CERTAIN IMPROVEMENTS IN MACHINERY FOR PLANING OR REDUCING BOARDS OR TIMBER
Year: 1853

page_text: LETTERS PATENT to Nicholas Gr. Norcross, of Lowell, in the State
of Massachusetts of the United States of America, for the In-
vention of "CERTAIN IMPROVEMENTS IN MACHINERY FOR PLANING OR
REDUCING BOARDS OR TIMBER."
of Massachusetts of the United States of America, for the In-
vention of "CERTAIN IMPROVEMENTS IN MACHINERY FOR PLANING OR
REDUCING BOARDS OR TIMBER."
Sealed the 27th May 1853, and dated the 22d March 1853.
PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by the said Nicholas G. Norcross
at the Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on
the 22d March 1853.
I, NICHOLAS G. NORCROSS, of Lowell, in the State of Massachusetts,
of the United States of America, do hereby declare the nature of the
said Invention of "CERTAIN IMPROVEMENTS IN MACHINERY FOR PLANING
OR REDUCING BOARDS OR TIMBER" to be as follows:-
The nature of my Invention does not consist in a combination of one
or more stationary planes, so arranged that, while one or more remove
the rough surface of the board, the rest or last shall finish or produce
on it a smooth plane surface; but I claim as the nature of my Inven-
tion, when placed so as to operate on one side of a board, a cylindrical
rotary cutter, (for roughing or reducing, and which cuts from the un-

page_text: planed to the planed surface,) in combination with a stationary cutter,
placed behind and near thereto as may be for finishing, withou tthe
employment of press rollers or pressure bars, whereby I am enabled to
operate with little power in comparison to that required to operate
many other kind of planing machines; and the rotary cutter, when de-
sirable, may be made to cut up and throw off the shavings produced by
the stationary plane, and the boards be reduced to an equal thickness
throughout, and with a plane and smooth surface.
The nature of my Invention further consists in combining with a
frame or carriage for holding the board, and running it under the cutters
or planes, not only a set or series of one or more doggs, clamps, or
equivalent contrivances for holding or fastening the board by its side
edges to the frame or carriage, but another of such or one or more sets
of such doggs, clamps, or equivalent contrivances for holding it by its
two ends to such frame or carriage, the same being to enable the board
to be planed or reduced on one sido out of wind, and to a plane surface,
while it is moved under the reducing planes.
The nature of my Invention further consists in so combining with
the feed rollers and their driving pulleys and belt a second set of feed
rollers and a driving belt and pulley, or equivalent therefor, that the
surplus power of the first set of feed rollers and cutter, tending to drive
the board forwards with great velocity, may be received by the second
set of feed rollers, and by them, their belt and pulley, transferred back
to the driving shaft in such manner as to cause the machine to be
worked with a saving of power to what would be required to press the
board between a single set of feed rollers, in order to counteract the
tendency of its being thrown forward by the rotativo power of the rotary

page_text: WHEREAS Her most Excellent Majesty Queen Victoria, by Her
Letters Patent, bearing date the Twenty-second day of March, in the
year of our Lord One thousand eight hundred and fifty-three, in the
sixteenth year of Her reign, did, for Herself, Her heirs and successors,
give and grant unto me, the said Nicholas G. Norcross, Her special
licence that I, the said Nicholas G. Norcross, my executors, admi-
nistrators, and assigns, and such others as I, the said Nicholas G. Nor-
cross, my executors, administrators, and assigns, should at any time
agree with, and no others, from time to time and at all times thereafter
during the term therein expressed, should and lawfully might make,
use, exercise, and vend, within the United Kingdom of Great Britain
and Ireland, the Channel Islands, and Isle of Man, an Invention of
"CERTAIN IMPROVEMENTS IN MACHINERY FOR PLANING OR REDUCING BOARD'S
OR TIMBER," upon the condition (amongst others) that I, the said
Nicholas G. Norcross, by an instrument in writing under my hand and
seal, should particularly describe and ascertain the nature of the said
Invention, and in what manner the same was to be performed, and
cause the same to be filed in the Great Seal Patent Office within six
calendar months next and immediately after the date of the said Letters
Patent.
NOW KNOW YE, that I, the said Nicholas G. Norcross, do hereby
declare the nature of the said Invention, and in what manner the same
is to be performed, to be particularly described and ascertained in and
by the following statement thereof, that is to say:
The nature of my Invention does not consist in a combination of one
or more stationary planes, so arranged that, while one or more remove
the rough surface of the board, the rest or last shall finish or produce
on it a smooth plane surface; but I claim as the nature of my Inven-
tion, when placed so as to operate on one side of a board, a cylindrical
rotary cutter, (for roughing or reducing, and which cuts from the un-
planed to the planed surface,) in combination with a stationary cutter,
placed behind and near thereto as may be for finishing, without the
employment of press rollers or pressure bars, whereby I am enabled to
operate with little power in comparison to that required to operate
many other kinds of planing machines; and the rotary cutter, when

