The story behind the iron

About the Collection

The company

Greenlee Bros. & Co. began in Chicago in 1862, founded by twin brothers Robert and Ralph Greenlee, and built its early reputation on machinery for the cooperage trade — barrels being the shipping containers of the nineteenth century — before broadening into a full line of woodworking machines. At the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago the company staged an exhibit of car-building and woodworking machinery in Machinery Hall — by its own proud account, the only woodworking machinery exhibit run in actual operation, and the one to receive an award on every machine shown. In 1904 the company moved to Rockford, Illinois, and it is the Rockford works that poured most of the iron on this site.

For the first two-thirds of the twentieth century, Greenlee machines equipped the furniture factories, sash-and-door plants, and millwork shops of the American Midwest — machines known for heavy castings, honest engineering, and a certain unfussy elegance. Over the same decades the company’s center of gravity shifted toward tools for the electrical trades, and that is where the Greenlee name lives today. The woodworking machinery line wound down; the machines themselves were scrapped, sold, and scattered.

Which is precisely why they are worth collecting. Nobody makes these anymore. Nobody will.

Period photograph of the Greenlee Bros. & Co. exhibit at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition — rows of machines behind an ornamental railing, beneath a canvas-draped pavilion lettered GREENLEE BROS. & CO. CHICAGO

The Greenlee Bros. & Co. exhibit at the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893 — a period photograph from a company plate. Its printed caption quotes the award: “These machines embody in the general design, arrangement of working parts, in their movements and the selection of mechanism to obtain and control the movements, the highest advancements made in the construction of such tools. The workmanship is of the highest standard.”

Engraving-style catalog illustration of an early 1900s band saw

A band saw of the early 1900s, drawn in the manner of a period catalog plate.

The mill floor, imagined

What did a factory full of Greenlee iron actually look like? Around 1905, a sash-and-door plant was organized as a production line under a line shaft: a steam engine spun overhead shafting the length of the mill floor, and every machine hung off it by a flat leather belt — which is why machines of that era carry those broad flat-belt pulleys. Lumber came in at one end past the rip saws and planers, moved to the joinery room where tenoners cut the rail ends and mortisers cut the matching pockets, passed the shapers and stickers for its profiles, and ended at the glue pots and assembly benches by the best window light.

The three plates below imagine that floor — drawn in the manner of period engravings, with the machines taken from Greenlee’s own catalog pages for the very models in this collection.

Engraving-style illustration of a 1905 sash-and-door factory machine floor: a worker feeds a board through a Greenlee self-feed rip saw, with a band saw and planer down the row, all driven by overhead line shafting

The rough mill: a No. 426 self-feed rip saw at work in the foreground, a No. 410 band saw and No. 105 planer down the row, every machine belted to the line shaft overhead.

Engraving-style illustration of the joinery room in a 1905 window factory: workers at a horizontal mortiser, an upright hollow-chisel mortiser, and a single-end tenoner, with a finished window sash leaning against a post

The joinery room: a No. 204 horizontal mortiser, a hollow-chisel mortiser, and a No. 530 tenoner cutting the joints of a window sash, with the finished article leaning at center.

Engraving-style illustration of closing time in a 1905 window factory: a mustached foreman holds a finished window sash up to the evening light beside a Greenlee band saw, while the shop dog sleeps in a drift of shavings and a cat naps on the tenoner

Closing time. The foreman inspects the day’s last sash by the evening light; the shop dog and cat have already clocked out.

The collection

Thirteen machines, spanning roughly seventy years of manufacture — from a hand-powered hauncher and relisher cast in Chicago in the 1890s to a matched pair of high-speed shapers from 1967. Six of Greenlee’s numbered series are represented: the 100-Series shapers and planers, 200-Series mortisers, 300-Series boring machines, 400-Series saws, 500-Series tenoners, and the early joinery machines that came before the system.

Ten of the thirteen are dated and documented; three are still in the research-and-restoration queue, and their pages say so plainly. Every machine keeps its serial number, its build date where known, and its story.

The collection at a glance

Thirteen machines, across all six of Greenlee’s numbered series, from the 1890s to the 1960s. Two things stand out: the collection falls into two clusters a generation apart — a pre-Depression run of joinery and saws, then a post-war burst of shapers — and the war years sit conspicuously empty.

By decade of manufacture

When each machine was built

1 604

1 204

1 426

3 175 356 530

1 105

3 165 180 495

1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s

Each medallion is a machine — select one to open its page. Three machines still being dated (the 227, 410 and 495s) appear in the series view and the table below.

By Greenlee series

Where the collection sits in Greenlee’s catalog

100-Seriesshapers & planer

200-Seriesmortisers

300-Seriesborer

400-Seriessaws

500-Seriestenoner

600-Seriessash joinery

604

The 100-Series shapers and 400-Series saws run deepest — four machines each.

In the collection Awaiting restoration

Show as a table

No.	Machine	Series	Built	Status
No. 604	Hauncher & Relisher	600-Series	c. 1895	In the collection
No. 204	Horizontal Mortiser	200-Series	c. 1905	In the collection
No. 426	Self-Feed Rip Saw	400-Series	1910	In the collection
No. 530	Single-End Tenoner	500-Series	1921	In the collection
No. 356	Vertical Boring Machine	300-Series	1923	In the collection
No. 175	Single-Spindle Shaper	100-Series	1929	In the collection
No. 105	30-inch Industrial Planer	100-Series	1937	In the collection
No. 495	Variety Saw	400-Series	1961	In the collection
No. 180	Double-Spindle Shaper	100-Series	1967	In the collection
No. 165	Single-Spindle Shaper	100-Series	1967	In the collection
No. 410	36-inch Band Saw	400-Series	Being dated	Awaiting restoration
No. 227	Hollow Chisel Mortiser	200-Series	Being dated	Awaiting restoration
No. 495s	Variety Saw, Special	400-Series	Being dated	Awaiting restoration

The principles

Keep them working. Nothing here is behind glass. A machine preserved but silenced is only half preserved — the point of old iron is that it still cuts.
Original where possible, modern where kind. Original parts, finishes, and fittings come first. But where modern electronics spare century-old windings — like the VFD soft-start on the No. 356 borer — the machines get them.
Document everything. Serial numbers, build dates, acquisition days, photographs from the trailer to the shop floor. A collection without records is just a pile of iron.
Admit the unknowns. Three machines are labeled “under research” because that is the truth. The labels will change when the facts do.

The collector

This is a private collection, kept in two timber frame buildings raised for the purpose, and shared here so the machines can be seen, studied, and enjoyed. Questions, corrections, and Greenlee lore are always welcome.

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