Hi Alan
The other people who would probably happy to help are Porter-Cable who are supposed to have a collection of their older routers. P-C at one time had some illustrations of very early routers on their web site. The earliest electric router I have ever heard of was the Kelley (1908) an Patrick Spielman showed a drawing of this in his "New Router Handbook". The Carter is probably one of the oldest you'll find in the flesh, though. The Carter was allegedly put on sale during WWI, although the company became part of Stanley in 1929 (source: Stanley). Stanley certainly produced publicity photographs of their routers and the Carter predecessors, although whether they or Bosch (who bought the Stanley power tools division in the 1980s) would have those photographs is anyone's guess. Bill Hylton did publish a couple of photos of Andy Bukowski's
Carter router on Wood Central a while back and it's a monster.
Maybe BugBear would like to comment as he refers elsewhere to a Carter overhead router being mentioned in one of George Ellis's books?
Paul - that Porter is hardly an old design. It is remarkably similar design to the R8 and R9 designs of SCM (the R9 is still made). The production direct drive overhead router (capable of 16 to 18,000 rpm) really only appeared in the mid to late 1920s because it depended on a high-frequency electric motor, frequency changer and ball bearings to work. A throwback too this period was the Wadkin LS - made from about 1929/1930 until the 1980s, although apparently not Wadkin's earliest high-frequency electric router:
Above: Wadkin LS overhead pin router
Devices called recessors capable of 6,000 rpm or so and working in a similar way were available from somewhere in the mid to late 19th Century. They seem to have been designed for pattern shops to start with and became more popular with the introduction of hardboard and plywoods in the late 19th century as a machine to pierce openings in door panels, etc. They look a bit like a large drill press but generally have an X-Y compound table, sometimes with (table) rotation to allow them to cut arcs and they have side-thrust bearings inthe quill/headstock assembly. Wadkin, of course, made the grand-daddy of them all, the WX pattern miller, as it's very first product in 1907. And there's even been a WX on eBay in the last 6 months
Below: Wadkin WX pattern miller
Scrit
