’s precious little in the way of materials that I can’t readily saw up ) is the simple fact that, if you have enough fossils, you begin to see how dinosaurs became chickens.

When I was a small boy, I would spend hours in my grandparents’ sunroom, devouring old Popular Mechanics and paying close attention to the Bantam Knowledge through Color paperbacks, most of which were about animals ( we were too poor for Zoo Books, I’m sorry to say ). I’m reminded of those books every time I explain to someone how the different series, eras, or designs are grouped together- I've always considered myself the Carl Linnaeus of power tools.

That said, I’ve sorted out the history and development of Porter Cable’s entire product lineup, so you don’t have to. It’s time to laugh and learn as I sketch out the various species of circular saw family, starting with the eldest branch, the K-series saws.

The original K-8 was the originator of the basic circular saw layout used today ( unless you're Skil), being a top-handled saw with the blade at right angles to the long axis of the motor. This accomplished two things: for one, it lent the saw a balance that allowed for one-handed use, and two, it got around existing patents. The K-8 is gearless, the arbor being the end of the armature; cutting power depended less on torque than on rim speed. While this worked well enough, it should be noted the K-9 did not use direct drive, having been designed with gear reduction and being the first true "sidewinder" saw. I consider the K-8 to be a bit of an evolutionary dead-end ( but a great first effort, considering Art Emmons was all of twenty-five when he designed it), though the short-lived Kwik-saw shares some characteristics.

My family starts with what I consider the first generation saws of the '30s and early '40s, ( the K-9, K-65, K-66, K-88, K-88a, K-10, and K-12 ). As they were almost comically overbuilt, they tended to survive the passage of time well, and tool Valhalla houses several of this merry band, including these fine gentlemen.

Left to right:
K-66 , K-10, K-88a, and K-88

These saws are the high water mark for build quality, in my opinion, having been meant for unremitting hard labor ( modern saws build houses; these immortals built neighborhoods). One of Porter-Cable's cleverest ideas was to add a force cup to the gearbox, allowing the user to add grease to the gears with a twist of the cap, critical in the days of bronze jackshaft gears when these saws roamed the earth. This lubrication feature would go on to grace nearly every Porter-Cable/Rockwell circular saw until the advent of the 347/743 and 345 Sawboss saws of the late '90s, but the original lineup was designed with two of these cups, the second being a tiny version mounted above the rear armature bearing. The K-10 cost 155.00 in 1941, or darn near 2,800 dollars in today's coin, which is why most specimens ( like my careworn old pal in the photo) have been used well past the point of failure for any saw that isn't of this hearty lineage. First generations can be recognized in the wild by the “coffee can” motor housing,

a design that allows you to sit the saw up on end for blade changes, although all but the K-66 also need the upper guard removed to change blades ( for decades, any P.C. saw could be purchased with an extended arbor and a Huther Brothers dado set, but the K-66 was the only one to come that way standard. It sounds odd until you remember that most joinery cut these days with a router was done by saw in the days when you only had the one power tool).
These saws also continued the use of the safety guard, which may seem dangerous today in the era of sheet goods but made a good deal more sense when the main material was dimensional lumber.

The wealth of user experience led the company to make some amendments to the design, lightening the saw a bit by thinner castings and a more rounded motor housing, as well as a larger depth slide knob. It may seem hardly worth it on paper, but I don’t have to tell anyone who’s framed a house how important even a one-pound weight saving is when faced with a repetitive task- there’s a reason hammers are marketed by the ounce. These saws are what I think of as the second generation, though they are still K-series saws. There are five basic flavors: the K-75, K-88c, BK-10, BK-12, and coming into the picture in 1950, the K-89.

Here are my examples. Left to right , the heroically proportioned BK-10, my ERA radial arm attachment mounted K-88c, a lightly used K-89 and the K-75, first available September 1st of 1940.

These saws are essentially sleeker versions of their forefathers, having most of the virtues of the earlier lineup ( save the whole sit-it-on-end feature), while being less expensive to build. Greasing of the rear bearing was still possible, done in this case by the removal of a finely threaded plug in the end of the motor housing; not as elegant, but still handy. This feature would appear on most later saws until the Rockwell years.

Join us next time, when we discuss the third generation and the debut of the long enduring 508.

The ballad of Lonesome Jim

There aren’t very many machines in my shop that don’t pertain to Porter-Cable in some way. This is by design; it would be hard to accidentally build an all-P.C. workshop. I’ve gathered equipment from virtually every era and product line, replacing the original hodge-podge of vintage machines wherever possible. This isn’t always possible, of course- Porter-Cable didn’t make everything, and where functionality conflicts with verisimilitude, functionality wins.

There are exceptions. I have a Keller power hacksaw that toils away cutting stock for the other metalworking machines, and the only P.C.-ish equivalent is a Lipe-Rollway portable hacksaw that is no match. Similarly, I have a Greenard #3-1/2 arbor press because none of the related companies made anything like it.

Then, there’s Lonesome Jim.

Back in December of 2021, I was looking for a possible milling machine that would be compatible with my Porter-Cable #2 universal milling head. Originally developed for and sold by Whitney Manufacturing Hartford, CT, this head was intended to give older hand millers vertical capability. I had found one for my collection and realized that it could be useful in a supporting role with the Rockwell vertical milling machine I had recently rebuilt. I had a few conditions that any potential milling machine would have to meet, namely a small footprint, an age similar to the universal head, and provision to mount it in place of the overhead arbor support.