page_text: desirable, made to cut up and throw off the shavings produced by the
stationary plane, and the boards be reduced to an equal thickness
throughout, and with a plane and smooth surface.
The nature of my Invention further consists in combining with a
frame or carriage for holding the board, and moving it under the
cutters or planes, not only a set or series of one or more doggs, clanips,
or equivalent contrivances for holding or fastening the board by its
side edges to the frame or carriage, but another of such or one or
more sets of such doggs, clamps, or equivalent contrivances for holding
it by its two ends to such frame or carriage, the same being to enable
the board to be planed or reduced on one side out of wind, and to a
plane surface, while it is moved under the reducing planes.
The nature of my Invention further consists in so combining with
the feed rollers and their driving pulleys and belt a second set of
feed rollers and a driving belt and pulley, or equivalents therefor, that
the surplus power of the first set of feed rollers and cutter, tending to
drive the board forwards with great velocity, may be received by the
second set of feed rollers, and by them, their belt and pulley, transferred
back to the driving shaft in such manner as to cause the machine to be
worked with a saving of power to what would be required to press the
board between a single set of feed rollers, in order to counteract the
tendency of its being thrown forwards by the rotative power of the rotary
plane or cutter.
Of the said drawings, Figure 1, denotes a perspective view of my
improved machine; Figure 2, a vertical, central, and longitudinal
section of it, as it appears without the carriage for supporting the
board. Figure 3, is a top view of the said carriage, and the con-
trivances applied to it for confining the board to it by its edges and
ends. Figure 4, is a sectional view or sketch of the third part of my
Invention.
In the drawings A, represents a cutter cylinder or rotary series of
planes a, a, a, placed above a bench or rest 13, that is supported by a
frame C. The said cutter cylinder is to be made to revolve in the
direction denoted by the arrow ; that is to say, it revolves not in a
direction against the grain of the wood, or adverse to that in which the

page_text: board is moved under it, but so as to cut from the unplaned surface of
the board towards its planed surface. The directions in which its
planes are arranged are shown in the drawing.
C, represents a board
laid on the machine, and fed or moved forward in the direction denoted
by the arrow c, and by means of feed rollers D, E, or other suitable
feeding mechanism. In advance of the rotary cutter cylinder A, I
make use of a straight stationary inclined plane iron F, which may be
arranged, if desirable, quite near to the path of the knife edges of the
cutter cylinder, and may be provided, or not, with a stationary bar
mouthpiece.
Through an opening in the bench B, and so as to operate on the
under side of the board, I arrange another cutter cylinder I, which I
cause to rotate so that its cutters shall cut against the grain of the
wood, or from its planed surface towards its unplaned surface, the said
cutters being arranged, with respect to those of the upper cutter
cylinder, as seen in Fig. 2.
Among those skilled in the art of planing wood by what is termed
automatic planing machines, the planing machines of Roguin, Daniel
Hill, and William Woodworth are well understood. A description of
that of the said Daniel Hill will be found in the Specification of Letters
Patent of the United States, granted to me on the Twelfth day of
February, A.D. Eighteen hundred and fifty. A drawing of the machine
of Roguin to which I allude, a Patent on which was granted in
France on the Thirtieth day of March, A.D. Eighteen hundred and
eighteen, will be found in Volume 28, Plate 28, of the well known
French publication, entitled "Descriptions des Machines et Procedes
consignes dans les Brevets d'Inventions de Parfectionement et d'Im-
portation."
The machine of William Woodworth was patented in the United
States on the Twenty-seventh of December, A.D. Eighteen hundred and
twenty-eight. Hill's machine had a rotary.cutter cylinder, which
was placed directly underneath the surface of the board to be planed,
and cut away the lower surface of it, while the board was supported
and moved on a bench or rest. This machine could not reduce a board
to an equal thickness when not of an equal thickness, yet it contained

