Making a fence for a spindle moulder (from iron)

[heimlaga]

Does anyone have a good design to share?

I bought an old Jonsered FM-C spindle moulder which had lost it's original fence. I got two fences with it but one of them is some kind of wartime substitute which never worked properly and the other which is a very good one does not fit the distance between the T-slots in the table of the Jonsered.
The machine is mothballed in an old hay barn for now but one day I will put it back to use. At this stage I am just interrested in coming up with a general design so that I can keep my eyes open for suitable materials when I visit the local scrap yards. I have some experience and with basic metalworking and I have several professional machinists amongs my aquintances.

I want the fence to have one half independently adjustable back and forth relative to the other fixed half. The fence should also have a built in dust hood that fits a dust collector hose and proper guards around the cutter head.
Any ideas?

 

[DennisCA]

I googled the name of the machine and this seems to be a similar jonsered, perhaps the pictures can give you some idea on how the fence looks and give some inspiration, I wouldn't really know what to look for:
http://www.klaravik.se/uploads/extrabil ... _large.jpg
http://www.klaravik.se/uploads/extrabil ... _large.jpg

Here's another
http://cdn.blocket.com/static/2/images_ ... 316964.jpg

And a Värnamo ad from sweden, it has some pictures of a fence which might help too:
http://www.blocket.se/stockholm/Bordsfr ... 356183.htm

I dunno if this is even applicable but here's how my table router dust collection is made. It has a solid fence and then two boards are affixed to the elongated holes and they act as a sacrificial fence and the opening of the fence can be adjusted to fit the router bit. The dust collection works well actually, just a box behind the mouth of the fence, I do not know if this would work on a bigger scale (edit: and with iron):

 

[heimlaga]

Thanks for trying.....nut all those designs require a foundry and a lot of expensive machining. However the Värnamo fence made a light bulb go off. There might be a way to use the fence I have and make it fit.
If that doesn't work a machinist friend came up with a good design that we can build from 20 and 25mm hot rolled mild steel plate at a reasonable cost.

 

[dickm]

How difficult would it be to adapt the existing fence that you say does not fit properly? If, as it sounds, you have access to metalworking skills, might this be the easiest route? Why not post pics of the various bits, in case anyone else has a lightbulb moment?

 

[heimlaga]

I will post pictures but I need daylight and time to get to the hay barn so I can take the pictures. The road is only good enough for farm tractors and walkers.

 

[heimlaga]

This fence comes from a machine with the T-slots much furter apart:

As you can see the T slots in the table align with the slide for the fine adjustment. I cannot drill a new attachment hole right there. I wonder if it could be bolted onto an U-shaped piece of 20 mm steel plate with attachment holes right behind the cast iron fence body.


This previous owner used this fence was on Jonsered. It had to be aligned manually every time anything was adjusted. Probably some kind of wartime substitute that does not belong to this machine.

The whole spindle moulder in storage:

 

[Bod]

Ask your friends to make a bridge up to suit the second fence.

Bod

 

[heimlaga]

Ask your friends to make a bridge up to suit the second fence.

Bod

Then I would be unable to adjust the fence halves back and forth relative to each others.

 

[dickm]

Hmmm, yes, tricky - your T-slots are in the worst possible position relative to the casting.

Possibly a useless suggestion, but how about cutting out a section from the "bridge" piece between the two sides, to bring the two sets of slots into line. Then either weld (tricky, but possibly feasible) the whole thing back together, or make a whole new piece with dust extraction to fit against the U-piece and bolt the two halves to this?

 

[heimlaga]

I have thought about it but there wouldn't be enough room left inside the fence for tennon cutters and panel fielding cutters.

 

[dickm]

I have thought about it but there wouldn't be enough room left inside the fence for tennon cutters and panel fielding cutters.

Ah. Hadn't thought of that. Can't be sure from the pics, but would it be possible to do the opposite of what I suggested, and make the arch wider? Then the slots would line up with the flattish area of the assembly either side of the arch, and you could fasten into the slots through there?

 

[heimlaga]

I have thought about it but there wouldn't be enough room left inside the fence for tennon cutters and panel fielding cutters.

Ah. Hadn't thought of that. Can't be sure from the pics, but would it be possible to do the opposite of what I suggested, and make the arch wider? Then the slots would line up with the flattish area of the assembly either side of the arch, and you could fasten into the slots through there?

That flattish area is the top of the fine adjustment slide...........

The ony resonable fix I can come up with would be bolting the whole fence body firmly to a piece of 20 mm plate with a U-shaped cutout in the middle. Then I could drill attachment holes in the plate behind the arch in line with the T-slots.
My greatest worry is wheter an attachment point this far back could keep the fence firm and steady.

 

[heimlaga]

At a local auction I bought a scrap heap containing a fully modern fence of such size that it would fit the Jonsered perfectly........problem solved I thought.

Then I couldn't hold myself back from buying a l'Invincibile T160 for a very low prize. Only a little over scrap value in fact. A much more modern spindle moulder with tilting spindle. The reason for the super-bargain prize....it has lost it's fence.

Back to square one........ but in the long term I need two spindle moulders........................