Old Rockwell-Delta-Milwaukee Heavy Duty Wood Shaper 43-205, 1340
One of our readers sent us these pictures of what turned out to be an older Rockwell-Delta-Milwaukee heavy duty wood shaper model 43-205 with serial number 78-2093. They were asking us to identify it so he could purchase the correct owner’s manual for it. This shaper is in good condition for it’s age. The serial number dates it to 1949. This was the biggest and heaviest wood shaper that Rockwell-Delta-Milwaukee ever made, and it was modeled after their popular unisaw design.
This shaper model came out in the Delta catalog in 1940 as the model 1340. The wood shaper has a 27″ x 28″ table with the standard 3/4″ spindle. It accepts a total of six interchangeable spindles: 5/16″, 1/2″, 3/4″ and 1″ standard spindles, 1/2″ stub spindle and a 3/4″ extra long spindle. This shaper was advertised as having a wide range of shaper cutter sizes.
Delta-Milwaukee 1953 Catalog Pages on 43-205 & 1340 Wood Shaper
Below are some pages from the Delta-Milwaukee 1953 catalog about the 43-205 and 1340 wood shaper. We have the complete catalog and more on our FREE PDF Catalogs page. This shows more about how this shaper was marketed as well as the available accessories. In 1953, this wood shaper was sold new for $252.00, which is equivalent to $2,278.65 today. I’ve heard of guys picking these up for around $500 today, depending on the condition.
ROCKWELL Older Heavy Duty Wood Shaper 43-205 & 1340 Operator’s & Parts Manual
We have the owner’s manual that came with this machine available below. It has a lot of nice pictures of the inner workings of the wood shaper, and with instructions on how to change the spindles. The manual has explosive diagrams of all the parts with parts numbers and descriptions, which helps when needing to restore this machine or find parts.