page_text: a means of preventing the board from being drawn downwards towards
the rotary planing cylinder while it was in operation, such means being
the bench or platform on which the board rested.
The rotary series of planes or cutter cylinder of Hill cut the board
from its planed towards its unplaned surface.
The machine of Roguin, above alluded to, had its rotary series of
knives or cutter cylinder placed above the bench on which the board
rested, and it cut the board in a direction from its unplaned to its
planed surface.
The practical working machines like that of Roguin, to which
I have referred, has been attended with a difficulty. This difliculty
arose from the fact that the edges of the cutters of its planing
cylinder, before passing into the board, struck directly against the
rough unplaned surface of it. This rough surface being generally
more or less dirty, or generally more or less covered with earthy or
gritty matter, would cause the edges of the cutters to soon become
dulled or so uneven as to render them unfit to make smooth work,
To obviate the difficulty experienced by such machines as that of
Roguin to reduce a board to an even thickness throughout, and to pre-
vent the board at the same time from being drawn upwards towards
the rotary cutter knives, and by the action of the same, Woodworth
arranged the cutter cylinder of his machine above the board, caused
the cutter cylinder to rotate so as to cut in a direction from the planed
to the unplaned surface of the board, and provided the machine with
rollers to hold the board down on the bench, and counteract the ten-
dency of the cutters to elevate it. There still remains a difliculty in
the Woodworth machine, and one incident to all such machines as
plane by a rotary series or cylinder of planes alone, this difficulty con-
sisting in their leaving the board ridged transversely on its planed sur-
face. The surface planed is not a plane surface, but one made up of a
series of many slightly curved surfaces.
My improved machine is intended to not only to reduce a board to
an even thickness, and on its upper surface, by means of a rotary cutler
cylinder, but to reduce the planed surface to a plane surface. It also,
if desirable, can be made to reduce the under side of the board at the

page_text: same time, so as to take an even thickness of woody matter therefrom.
My machines do not contain the invention or improvement of William
Woodworth, for I make use of no rollers, or their equivalent, to hold the
board down, or counteract any tendency of the rotary cutter cylinder to
lift it; for the reason, that the manner in which my upper cutter cylinder
operates on the board is the reverse of that of Woodworth, and tends to
force the board down on the bench, instead of raising it off' the same.
My rotary cutter cylinder is used to take off the rough surface of the
board, and reduce it so that the stationary plane can next operate and
make on it a plane surface.
By placing the stationary cutter close up or near to the path of the
revolving knives, the riband shaving made by the former will be cut up
and thrown off by the latter, an advantage being thus gained over the
machines that use stationary planes alone; for in using such machines,
it is well known that the services of an attendant are necessary to effect
the removal of the shavings, the same being done by manual labour.
When it is desirable, if planing dimension stuff, or a board that can
be confined down upon a carriage or frame, I so apply such carriage or
frame to the cutters or planes, and the rest of the machine, that it may
be moved along under the cutters, and carry the board with it, and so
that they will reduce it. An open frame of this kind is shown in
Figure 1, at J, the board being seen at C. The carriage may be
moved by racks and pinions, or by any suitable application of power to
it. A top view of the carriage is given in Figure 3, it being there
represented not as an open frame, as it is shown in Figure 1:
It
may be provided with holes perforated through it, and placed at
any suitable distances apart, in which holes pins may be inserted and
made to project above the top surface of the carriage in convenient
positions near to the end and edges of the board to be planed; on each
of these pins a small eccentric clamp, dogg, or piece of metal, may be
placed, as seen at a, b, c, d, in Figure 3. The form of this clamp or dogg
is given on a larger scale in Figure 5, in
side view. It is creased or grooved on its periphery, and is provided
with a series of holes e, f, g, h, i, arranged respectively at different dis-
tances from its centre. It may also have two holes, k, l, in which the
top view, and in Fig. 6, in