While browsing online for a machine that met the criteria, I found an unfamiliar name at HGR, an industrial surplus dealer near me. I had never heard of the J. E. Costilo Machine Works of Brooklyn, NY, but I was intrigued by the small scale, obvious origin during the lineshaft era, and ( let’s face it) low asking price. For a mere 180.00 and tax, I could add this interesting fellow to the team, and if it didn’t work out, I felt I could always get my money back out of it. A further motive was pity. Some research by myself and others led to the discovery that J.E. Costilo was in business from 1893 to 1901, moving to Manhattan that year before fading into obscurity. The thumbnail in the sales ad was enough to reveal that the machine was in poor shape, missing several parts and badly damaged, which was heartbreaking to see in a machine of that era. When it comes to any kind of tool, I don’t pursue the intact ones, the machines that are in gently used condition. I’m too much of a mechanic for that.

I was able to get confirmation of the overhead support diameter, and it seemed that the machine was the right size. What did I have to lose?

When I first laid eyes on the Costilo, I was drop-jawed at the level of indignities the poor fellow had suffered in the past 120 years. The milling machine had lost the overhead support ( not the world’s biggest deal, but still), and had been converted from a lineshaft machine with the crudely installed, shop made countershaft and motor that was mounted via a series of inaccurately drilled holes through the side of the main casting. Worse, the lead screw for the x-axis was completely torn out of the machine, nut, balanced crank, and all. In its place, some degenerate had mounted an adjustable stop bodged from a piece of all thread and some nuts, while a sub-table kludged together from flat stock and an entire box of 1/4-20 flathead screws was slapped on the original table surface.

There was also good news. I’ll think of it any minute.

I posted bail for the ancient milling machine and loaded it up ( well, the forklift driver loaded it up- the Costilo is a lot heavier than it looks). Once I got home, I spent an hour and a half just removing all the BX cables, hack job guards, and other barnacles slathered haphazardly to the mill by generations of millwrights ( or in this case, millwrongs). To my surprise, the milling machine had suffered an injury that staggered belief- the entire table had been broken in half, the damage “corrected” by brazing the halves back together. In addition, the castings, under all the brackets, were pockmarked with bolt holes.

I love getting machines in this kind of shape, really. You have absolutely nowhere to go but up.

I started by giving the mill a bath. A thorough degreasing/scrubbing/pressure washing peeled most of the vomitous green paint off of the milling machine as if I was shucking a corn cob, and a session of wire wheeling removed what little original paint remained, leaving clean ( if butchered) castings. I stripped the milling machine to the last screw and sent everything off to the vinegar bucket for derusting.

I dragged the main castings into the basement shop and eased the Costilo into its berth, recently vacated by a drill press that I never really used. After filling the holes in the castings with epoxy, I painted the milling machine a slimming satin black. The raised lettering and trim around the openings in the casting got a coat of gold paint. There’s no evidence that the mill originally had an accent color, but after all its suffering the poor thing deserved to be tarted up a bit.

Going through the cleaned hardware, I rejected any and all pieces that were obviously too new to have been original to the mill. Luckily, most of the major components had an assembly number stamped on them; anything marked, “25” was supposed to be there.

After a little work, it became obvious how much was missing from the mill, and how much needed to be made from scratch. This wasn’t a serious problem in and of itself. What was problematic was recreating the original appearance.

See, I didn’t have any idea what the milling machine was supposed to look like.

As of this date, only one catalog cut of a J.E. Costilo machine has come to light, and it isn’t the mill. In fact, no other Costilo machine has surfaced. Our boy here is, at present, the sole survivor of the James Edward Costilo machine Works, hence the moniker, Lonesome Jim.

It’s not all bad news, though. There are a number of similar machines to extrapolate from, the closest being a Carter and Hakes hand milling machine. After some studying, I was able to reverse engineer what I think is the most likely configuration. The damaged table was re-repaired by driving bolts into the sea of holes left by the sub-table, cutting them off flush, and cleaning up the whole casting on the surface grinder. There are a couple of major blowouts to be avoided when clamping work, but this is usually not an issue.

The Costilo uses a “rise and fall” mechanism for the Z-axis; the large crank on the front operates a rack and pinion which lowers the table against spring pressure, and relating the hand crank returns the table to operating height. This design lends itself to operations like keyway cutting, a task at which the Costilo excels.

The countershaft was reconstructed and married to a 1/2hp Century repulsion induction motor. Reverse is provided by shifting the brush assembly, and the whole shooting match is mounted to the rafters above the mill, returning it to the lineshaft power source it was meant to have.

Tha Porter-Cable universal head? It fits like a glove, giving the Costilo vertical milling properties and giving it the ability to achieve some very complex angles. It is also powered from the countershaft. The clicking of the belt adds a certain something to the experience.

The two “windows” in the main casting were filled with Mahogany and drilled to accept the tools and tooling most commonly used with the mill; the right-hand side houses all the Brown and Sharpe #7 collets, hex wrenches, and even a small boring head. On the left -hand side, there is room for the horizontal arbor tooling, which I don’t have ( it’s #6 Jarno taper, which went out of style when Teddy Roosevelt was president and is understandably hard to come by). These boards also serve to keep dust and swarf from entering the base, making it easier to keep the milling machine relatively clean. The leadscrews are protected by brass covers, because the Costilo has a lot of spoiling due after all the abuse it suffered.

The Costilo has proven to be invaluable to the shop, handling the surprising workload of shaft repairs that I run into. Sure, the Rockwell could do the job, but the Costilo is faster to set up, leaves the Rockwell free for other things, and is a lot of fun to run. I’ve grown very fond of this time traveler that remembers a world before airplanes were invented.

Welcome to the team, old man. It’s good to have you.

