Found Dreaming

This one has been my subject of interest for quite a while now, but it's the corebox machine/jig for a router that was found in the navy patternmaking manual 3 & 2. I saw it a while back and while it would have been handy a few times already, I just struggled to try to figure out how in the world the thing was made and how it worked, even tho it was so simple, lol. Ive made a number of 2 3/4"-3" coreboxes lately, along with some other stuff that needed a shallow but decently large radius in it, that I just ended up using a round bottom plane to shape out, but this thing just kept coming back to my mind, lol.

I was looking at stuff earlier tonight and ended up thinking about it again and thought that it would be pretty cool to try making one, but with only that description and crappy and grainy pic, it was almost impossible to know where to really start. I started looking up patternmaking machine patents from the navy, and various ways of looking at it that I could think of, and in the description of one patent, I ended up finding it, which had been released pretty much the same year or shortly before the patternmaking 3 & 2 book came out. Evidently there was two styles that were made, a larger one, and a smaller one, but worked off of the same principle.

It was designed by Olen L Miller and patented in 1944, patent number US2,445,918A. The design had changed a little over time, but yea, lol.
https://patents.google.com/patent/US2445918A/

I also found a link on vintage machinery that was kinda hidden, but found it after looking up the patent number that had some other pics.
http://vintagemachinery.org/photoindex/ ... x?id=27761

Based off of the pics, it doesnt look like it would be that hard to make really, and actually could become quite handy tbh, lol. Being only 20-25lbs all together for something that large, I'd expect that alot of it was made from aluminum, so that'll make things easier. If I could figure out how big the handwheels and width of it was, the rest would be a piece of cake to make a copy of it, lol.

I figured you guys would find this interesting and maybe someone here had seen one or used one maybe.

Now we have CNC machines that will do more than this to make patterns. My problem is figuring out the CAD/CAM part of it. I'm getting better and have almost figured out Vetric's 2D Pro to make 2 dimensional things. I hope to pick up 2.5D to get more depth. Pat makes everything with his 3D printer.

Yea, I know there's cnc these days, but even they have thier limitations, and sometimes, the non cookie cutter cnc'd look actually looks better on parts, lol. With that, I could set up two boards side by side as a fence and put that in between them to do stuff on large slabs of wood that you normally cant fit in the cnc, and alot of other stuff too. I was looking up the patents from that guy and he had another that was a smaller version, but it could be used on the same setup as the router sled, just using the wheels as handles, locked in the middle to do the coreboxes, or it'll lock the spindle vertical and be able to slide the whole thing around to flatten slabs and such, on top of being able to do coreboxes, different radiuses, etc, so that really caught my interest and Ive been half tempted to try to make it, lol.

I rather not use cnc if I can help it, and up till now, Ive never had a problem that really needed one, plus I could do up the patterns by hand in probably the same time as it would be to doodle up the part, figure out the cam software, then the hours of it cutting tbh, lol. Also it's far easier on the allergies, lol. I know that last part is kinda a moot point tho because of the router and such here, lol. I also just thought this thing was pretty cool really, and could be a pretty nice addition to a workshop where storage space is a luxury, and no room for a bigger cnc machine and computer and all of that. As for the 3d printer, Ive had nothing but crap luck when it came to coreboxes and such that's 3d printed, mostly because the stuff wouldnt want to release for anything from them due to layer lines, and even if I filled them in with bondo and sanded it smooth, they still gave me problems for different reasons.

Here's the idea of the surface miller/router sled, which he has an adjustable head on it, but instead of that, I would put the corebox cutting head from the smaller corebox machine on the vintagemachinery site, that way I can use it as a router sled and such. Since it not only does half round cutouts for coreboxes, you can use it for creating half round dowels and different shapes on it too, which they gave some examples of it in the patent document above.
https://patents.google.com/patent/US2638136A

I just thought the stuff was cool and thought someone might find it interesting anyways.