Added a length stop to the bar cutter (which I also cleaned and oiled), for cutting multiples of a particular length. 

The critical part of this is the little piece of square tube. This is held down by one of the bolts that holds the cutter to its mounting bracket  (for holding it in the vise). Holes on the sides allow the adjustable stop to pass through, and a hole on top is threaded for a knob* to lock the stop in place.

The right-hand side of the tube is in line with the cutting blades**, so measuring from that side to the stop gives you the length of the cut piece.

I’m going to call that a success. 

 

 

* Salvaged from somewhere, ground down to a smaller size that doesn’t bump into the base of the cutter. 

 

** I didn’t take a photo, but I was interested to see when I took the cutter apart that there’s a pair of hardened steel cutting blades inside. Nice bit of product design. 

I'm a little surprised it wasn't set up for a stop, whether it still had it when you got it or not.  I don't recall is it missing the base / stand? 

I've used these or ones so similar I can't tell the difference from here. The one we had in Metal shop in high school had a stop on a flat bar with increments to 1/16". You could use a steel pocket scale or even vernier calipers butted against the stop scale blade on the shear for more precise measurements.

BOY, not remembering the terms made that one clumsy description. The bar shear we had in Occupational Heavy Metal would shear 5/8" rnd. or 1/2" x 1" flat with the cheater provided with the shear. That one was bolted to the floor, like our Hossfeld bender. 

MAN I miss the Occupational Heavy Metal shop. I'm sure it went for pennies on the dollar when the Cal. edu system eliminated shop classes. Wish I could've been there for the auction. <sigh> Seriously well equipped shop intended to train people to go to work in any one of several heavy steel trades. We had 5-6 lathes, horizontal and vertical mills, shaper, casting, welding, gas, arc, heli-arc. Heliarc was for advanced students. We learned proper all position cutting torch work and of course a rarely used anvil and Johnson Gas Appliance forge we almost never fired because blacksmithing wasn't considered a current occupation. We did heat treat the basic forged screw driver and cold chisel to meet the curriculum though. So, somewhere in Dad's tool box if it's still around there are 10 hand forged screw drivers and 10 hand forged and heat treated cold chisels. They were a required project as were the hand sawn and filed steel dice the instructors accepted for the cube required project.

Sorry for taking a stroll down memory lane but your bar shear (triggered me.)

Frosty The Lucky.

2 hours ago, Frosty said:

I don't recall is it missing the base / stand? 

It came to me without a stand, and I don’t see any provision for mounted accessories. Since it’s a smaller model, I’m not surprised by the absence of extras. 

Here’s a shot of the bracket I made for clamping it in the big bench vise:

 And here it is in storage mode, with the stop removed from its holder and secured to the handle with ranger bands:

Is there a maker or patent # on it? 

Years ago I bought a larger bar shear and though it was missing it had a place to bolt a stop though the shear didn't have provisions for a stop itself. The stop mechanism bolted to the bench under the shear's bolt flanges. The catalogues online showed a few different stands, etc. with adjustable stops. 

The yard / garage sale I picked it up at was a retired concrete guy and he used it for cutting rebar so precision wasn't very important. If they were cutting a lot of repeat lengths they measured the distance from a wall or truck tire for the stop. It develops the force to shear 1/2" rebar through a compound lever and the base it's bolted to is intended to lay on the ground, floor, etc. It was pretty rusty when I picked it up, it works but it's dull. The shear blades aren't crisp and clean so it's in the shop and I use my big honking bolt cutters and touch them with a disk grinder if I need a nice end.

Frosty The Lucky.

The maker is "H.L.Judd Co." (cast into the handle), and the model is "No. 1" (cast into the body). 

Judd was a company based in NYC, with factories in Wallingford, CT and Chattanooga, TN. In their 1913 catalog (available online HERE), they describe themselves as "Manufacturers of Upholstery Hardware, Curtain Poles, Shade and Carpet Hardware, Picture Hardware, Stationery Hardware, Brass Fancy Goods, Brass and Iron Bedsteads, Brass Railings and Drapery, Display Fixtures, Andirons, Fenders, etc."

The "Rod Cutter No. 1" is shown on page 214, along with a couple of other similar tools.

There doesn't appear to be any provision for a stop, but I suspect that little tab is there to provide a reference point to measure from.

(N.B.: Adjusted for inflation, that $6 price in 1913 is about $195 today. I paid $20, which is 61¢ in 1913 dollars. Pretty good deal, either way.)

 

WOW, that is some rabbit hole! Just the fancy nail heads are kind of a bogle.

From as far as I've browsed it looks like the tools and equipment they sold was for installing products they sold. 

Another example of how much fun it is to go through old catalogs.

Frosty The Lucky.

Yes, indeed!

It's also an interesting window into some interesting historical connections. First of all, their building on Chambers Street (a couple of blocks from the World Trade Center site) is now an urgent care center with condominium apartments upstairs:

The building appears to date to the time of significant economic prosperity and redevelopment of Lower Manhattan at the end of the 19th and turn of the 20th centuries. A lot of these buildings were originally built with masonry-over-steel-frame construction, but with the interior structures (floor joists and floorboards, wall studs, etc) almost entirely made from old-growth timber from the South. This was after the destruction of the Southern economy post-Civil War, when one of the few things the South still had to sell was its timber. The building (now demolished, alas) that housed the furniture store where I worked for many years was one of these; it had originally housed a machinery company with a showroom and offices on the first floor and workshops on the upper floors. When we cut a stairwell from the first floor to the second, we discovered that above a thick plaster ceiling, the original T&G floorboards were laid in three layers at right angles to each other, to keep oil from dripping down through the cracks from above and fire from getting through from below.

It's also interesting to note that by the time Judd put out their catalog, manufacturing had shifted from Manhattan (assuming that they'd started in a similar showroom/workshop arrangement) to Connecticut and Tennessee, indicating both the growth of the company itself and also the way that the post-Civil War expansion of manufacturing and railroads had made such a multi-state arrangement possible and even necessary.

 

3 hours ago, JHCC said:

I suspect that little tab is there to provide a reference point to measure from.

If that's the case, though, I suppose I'm using mine backwards.

Not surprising, its that whole learning curve thing you encounter not having instructions. 

Frosty The Lucky.