The B-1, that most misbegotten child of Ray L. Carter

You may not have heard the name Ray Carter before, but if you’ve ever used a router, you have benefited from his greatest work. For you see, Mr. Carter was the man most directly responsible for the modern router. Oh, sure, there was the Kelley Electric Machine Co., but their “router” was designed for one application, the routing of stair stringers. Ray Carter’s design ticks all the boxes we expect from a router in the space age, not least being the provision to adjust depth. It seems that Carter improvised his first router ( or, in company parlance, a hand shaper) from a hair clipper motor, gave it a base and handles, and changed the way dozens of woodworking jobs were accomplished. (few tools are as versatile as the router; the biggest limitation is the imagination of the operator, really ). Carter would sell his manufacturing concern, the R.L. Carter Co., Inc, to Stanley in 1929. Stanley, in turn, would make his invention in every size from the smallest proto-laminate trimmers to the mammoth 3 hp monsters that were so heavy they were equipped with a lifting ring. This lineup would go through endless permutations before being bought out by Bosch, who would continue using elements of this lineup of Carter-inspired routers into the 2000s, making it an incredibly successful design.

Not bad for a fellow who fumbled three businesses in six years.

See, several years earlier, our boy here developed a disc sander in 1916; this sander was sold under the name of the Pioneer Dustless Disc Co., a company that existed for about six months. This would become the Carter & Buchholz Co., Inc. , a teaming up of Carter with Louis Buchholz, a patternmaker. This incarnation would offer three disc sanders ( and possibly, the S-1 oscillating spindle sander) before mutating once more into the Syracuse Sander Manufacturing Co. Under the Syracuse aegis, this duo would prove fruitful, expanding into a number of machines that included a truly underrated band saw, several disc and spindle sanders, and the dumbest design of belt sander known to mankind.

There is some design flaw or another with virtually every Carter-designed machine. The BS band saw suffered the least from his flights of fancy; compact ( for a 20” band saw, that is), robust, and elegantly shaped, it has one main fault in the distinctive round table, which looks boss but is something of a headache to put a fence on. It’s a minor matter- after all, the utility of a band saw fence was but poorly understood in the ‘teens. Besides, the saw makes up for it in every other respect, being the finest band saw I’ve ever used, bar none. The D-1 disc sander is likewise a fine machine, only slightly hampered by the table being supported on only one side ( a defect corrected by Porter-Cable with the addition of a steel bracket that bolted to the table and an added excrescence on the dust shroud casting). The oscillating sanders got it much worse. While the S-1 has a worm drive oscillating mechanism running in grease instead of the tried and true oil bath, the O-3 didn’t even have that, the worm drive being external, directly under the open throat of a sander, and protected ( if that’s the right term) by a chintzy tin cover.

However, no machine in Carter’s prolific career was wronged by its creator like the poor, benighted B-1.

In my shop, the only known surviving example of this abomination rests uneasily, shorn of motor and stand, the table wrenched away, abraded, worn, and prematurely wounded by the inherent flaws of its design.

I was offered this sander, or what’s left of it, by my friend Craig, who got it out of a combination of pity and curiosity. This may be the only proper way to regard a B-1, and after a comedy of errors with the shipping agency that resulted in me dragging the remains into my lair on New Years’ Eve night, I had to agree.

What can we say about the last B-1? The sander couldn’t have ever worked very well. One of the worst mistakes is the peculiar system for mounting the table. Instead of the flexible but otherwise robust single trunnion, the B-1 had the table supported on both sides by a sort of pivoting bracket with fingers that engaged two sockets machined in the sides of the table. This in and of itself is fine, if a little weird, but the brackets are minuscule, being about a 1/4” thick, and the fingers and sockets are correspondingly tiny. This, combined with the proximity of the sockets to the edge of the table closest the belt, make it only a matter of time before the table is abraded away enough for those sockets to be eroded, causing the table to fall off. Of course, this can be somewhat delayed by cranking down the bracket adjustments for dear life, but this only causes the casting to fail around the brackets, making them tear out. I don’t have to tell you that a belt sander with a delicate table is at a serious disadvantage, but wait, there’s more.

The second major shortcoming of the B-1 is the idler pulley. Later sanders during the Porter-Cable years would use a pulley ( or roller ) that had bearings pressed into it; these bearings would mount on stub spindles that were free to pivot in a pair of bronze hangers that could move up and down in a cast pocket in the frame to allow for tracking. Simple, no?

The B-1 had no such frills. Instead, the pulley has a fixed arbor that mounts in two bearings. These bearings in turn are mounted in bronze hangers that have no provision to pivot. These hangers are contained in a pocket that is a bit wider, and since the adjuster screws are captive in a cast iron arch that straddles the pocket without being attached in any way, can be tilted from side to side. As a result, the entire range of movement for tracking is dependent on the poor fit and lack of fasteners ( although there is a small steel dowel to register the upper adjustment assembly). Not only does this promote wear on, well, every moving part of the upper pulley and hardware, it also means that a belt failure with the platen in the horizontal position will mean that the pulley, tracking hangers, bearings, and adjusters will crash to the floor, being held in place chiefly by the sanding belt.

I mean, why?

There is a third serious drawback to the B-1, as if it wasn’t already doomed- the motor is a direct drive arrangement, mounted by the face and cantilevered out into the ether on the other end. In fact, the casting that houses the lower shaft and supports the top frame is also the front endbell of the motor. As a result, any failure of the motor is catastrophic and requires some serious retrofitting to mount a different motor, which is why the original base is missing on our example.

So, you might ask, what’s the bad news?

