Oh, now I'm going to gush about this thing. I've been restoring old machinery for decades, but this is one of the best pieces of old Ohio machinery I've ever had my hands on.
It's a beautiful machine. It's a JT Towsley 24" jointer - the best I can guess is that it's from 1930-35 or so; there isn't a lot of information about that company anywhere.
It's somewhere around 2300 lbs - everything is solid cast iron (subsequently, I have retrofit some heavy casters because it was so unbelievably hard to move without them). It used to be 3 phase direct drive, but the shop I got it from gutted the old motor and set it as a belt and pulley drive to a smaller motor on the base. I swapped the little motor with a new Leeson 7.5hp. I painted it and replaced all of the bearings for safety sake (with new - old stock - American made bearings that matched the originals, btw), but other than that everything was in amazing shape. It has a massive 4 blade cutterhead with huge new blades the man that owned it put on it. This thing is amazing.
It sat in the corner of a cabinet making shop up the road from me for something like 80 years, until the owner died. His wife was going to have the local junker haul it out. It was the cabinetmaker's pride and joy. It had surface rust and needed to be repainted/all the bearings replaced, but otherwise it was like a brand new machine.
It currently lives in Illinois at a buddy's house while he waits for his own jointer to come in- it's his daily driver right now. But this thing is worth the drive to pick up. I've only ever seen one this size and quality in person, and I've never seen one for sale on the public market. I know I'm biased because I'm selling it, but it's just such a bad-ass old piece of iron.
I considered putting a helical head on it, and I contacted a couple of companies for quotes on custom heads. They're pretty reasonable (for what you get), but the companies are like 6-8 months out on custom orders and byrd won't even respond.
Anyway. This thing is amazing. I love old machinery, and this piece is super cool. The thought that went into making something that big also very easy to adjust and work with is just amazing.
Sounds awesome. I've only ever used 8" jointers. Does it take a long time to spin up? Bet that needs a lot of dust collection power, too. By sheer coincidence, in the editor's note of the current issue of Popular Woodworking, the editor is talking about his work restoring a Towsley 24" jointer, and will be publishing articles about the restoration process over the next year.
It only takes a few seconds to spin up with the larger motor on it. As far as dust collection - the tables are open, so I had originally fit a wedge underneath with a 4" port on the outfeed side, but according to my friend, it's not necessary and he just has a 4" open pipe on the floor near the outfeed side that he sweeps up once a month or so.
That's a wild coincidence! Was that the October edition? I would like to see those articles. This was a project, and I can tell you that learning from someone else would've been super helpful when moving that much cast iron around.
The hardest part was re-leveling and ensuring the tables were co-planar when re-assembling it. You have 8 level screws, and something like 60 set screws for the blades. It was a fiddly process!
Man this is the kind of thing you have to include a location for ;)