rogxwhit
Established Member
A few years ago I was without a tenoner, having sold my TM3. But a joiner I knew had this elderly single-phase Multico lying in bits round the back of his yard. He was highly skilled with wood and metal, but said he hadn't been able to make anything of it. It might do someone who makes gates, he said disparagingly. I was tempted to have a go, and loaded the parts into my van.
After I assembled it, it was plain that it had issues that seemed more or less designed into it, which made me think that it might've been Multico's first attempt at a tenoner, even perhaps a prototype? The problems centred around the sliding table and bars - I couldn't get the travel to be firm and accurate, which made it useless. But also the geometry of the table travel past the heads was rather constricted, with not much room before the heads so you'd have trouble doing a wide bottom door rail, say.
But never give in. I didn't want to spend much, though - it was an experiment.
Solution 1: make a sub-frame to put the limits of the table travel where I wanted them.
Solution 2: come up with a new way of mounting the table.
So here's the beginning of all that (the old rails are on the right):
And here's how it ended up:
And to explain what's been done:
A bit of fine tuning followed - table aligned in plane with heads, fence at 90deg to the travel - and off to work we went! Had it for a few years then sold it for an amount that covered what I'd spent on it.
The basic construction was a cast iron frame on a steel cabinet base, but the column-and-heads design was already mature and would go on to be replicated in later Multico TM's. Signs of age were present - there was a fair bit of backlash in all the adjusters! The blocks had an imperial bore; all fixings were imperial.
Somehow there's a bit of history here. I've never seen another like it, though I have seen a version with the same table (on bars set one above the other) but a wholly-fabricated box steel frame.
And I had no engineering facilities, hence the use of wood in certain parts!
After I assembled it, it was plain that it had issues that seemed more or less designed into it, which made me think that it might've been Multico's first attempt at a tenoner, even perhaps a prototype? The problems centred around the sliding table and bars - I couldn't get the travel to be firm and accurate, which made it useless. But also the geometry of the table travel past the heads was rather constricted, with not much room before the heads so you'd have trouble doing a wide bottom door rail, say.
But never give in. I didn't want to spend much, though - it was an experiment.
Solution 1: make a sub-frame to put the limits of the table travel where I wanted them.
Solution 2: come up with a new way of mounting the table.
So here's the beginning of all that (the old rails are on the right):
And here's how it ended up:
And to explain what's been done:
A bit of fine tuning followed - table aligned in plane with heads, fence at 90deg to the travel - and off to work we went! Had it for a few years then sold it for an amount that covered what I'd spent on it.
The basic construction was a cast iron frame on a steel cabinet base, but the column-and-heads design was already mature and would go on to be replicated in later Multico TM's. Signs of age were present - there was a fair bit of backlash in all the adjusters! The blocks had an imperial bore; all fixings were imperial.
Somehow there's a bit of history here. I've never seen another like it, though I have seen a version with the same table (on bars set one above the other) but a wholly-fabricated box steel frame.
And I had no engineering facilities, hence the use of wood in certain parts!