The B-1 has everything wrong with it. Bearings are of no moment, since I replace them as a matter of course, but every bearing surface was worn or damaged. The table mounting area of the main casting is broken out, the table badly abraded, the top and bottom shafts ruined, the platen worn, the motor missing, the stand long gone. No matter; shafts are easy enough to reproduce, and my toolroom personnel includes a very competent old lathe and a milling machine that specializes in cutting keyways. The table? well, it wouldn’t be too hard to mill out material where the table mounts and fit a piece of steel drilled, tapped, and slotted for the brackets. The table could be repaired with a fabricated filler piece, the platen filled with epoxy and covered with spring steel, and the stand made up by having some patterns cast and finding an appropriate-sized piece of pipe. The motor would be a trick, being a General Electric 3600 RPM model, but they do turn up from time to time.

The only issue is that when the parts have been made or sourced, and the sander is freshly reassembled, it’s still a lousy design.

Luckily for me, the B-1 begat far more successful descendants, and I own six of them. The B-1 will someday stand cheek to jowl with its grandchild, the irreproachable B-3, a machine with none of the faulty DNA of its ancestor. I can’t imagine I’ll use the B-1 a whole lot, but I’ll fire it up every once and again if only to appreciate that some machines are rare for a reason, not everything should be made like they used to, and certain folk really, really needed to stick to routers.

Model spotlight: the 115/115a circular saw

It started, innocently enough, with a circular saw.

I was originally a small engine mechanic at my place of employment until 2002 when I was asked to take over the power tool repairs. I started by doing some spring cleaning, sorting out the scrapped tools, and throwing out what was unusable. Many of the tools were obsolete, some were downright ancient. I was arranging circular saws when I found what would prove to be the start of a fascination (or obsession, depending on who you ask). It was a smallish saw, with a compact body that was smoothly rounded and streamlined. The saw in question was a 115, an incredibly influential 7” circular saw Porter Cable made from 1954 to 1963.

This one was the earliest version, which used a flat recoil spring to return the guard rather than the later coil spring. While nominally a 7", it would accept a 7-1/4" blade. In its day it was quite sophisticated, having one of the first telescoping guards found on a Porter Cable product. Light, powerful, and compact, the 115 was very popular with carpenters - so much so that the metal storage case had "contractor's special" printed right on it. The design of the 115 would lead to the development of subsequent saws like the 146/346, 597, and 315, but the build quality and futuristic profile of the 115 would never be matched.

Of course, I didn't know any of this at the time. I just thought it looked neat.

Due to its many virtues, the 115 was widely used, and is one of the less expensive saws to buy these days. An early model will have the narrow, K-series-style base, but later models went to a more modern wrap-around base. Other than that and the improvement to the lower guard spring, a 115 is a 115- why paint the peacock?

As of this writing, I own 36 different models of circular saw... from the tiny 126 to the gargantuan 542. I use them all, sometimes having three or four saws out for one project, set up with different blades, or adjusted to different depths and angles. But the saw I reach for, nine times out of ten, is that same saw that piqued my interest over a decade ago.

By The Numbers:

Made: 1954-1963

Motor: 10 amp

Blade Size: 7"

Look for: cracks in lower guard; missing end cap, stripped gears, damaged blade screw and washer

On the subject of tool resurrection

There are a number of questions I get asked regularly about my passion for restoring machinery and handheld tools of the past. Do I use all the tools in my shop? Eventually, yeah. Do I think I’ll ever stop lugging them home? Goodness, no! What does my wife think? She’s come to terms with the irony of being a minimalist woman married to a man who owns seventy-three circular saws.

The big question, the one with no pat answer is this: what’s the point in collecting old tools?

What indeed.

There are a lot of reasons a body might rebuild an old handheld power tool or stationary machine. You might be starting a shop on the cheap, and a router or table saw that just needs a bit of TLC is less expensive than buying new. You may be attracted by the build quality, or aesthetics, or quaintness of a long-ago machine, have fond memories of the one your dad had that was just like it, or simply enjoy having a project to tinker with.

For me, a major factor has to do with my career. I have been a power tool repairman for over twenty years now, and I’ve had a front-row seat to the decline and fall of Domestically produced tools of all types and the subsequent prevalence of tools made by the lowest bidder in a factory on the other side of the world, preferably by robots. My years at the workbench spanned the end of American manufacturing and the unavoidable paradigm shift as tools went from being thought of as one-time purchases to be cared for and repaired as necessary ( tool as investment) to the current view of a tradesperson’s tools as another jobsite consumable, no less than reciprocating saw blades or a box of drywall screws ( tool as expense).

The vantage point of tools as being something you buy without research the next time you run out for warped plywood at the big box store is appalling to little ol’ me on a number of levels. My shop is filled ( crammed, even) with tools that were researched, demonstrated by a salesman, saved for over a matter of months, and purchased at great expense by the original owners, be they a home builder or a factory, serious home hobbyist or maintenance department. These machines were not replaced at the first sign of trouble because they rarely misbehaved and were far too expensive to ditch. They weren’t relegated to the backup when they got older- there was no backup for a circular saw or belt sander in the ’30s because the company very likely didn’t own another. These tools were expected to perform, and they did so well at it that they have, without exception, outlived their first owners, and often their second. That degree of build quality wasn’t cheap then. It doesn’t even exist now.

Moreover, there is the environmental impact to consider. People look askance at me when I say that because they often think of conservation as a modern concept with no application in the world of Old Stuff, but my views on the subject are more in line with the era these tools came from than one might think. We exist in a time when we have more information on our effect on the planet than ever before. We can exchange information about everything from climate change to resource depletion with anyone anywhere in the world, build a computer model to predict the number of water bottles that will be in the ocean in fifty years, and track, in real-time, the inevitable crash of an eco structure, yet there has never been a time in human history that has been more wasteful, more gluttonous for material goods, more predisposed to squander resources without compunction.

