Hall & Brown No. 1 12" Jointer Restoration

The rough looking example of old iron is Hall and Brown No. 1 jointer with a 12" capacity and babbit bearings. It has the finger eating square head that has a worse reputation than a Radial Arm Saw. Maybe with good reason too! Best guess is it was made in the teens, 19015-1920. The jointer is amazingly complete. It is missing one of the knobs that locks the bed in place and (I think) it is missing one of the spring bar hold downs on the fence. I am assuming it came with two but I don't know. To me that is just amazing that is all there.

The machine has already be named. The Great Pumpkin. Why you ask? Well there is the gentleman named Bill Hodges from Texas that had this crazy idea it would be fun to Rucker (an OWWM term meaning basically hauling machines for other people around) machines all over the NE and SE for vacation. I called it Bill's Arn Sleigh because he was bringing all or new toys to us. I was one of the last stops and was anxiously awaiting the Sleigh to show up at the Lab. Due to mechanical problems Bill never made it to me. He dropped off the Great Pumpkin not far from me thought. We were keep track of Bill on the forum. Your can read the thread here.

Well Bill S. posted this and I loved it:
"Which reminds me.... folks might remember the character in the cartoon strip "Peanuts" who sat in the pumpkin patch each Halloween awaiting the arrival of the Great Pumpkin. Somehow, I have a similar image of Jeff Horton sitting in his "lab" waiting for the arrival of the Great Arn Sleigh!"

I got a good laugh out of that and decided that the jointer had to be named the Great Pumpkin.

The jointer has a broken bearing box on the rear. I suspect that water got in there and it froze. I will find someone that can braze cast iron and have them repair that. The other photo shows the really impressive scrolling letters on the casting.

I will be updating this as the restoration proceeds.

Page 1 Introduction |  Page 2 Teardown  |  Page 3 Teardown  | 
Page 4 Cleaning and painting  |  Page 5 Reassembly  |  Page 6 It's Restored  | 
Page 7 Almost Finished  |  Page 8 98% Finished  |  Home