Hey all, we purchased this from our friend Bill Kerfoot with one other item during the pandemic.
The maker was unknown to us at time of purchase, since then we have found out that this is a Griggio Italian fence. Shout out to owwm.org for identifying this for us. This is a very heavy cast iron and aluminum, large shaper fence with a giant dust collection port. I was guessing that it is Euro in manufacture because it has metric fasteners. So once again I took a chance on a couple of crappy dealers pics;
So I do like that it is so heavy and its not Chinese! Big shout out to our buddy Chester who was able and willing to transport this for us on a return trip from Boston. It seems like the plandemic has given us a chance to do some restoration work and shop maintenance even though we have a huge backlog of work in the shop. So here are the "before" pics;
So for a minute this fence was an extra one for us because we accidentally just scored a super cool Martin shaper fence, which arrived before this one and we put it on our last Oliver shaper that didn't have a fence. As luck would have it, Bill from Washington state emailed me and was looking for a shaper fence. I told him my least favorite fence, that we have on our seven shapers, is a Powermatic fence that I bought new about 25 years ago. Well he liked that fence and bought it from us. Nice fella and he really likes the fence he got. One man's floor is another man's ceiling. We shipped that off and now need to get this fence ready for service. The green and orange looks to be original paint color scheme. The new colors will be black and red; my personal favorite for shaper fences.
The original paint is in very good condition so I won't be going down to raw castings this time. I am also painting it with a little Emmert vise; the main color on both is black so that's kind of nice. The 2 paint jobs can scratch each other's back. Step #1 in the process is to clean and scuff the old paint. Step #2 is to do a little masking off. Step #3 is to prime with rattle can primer from Sherwin. Its called Pro Primer in the tall rattle cans. Step #4 spray paint with Sherwin industrial enamel with hardener added.
We have reassembled and added some Kipp handles. We are getting a lot closer and I really like this fence.
So now I have to flatten the fence faces; I'm doing this on the Ekstrom Carlson #112 edge sander. Had to take it slow, the maple is very hard. Now they are nice and straight!
Now to put this baby on the shaper. But wait...this fence is so much larger than the Powermatic fence it is replacing, that now I have to move the power feeder base. I will also have to tap new holes in the shaper top for the big bolts. The Oliver #288 shaper this is going on is our shop's "molder", that's a crown mold cutter stack in the photo and the feeder is in a vertical position.
All right all right feeder base is moved over about 4" so we can mount the fence now
I had to cut about 3" off the left hand fence because it was going to hit the other spindle. Now all that's left is the dust collection.
She's ready for woodwork! That's all ya gotta do! Thanks for looking!