I’m not a wasteful person by nature. I’m the descendant of people who came from Scotland ( a country synonymous with parsimony) to become Hillbillies ( who didn’t have enough to their names to waste). I’m also a mechanic, both by trade and disposition- it goes deeply against the grain to throw out what could just be fixed. I think it’s absurd for a saw or drill to have a lifespan of fewer than ten years when virtually everything you or I own can be constructed in such a way that one of them will last you the rest of your life. For example, my lawnmower, a secondhand Lawn-Boy acquired when my wife and I moved in together, is now sixty-eight years old and still going strong. I’ve never owned another mower, and there’s every likelihood I never will. Our refrigerator is even older, having been made before the outbreak of WW2. It still does a fine job of keeping things cold, looks good doing it, and is the most efficient refrigerator ever tested by Consumer Reports to this day. My truck, one of the newest things I own, is old enough to run for president.

I may not always do the best job of sorting the cans from the bottles, but it’s safe to say I’ve got reducing and reusing on lock.

Additionally, there is, I think, a greater connection with life when the things you use day to day are an experience. Many of the greatest advancements in technology in the last fifty years are related more to convenience than to longevity or quality. This is not necessarily a bad thing, especially for the tool user who must watch his or her bottom line like the proverbial hawk. However, I have a low tolerance for the just-push-a-button, automatic, everything-is-being-done-for-you nature of things. I like shifting gears myself. I enjoy lining things up to a pencil mark instead of a laser. I enjoy sharpening lathe tooling and adjusting the lantern toolholder. It’s part of the ambiance to top off the oil before sanding down a board, I’m in no hurry. Flat belts and drum switches and HSS tooling have great feng shui properties.

Anyone with a love of history can’t help but be drawn in by the artifacts of the past. I think about my tools every time I start a job. Was my 1918 lathe purchased for war work? Why did the Army Air Corps want my T-33 made with a three-phase motor? How long did the original owner of my K-88 have to save to buy it? Did my 503 sander help put someone’s kid through college?

I often think of my crew down here in the shop as time travelers. The world is so very different from when they first saw the light of day. My Costilo milling machine remembers Utah becoming a state. My Syracuse band saw recalls the Teapot Dome scandal of the Harding administration. My workshop contains the tools of any number of trades, many of which simply don’t exist. When was the last time someone hung a regular door? Who sharpens drill bits anymore? What is a deck crawler for, anyway?

There’s also the question of performance. I draw a fair amount of heat for this, but I hold that, outside of weight savings and price, the best tools of the past can show a clean pair of heels to any modern equivalent, and can almost always hand the current brightly colored plastic excuse for a tool its hind portions in a one-on-one shootout. This deeply offends people who drink deep of the red/yellow/green Kool-Aid, but it’s true. No one has made a great circular saw in nearly thirty years. There is no honest-to-goodness heavy-duty belt sander on the market today. I have a handheld jigsaw that can cut 3/8” steel plate- show me the variable speed, keyless chucked offering that has a chance of doing that. Yes, cordless tools are a thing. I own them, they’re new. I find them very handy for jobs when I don’t want to run an extension cord. They’re boring as a beige room, and I get nothing out of using them except more time to run the cool machines.

As I mentioned earlier, my wife is a minimalist person to the core, chiefly because she doesn’t want to spend her life caring for things she doesn’t really care about. I get that, and couldn’t agree more. Thing is, there’s a lot of inanimate objects I do care about, and I’m happy spending a large part of my life caring for them.

You?

Brigadoon Considered as a Belt Sander

I found my ultimate quest machine nine years ago.

I had been seeking a Porter-Cable B-5 sander for ages. The B-5 was the first handheld belt sander ever marketed, and, along with the K-8 circular saw, formed the bedrock of Porter-Cable’s reputation.

I had a chance at one in late 2003, when I first got into vintage power tools. Unfortunately, it was beyond my budget at the time. I tried again a few years after, and it once more went out of my reach. This happened again and again, while prices rose sharply, in some cases approaching $1,000.00 for a clean example. I was beginning to despair.

My luck changed thanks to Paul, a fellow Porter-Cable collector. In the course of talking about our respective P.C. collections, he offered me a B-5, in rough shape but with potential for salvation, for free.

As you may have surmised, I took him up on it.

I went to Youngstown with my father-in-law to meet Paul in person and pick up the sander. He spared us a great deal of his time, allowing me to peruse through his enviable collection of Porter-Cable documentation, and shared some great stories about his finds (his collection is astonishing, to say the least).

The sander in question was his first B-5, too, and is a bit of an enigma – besides having some casting differences to any other known example, it has an anachronistic tag. The original B-5, an aluminum handled affair, was made for only two years before it was realized that sanding conductive materials with an all-metal power tool greatly increased the chance of shock. The type two seen here used a maple handle that would go on to be seen on Porter-Cable machines as late as the 1990s. Our example, however, still bears the earlier 1926 tag, which mentions patents pending and has no model number (at the time, there was no need to mention the model, as there was no other model of handheld belt sander made, by anyone). I imagine someone at the factory stumbled across some old tags and chose to use them up, making this uncommon fellow even rarer.

After we took up a goodly portion of his afternoon, we departed with this,

the most beautiful sander in the world, if you ask me.

The years (and former users) had not been kind to the B-5. The brass gear was stripped, the switch plate was missing, a former owner nearly cut it in half with a poorly tracked belt (or ten), and a mending plate had been added, with a mounting bolt right through the tag. When that didn’t work, welding repairs had been done without dismantling the sander, so it melted part of the tag and finished cooking the insulation of the field and armature. Oh, and they stripped out the front handle, the hooligans.