page_text: studs of a land-wrench may be inserted, in order to enable a person to
revolve the clamp. These clamps should be of a thickness less than
that to which the board is to be reduced, in order that they may not
interfere with the cutters while they are in operation on the board. By
means of the pin holes, e, f, g, h, (the number of which, and their
arrangement, may be that which is most convenient,) the clamp may
be adjusted to the edge of the board, such hole being placed on the pin,
or the pin extended through it, as may be necessary to enable the clamp
to press firmly against the edge of the board when rotated by the hand-
wrench. By applying such clamps, or equivalent contrivances, to both
side edges and both end edges of the board, it may be firmly held, so as
to be incapable of lateral or endwise movement on the carriage. The
particular purpose or object of this latter part of my Invention is to
enable a warped board to be reduced to a plane surface on one side,
which having been done, the board can he turned over and reduced
to an equal thickness by being run through the machine when the
carriage is removed from it, and the machine properly adjusted for
planing without the carriage.
The third part of my Invention is exhibited in Figure 4, of the
drawings. A, in the same is a rotary cutter cylinder, made to revolve in
the direction denoted by the arrow a; 13, is a stationary plane or knife,
for finishing or reducing the board to a plane surface, after the cutter
cylinder has performed its office; C, and D, are the feed rollers; E', is
the board; E, and F, is another set of feed rollers, placed in advance
or rear of the stationary knife, as seen in the drawing; the arrows on
the feed rollers show the directions of their motion. G, H, are the
driving pulleys of the feed rollers; I, K, their driving bands; L, is the
drum around which the bands I, K, pass, it being fixed on the main
driving shaft b; M, is the large pulley that drives the rotary cutter
cylinder A; N, is the band that goes around the pulley M, and a
pulley N', on the shaft of the cylinder.
In a machine of the above kind, it will be seen that the force of
rotation of the cutters tends to drive the board forwards with great
velocity; that the feed rollers serve to conduct the board to the cutter
cylinder, which takes it, reduces it, and impels it forwards against the

page_text: feed rollers. As soon as the rear end of the board leaves the feed
rollers it would be projected forwards with great velocity, were it not
for the second set of feed rollers E, F, which then retain it or hold it
back against the projectile power of the cylinder A. The surplus
power beyond that which is necessary to reduce the board is transferred
by the feed rollers back to the driving shaft, so as to cause the machine
to be worked with little power in comparison to what would be required
did we not use the feed rollers E, F, for a great power would be
required to press the board downwards, in order to counteract the
tendency of the rotary cylinder to drive it forward after it leaves the
rollers C, D.
It is therefore that this portion of my Invention consisting in the
second set of feed rollers, and their driving belt and pulley, or their
equivalent, as applied to or combined with the shaft b, and the rest
of the mechanism excepting the knife B, or with it, as occasion may
require.
I do not claim as my Invention the combination of one or more
stationary planes, so arranged that, while one or more are made to
remove the rough surface of a board or piece of timber, the rest or
last shall finish or produce on it a smooth plane surface; but I claim,
when they are placed so as to operate on one side of a board, a
cylindrical rotary cutter for roughing and reducing, and which cuts
from the unplaned to the planed surface, in combination with a stationary
cutter placed behind and near thereto as may be for finishing, without
the employment of pressure rollers or pressure bars, as is used in the
Woodworth machine above referred to, whereby I am enabled to
operate and reduce a board to an equal thickness throughout, and with
a plane and smooth surface.
And I also claim the improvement of arranging the stationary plane
so near to the path of revolution of the rotary cutter cylinder, that the
shaving removed by the former may be struck and cut up and thrown
off by the latter, as specified.
I also claim the improvement of combining with the carriage or
frame for holding the board, and moving it under the cutters or planes,
not only a set or series of one or more doggs, clamps, or equivalent

page_text: contrivances, for holding or fastening the board by its side edges to the
frame or carriage, but another of such, or one or more sets of such
doggs, clamps, or equivalent contrivances, for holding it by its two ends
to such frame or carriage, the same being to enable the board to be
planed or reduced on one side out of wind to a plane surface, while it
is removed under the reducing planes, and preparatory to being reduced
to an even thickness, as specified.
I also claim the improvement of so combining with the feed rollers,
and their driving pulleys and belt, a second set of feed rollers and a
driving belt and pulley, or equivalents therefor, that the surplus power
of the first set of feed rollers and cutter, tending to drive the board
forwards with great velocity, may be received by the second set of feed
rollers, and by them, their belt and pulley, transferred back to the
driving shaft, in such manner as to cause the machine to be worked
with a saving of power, as specified.
In witness whereof, I have hereto set my hand and seal, this First
day of August, One thousand eight hundred and fifty-three.
NICHOLAS G. NORCROSS. (L.S.)