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[xlch58 at swbell.net]

I have an old Ammco seven inch I wouldn't trade.   In fact the small 
shapers go for quite a premium these days as they are a popular item for 
home shop machinists.    You can do a lot of jobs on a shaper with a 
hand ground piece of tool steel that would take several very expensive 
cutters in a milling machine.   There are a few jobs in gunmaking where 
the only alternative is essentially hand work.  The larger 16 inch and 
up shapers are less popular due to their size, but I know a fair number 
of people running them.  Shapers are still being manufactured and sold ( 
and used) in India and China.   In fact, a chinese company brought a 
large new one to a metalworking machinery show in califirnia a couple of 
years ago, since it was being offered for sale after the show at a 
machinery dealr ( guess they didn't get a lot of orders at the show)

Charles

debmiller at fuse.net wrote:

>Most of the ones i have seen in recent years have been pushed off into a corner and buried in junk. Many are scrapped. We use one in our Principles of Machining class at UC College of Applied Science, but that's only because most of our machine tools still have DOD tags from WWII and were donated by Cincinnati Milling Machine, later called Cincinnati Milaron. Now mostly defunct!!!
>
>Ray Miller
>Cincinnati
>  
>