However, it wasn’t all doom and gloom; it had, as they say, good bones.

Some collectors would keep looking for a better example, but I actually enjoy the challenge of a trainwreck machine, and I get a great deal of satisfaction in rescuing these basket cases. There’s a silver lining of sorts with a machine in this situation; you have nowhere to go but up.

I chose to start the resuscitation by rewelding the body properly and straightening the frame once it was repaired. After that, I could address the other issues with the castings while waiting for the motor to be rewound and the gear to be reproduced. Farming out so much of the work was expensive to be sure, but a few tool sales and some judicious savings soon provided the funds. It took a while, but love always finds a way.

The welds were ground completely out and redone. Once the frame was a bit more solidly held together, I started bending the front roller housing assembly back into true. I’ve never been more nervous in my life than when I was applying leverage to the irreplaceable main casting in order to wind it back into alignment without cracking it in half; if it had let go, I think I would have thrown myself in a river.

Once I had attended to the ravages of time, I turned my attention to the poor state of the bearings. The sander was equipped from the factory with magneto bearings, a design popular at the time for ease of installation, and well suited for lower workload applications. These bearings were, of course, ground to hamburger, so the decision was made to modify the B-5 to accept modern, sealed ball bearings. Preload is still adjusted through the bearing caps, and no difference can be seen from the outside of the sander.

I also took the liberty of adding a full-length wear bar to the B-5 both to prevent future damage and to provide some structural support to the frame. This amendment replaces the small, rudimentary block of the original design. The vise grips in the photo are holding the wear bar in register while the metal-filled epoxy I used as a bedding agent sets.

Here is a close up of the repair; I had to carve the welded over letters of the name “Cable” out of the remaining aluminum:

Other than fabricating a new tracking screw, the front pulley arm assembly was an easy fix. The support arm is bronze, and, like most other castings on the B-5, has an inspection stamp. This, combined with the numbers stamped into the various sander parts to keep them together through the fit and finish process just goes to show that early Porter-Cable power tools were almost hand made, a far cry from the automated production of today. Not many people can say they have a bespoke belt sander, but the B-5, B-4, and B-10 machines do kinda fit the description.

The poor thing was looking a bit more dignified after clean up, repairs and a bit of paint. Some B-5’s have a polished finish, but this one wore a metallic paint job from the factory.

I needed to farm out some things, such as the rewinding of the field and armature, having a new rear roller bracket (the B-5 is poorly balanced due to the offset motor, so an aluminum roller in an adjustable bracket is used to keep it upright. At some point, that disappeared, too). A new gear had to be made as well, but once that was accomplished, I was able to take this lovely old sander on the first run it had been capable of in decades.

The B-5 sands quite well, better than the design simplicity and poor balance would suggest. I reserve this old sander for my finest work, and it still lifts the burden of sanding drudgery from my shoulders with the same aplomb it demonstrated ninety-two years ago. It’s easy to see why this sander helped propel Porter-Cable to the forefront of power tool manufacturing.

The Strange, possibly plagiaristic story of Mackintosh Hutchinson

While they were best known for the manufacture of handheld power tools, Porter-Cable has had many forays into the world of stationary machines- after all, George G. Porter was the inventor of the hi-production lathe ( in addition to his patents for automotive parts and his pioneering work in diet culture. But that’s another story).

Truth be told, Porter-Cable tended to do better by bringing in outside talent when it came to the larger tools, which is where Syracuse sander and Mulliner Enlund came in. Our focus, however, is on a little-known connection to an obscure maker who managed to develop several machines that were simultaneously painstakingly machined and haphazardly finished.

I give you the Hutchinson Manufacturing Company, Inc., of Norristown, PA.

Originally based in Toronto, Mackintosh Hutchinson started out around 1912 making a machine known as the woodworker. this was, in essence, a flat belt driven radial arm saw, powered by a rear-mounted motor and adjustable via a column that rose from the floor; there appears to have been nothing linking the working parts to the tall wooden bench that the work sat on.

This machine went through a number of changes over the next few years, but unfortunately for Hutchinson, it remained suspiciously similar to another machine, the Elliot Woodworker.

Elliot was another Toronto builder, who opened their doors in 1910 making the Woodworker; they didn’t take kindly to anyone cribbing their notes, and there were several years of courtroom drama where our boy Mackintosh gave as good as he got, but, in the end, Hutchinson had to relinquish the rights to his machine to Elliot. It’s unknown whether Hutchinson copied Elliot or just happened to come up with a similar design by chance, but like the song the sirens sang, it isn’t beyond conjecture. For my money, I think it was a case of great minds thinking alike- while the basic concepts are the same, the two machines are different in quite a few ways, if the advertising cuts are any indication. Regardless, Mackintosh was forced out of production, at least in Canada.

Cue the move to Pennsylvania.

By 1921, Hutchinson manufacturing was offering a variety of combination machines. In fact, there were only a few standalone machines in the lineup,, such as the Speed Marvel bandsaw. Or the Speed Marvel shaper. Or the Speed Marvel jointer.

It strikes me that, for an inventor, Mackintosh Hutchinson wasn’t very imaginative.

Hutchinson products all have two things in common: First, endless running changes to the design, wherein a given machine would be improved upon subtly throughout production life, and secondly, being somehow both well and poorly constructed at the same time.

