Quote from my friend Mike on the repair of his planer leg -

"I retrieved the Shepard, lathe and Co. planer leg from Harrisonburg, VA yesterday. I attached
some pictures of the repaired leg. Pretty amazing repair work. The Company that did the work
was Custom Cast Repair & Services Inc.(http://www.customcastrepair.com/) Lonnie is the fellow
I dealt with on the planer leg. They specialize in cast iron repair and use ONLY cast iron to
facilitate the repair. They specialize in restoration of rare and one of a kind cast iron pieces. This
repair became tricky as the break was contaminated by nickel from the previous unsuccessful
repair effort. There was also some additional cracks that were present in addition to the original
break. As you can see from the pictures, Lonnie is an artist. I highly recommend his shop to anyone
looking to save a particularly rare or valuable piece of iron. This kind of restoration work takes
serious time and skill and therefore doesn't come cheap but is a wonderful option for saving rare
cast iron. I'm thrilled to be able to save the original leg to this amazing planer. I assumed I would
need to true up the bottoms of the planer feet after the repair was completed but when I picked it
up Lonnie laid a machinist's straight edge across the feet to show me he made sure everything
stayed squared. IMO, an amazing piece of work."

shepard_lathe_and_co_planer_repair_1.jpg
shepard_lathe_and_co_planer_repair_2.jpg
shepard_lathe_and_co_planer_repair_3.jpg

Irby Jones
12/31/2007