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.