Most Hutchinson machines are built around a similar concept- the twin screw mechanism. In this system, a table saw, shaper, or radial arm saw table is raised or lowered via two acme thread screws, attached to the bottom of the table in such a way that they aren’t free to rotate. These screws pass through a pair of helical gears that are internally threaded; turning the gears will cause the screws to move up and down. These gears are held captive in a notch in the main casting and are acted upon by another set of gears mounted to a horizontal rod. This allows everything to be adjusted via a handwheel, and is an accurate and robust system, but it requires a great deal of machining to build. This work was done well, and I have yet to see a Hutchinson machine with a raising mechanism that was damaged- the design is just about indestructible. Equal in quality are the beautifully planed cast iron tops, the massive, perfectly fitted flanges and spacers on the arbor, and the rather elegant toggle levers for locking adjustments, all top-notch manufacturing.

However, similar care was eschewed for virtually anything else, and most machines are comprised of castings that are for all intents unfinished, with visible casting flash, bolt slots that are fresh out of the mold, and barely any attention to looks beyond the omnipresent, muddy gray-blue paint every machine bore. A Hutchinson machine is a joy to use, but only after some filing and tweaking.

This bizarre set of priorities is equally evident in the lack of scales, pointers, and any other form of onboard mensuration ( the sole exception that comes to mind is the rather crude angle scale found on the radial arm saws. This has no real means of adjustment, the pointer being a chisel mark in the accompanying casting). Ol’ Mack firmly expected the user to have a box rule and square handy at all times, It seems.

All this aside, Hutchinson products are very well made where it counts. I have three of their machines, a “Handy Hutch” table saw/ jointer, a “Beaver” combination woodworker ( radial arm saw, rip saw, jointer, and horizontal borer), and the “Speed Marvel” shaper, and have nothing but good to say of them ( though several upgrades, mainly to dust collection and guarding, definitely improve the experience). These machines were mainly intended for the homebuilder, and are constructed for the job site, more so than the workshop ( there are several machines that were available with a gasoline engine instead of the usual electric motor). They are accurate, sturdy, and easy to use, but lacking in refinement and usually in need of some finetuning to get the best out of them.

What’s all this have to do with Porter-Cable? Well, at some point before 1931, Porter-Cable started offering the Hutchinson line in their catalogs to supplement the portable saws and sanders, having no other stationary machines in the lineup than the Syracuse Sander based designs for sanders and a band saw. Hutchinson had no sanding machines ( although there was a sanding disc that could be mounted to the “Beaver”), though there were a few different configurations of band saw, and the lines dovetailed fairly well. The exact nature of the arrangement appears to have been the purchase outright of Hutchinson by Porter-Cable, even if there’s not much to confirm it; it would be odd if they didn’t, because they referred to the resulting firm as the Porter-Cable- Hutchinson Corporation.

No light has been shed on the length of this team-up, but it’s known that a newer pattern of jointer was offered as late as 1949. I have seen one of these machines, and it bears little resemblance to the earlier offerings, being a thoroughly modern design.

All things considered, Mackintosh Hutchinson was a clever inventor, having offered a fairly comprehensive line of machines from table saws to lathes in any number of permutations; a person could go mad trying to collect one of everything. Hutchinson machines crop up from time to time, drawing little notice due to the obscurity of the brand, but they are solid machines, capable of good work and not without a certain roughhewn charm, and they deserve a place in the history of Porter-Cable for that reason alone.

The Beast of Syracuse

I first met Millicent in the Fall of 2016, when she was already nearly one hundred years old.

The years had not been kind to her; most likely brought into the world to help vanquish the Kaiser, she had labored for decades making parts, doing thousands of hours of threading. When she was put out to pasture by the original purchasers, she was passed from one indifferent owner to another, doing any number of odd jobs while her health declined, she lost some teeth, and stiffness, fatigue, and general malaise crept over her. Purchased at last by a caring owner and retrieved from the basement in Chicago where she had languished for many years, she was treated for her worst health problems and given a new job, making the occasional run of parts. However, her age and general condition proved unequal to the task, and she was once again relegated to the sidelines, this time at least given shelter in a shipping container until I was able to purchase her freedom for a mere three hundred dollars. After much work and TLC, she has regained most of her health and not a little of her dignity, her scabby hide now returned to a glossy coat, and the past five years working with her have undone a lifetime of neglect. This comeback is heartwarming but not unheard of. People rescue dogs, cats, horses, and other animals all the time. Things are a bit different when it comes to old Millie, though.

For, you see, Millicent is a metal lathe.

I’ve had a bug in my ear for ages about finding a Porter-Cable lathe. After all, lathes and milling attachments are really where the company made its first foray into the world of tools, and if a body has a hankering to make an all- Porter-Cable workshop dedicated to restoring that company’s products, a P.C.-made metal lathe ( or, in company parlance, an engine lathe) is de rigueur. While there are three basic flavors of Porter-Cable lathe, two of them, the Rapid Production and the later Carbo-Lathe, are purely production lathes, highly specialized for making hundreds of a given part a day; they don’t even have provision for threading and as a result, don’t lend themselves to making onesies-twosies parts. But the third machine, a far more versatile design, was right up my alley. What I need, I said to myself, Is a Mulliner Enlund.

Established in Cincinnati, Ohio in late 1915, Mulliner Enlund was a very small concern, so small that they only had two products, a 12” and a 14” lathe. Moving a few years later to Syracuse, NY, they were purchased by Porter-Cable in May of 1919, and the entire outfit down to the cleaning lady was brought into the fold, joining the family at the Salina Street plant.

