Can someone explain to me the Wadkin BAO (or BAO/S) roller control lever mechanism / function?

[julianf]

Im looking at various Wadkin scans, and I really cant see well what it does from the diagrams, but it vaguely appears that it may be a rotating cam type thing to raise or lower the roller set?

The BAO manual has a statement that "prior to serial..." the rollers had to be individually adjusted, but subsequently they are adjusted as a group "according to working conditions" using the lever thats snapped off.

Its described, and shown, on pages 6 and 10 of the bao document -

https://www.wadkin.com/archive pdfs/Wadkin BAO 12 inch Thicknesser Manual Parts List.pdf


Anyway, can someone shed light on this for me?

Thank you.

 

[Doug71]

I used to have a BAOS and yes the lever lifts up the two middle rollers in the bed, lifting them makes it easier if you are putting rougher timber straight under. If you are putting flat/planed timber through it's best to have the rollers level with the bed as they can cause snipe if they are raised.

 

[julianf]

Thank you.

I'm now wondering / wanting to ask you how much difference it really made with rough wood? I can't really conceive how it would benefit - I'm guessing just reducing the friction at the cost of snipe? But I'm not sure how much of bonus that would be?

 

[Doug71]

To be honest it's a feature that we didn't use much. About the only time it did get used was when machining big pieces of Parana pine for stair strings, they were a bit unwieldy to flat over the top and pretty straight/flat anyway so they could go straight under. As the boards were just running on the rollers there was less friction so they would feed through easier. Once the boards were something like flat you could drop the rollers for the final couple of passes to get rid of any snipe, things were normally over length though so if there was a couple of inches of snipe at the end it would be cut off anyway.

 

[julianf]

Thank you for your reply - it's very helpful to me.

 

[stidy]

Just been out to my workshop to look for this lever ; there isn't one on my baos! BUT on closer inspection the roller assemblies can be lifted out manually, the bearing blocks flipped round and the rollers can go back in raised or lowered. Thanks for the thread! definitely a feature I will be using for rough timber of final pass.