The Mulliner-Enlund was a fairly forward-thinking but otherwise conventional engine lathe that was offered in a number of differing bed lengths, the longest being a 6’. There are several well-made features that will immediately seem familiar to anyone who has run a Hendey lathe of that period, especially the quick change gearbox and the threading dial. There’s a good reason for this- Mulliner-Enlund used the patented designs of a fellow named Wendell Norton, who worked for Hendey ( presumably, they made their versions under license, though the gearbox is so similar it may actually be the same casting). The Mulliner distinguished itself by the then-uncommon headstock design, which eschewed the older style of stirrup-shaped casting for one that extended up to the centerline of the spindle, making for a far more rigid headstock and obviating the need for a tierod such as the one used on the Hendey “conehead” system. The lathe was robust, accurate, and easy to operate, and the addition of a separate feed rod for threading proved a popular feature. Porter-Cable changed nothing but the name on the lathe, leaving well enough alone, and sales continued on into the early ‘20s when president Walter Ridings made the decision to pivot toward woodworking equipment.

Never common, these lathes were only offered for a total of ten years altogether, used solely in industry, and the vast majority of them were used until they were worn out, then promptly turned into bathtubs and razorblades via the local scrapyard. I had my work cut out for me to find an example for my shop, or so I thought.

Turns out, I had to post a couple of want ads.

OWWM came through for me once again; I regularly reposted my WTB ad on BOYD, the site’s forum for machine sales ( Bring Out Your Dead, if you’re wondering, and yes, Monty Python is implicit in that joke). After about a year I received a message from Dan, a member I had met in the past. It seems he had just what I was looking for, even if he was incredulous at first as to why anyone would one such a specific, obscure brand of machine.

What can I say, I’m a romantic.

He was kind enough to not only disinter the old girl from her crypt behind his machine shop but to then load the lathe on a trailer and cart it from Indiana to Chrystal Lake, Illinois, where Millicent was dismantled and loaded into two full-sized trucks for the trip to Ohio. I had assumed that the Mulliner was about the same weight as a similarly sized South Bend or Sheldon lathe, a fallacy that everyone involved was quickly disabused of when the chip pan, legs, and bed alone were enough to bottom out the suspension of an F-150.

Making her way to me in a number of pieces, Millicent looked like hell. The entire machine had a coat or five of the scabrous gray/green paint that is issued to every factory flunky along with the tar brush used to apply it. Several of the gearbox shifter gate fingers were snapped off, there was a feed gear that was entirely missing, the chuck was worn out… Millicent was very nearly a centenarian, and every year had taken its toll.

That said, for all her mileage she still had it where it counted, and it became clear that the old lathe could very likely turn out a satisfactory part in the hands of an understanding operator, so cleanup began. The wire wheeling was the easiest part, as the paint failure was almost complete, and the original satin black livery was no hardship to apply. Likewise, the repairs to the gearbox were the work of an afternoon, pinning pieces of steel to the casting and welding them in place. Even the missing gear was an easy repair- in fact, the old girl was able to do the machining on her own gears ( metal lathe, heal thyself! ). The biggest challenge, when all was said and done, was in moving her into her berth.

I had said that the Mulliner-Enlund was quite a bit heavier than most of the lathes I was familiar with, and she had gained a bit of weight over the years. At some point in the late ‘30s or early ‘40s, some long-ago owner had removed her from the lineshaft that machines of her era were shackled to by fitting the overhead drive from a South Bend 15” lathe, freeing up the lathe to be moved around but adding several hundred pounds of cast iron and copper ( the motor mounts to the top of the whole affair), and if my math is right, Millicent weighs in at about 2,700lbs without swarf in the chip pan. I don’t always name machines, but I knew her name was Millicent the second I laid eyes on her. However, as TS Eliot once said about cats, metal lathes need at least three names, and by the time the old girl came to rest in her new home, she was given the sobriquet The Beast of Syracuse. The largest swing and longest bed available, she’s the biggest machine to ever wear the Porter-Cable name, even if our particular example is about six or eight months too old to undergo the name change.

The headstock bearings are conical bronze, and it was simple enough to adjust them to take up play. I swapped out the Delco motor that was mounted in the ‘40s for a General Electric Polyphase built in the very early ‘20s, mounted an Adjustco work light, and retrofitted a South Bend micrometer stop with a dial indicator for operations like threading to a shoulder. The D.E. Whiton chuck that had graced the spindle lo, these many years was retired in exchange for an early Cushman three-jaw, and there is also a Skinner four-jaw on hand. I’ve kept the tooling to WW2 and earlier for the sake of verisimilitude ( and because I’m quite familiar with sharpening HSS tooling), even going so far as to source period Jacobs chucks for the tailstock.

I had hoped to get my hands on an example of this lathe that could eke out an acceptable part without too much frustration. What I got is a machine capable of peeling a piece of high carbon steel like an orange to a level of accuracy that’s better than any other lathe I’ve owned ( even the lovely Sheldon 10” that I sold to bail Millicent out of lathe jail). The Mulliner Enlund is an impressive machine, more precise than I am and quite adept at fabricating parts for my various restorations; at the moment, the old girl is making a new feed pawl for my metal shaper, and boy, does she do good work.

Millicent has led a tumultuous life. When this lathe was made, doughboys were fighting at the Marne in France, women couldn’t vote yet, and the very idea of having such a mammoth metal lathe in a home shop for making the occasional widget was laughable. How many jobs has the old girl done, thousands? Tens of thousands? In the past five years, this lathe has had a hand in hundreds of repairs, doing everything from machining a new lower spindle for a B-1 stationary belt sander to turning piano wire into guard springs for Speedmatic saws. She’s proven to be a maid-of-all-work here in the shop, and while the two milling machines that keep company with her do a lot to help out, Millicent is the reigning queen of the toolroom.

I like to joke that I don’t know much about machining, but I know a lot of oldtimers that do, and I’m looking forward to learning all the tricks ( Millicent would use the term “shop kinks” if she could talk, but I wouldn’t be able to take her seriously. Luckily, she’s not much for chatter. That's a lathe joke) that this heavyset old lady can teach.