.....did you find using toluene increased your yields , also why so much time , i would say 8 hours would be sufficient at 130?C but by you adding Toluene the temp of reflux will not go above the BP of toluene which is 110?C, hence you sort of defeated the purpose .....i will be suprised if your yields are the regular using only Xylene which averages 75-80 %.....also you have a lot of volume of solvent ....the reaction can be performed with equal  volume as qeight of oxime, i.e. 100gr of oxime and 100 ml of xylene.....java

almost all the toluene distills off before the oxime really reacts.

I can't find the reference, but this procedure is known to fail if toluene alone is used. It's unsurprising that the oxime doesn't react until the xylene's higher reflux temperature.

tried toluene with zinc nitrate as catalyst and got a bright orange goo 
from the same batch of aldoxime used nickel acetate and xylene no problem
substituted the nickel acetate for zinc nitrate + xylene worked fine (had to adjust catalyst amounts from paper though )
going over 132c meant dirty amide and long workup for moi + lower yields so after twice bitten shied away from it.

ended up using a procedure something like
(cant remember solvent amount) but nickel acetate was added to xylene and refluxed at @ 110c for an hour or so.
the amide added in portions at that temperature, (oops mind fizzing) add slow enough to let it dissolve completely and temperature not drop below 100c.
reflux for @ 8 hours.
during this time temperatures are raised as bubbling slows during the reaction time and kept at 125-130c.
gotta watch this one cos temps seem too creep up.
filtered hot.
cooled, crystallised in freezer. filtered, washed. pearly white amide.
the post reaction solution if refroze sometimes dropped out unreacted aldoxime separately. if yield was down thats where it was, unreacted.
filter that out, left with dark red viscous oil once xylene stripped off.(if aldoxime was impure or temps above 132c this is probably brown-black tar i might be wrong, in my case that was the case)

total including aldoxime recovery and reuse, think it was 2786g amide from 3600g aldoxime (give or take a g or two)

it has to get to 120-130 because i thing the intermediate has to be of syn orientation (i think) which is'nt it's thermodynamically favorable isomer

Just a note ;

Benzaldehyde is not a goot representation of most oximes people want on this site.

There are some benzaldehyde oxime reactions that undergo favorable transformations in good yield, but do not transfer to alkyl oximes.

Here is the full paper:

Copper-catalyzed rearrangement of oximes into primary amides
Sumeet K. Sharmaa, Simon D. Bishoppa, C. Liana Allena, Ruth Lawrencea, Mark J. Bamfordb, Alexei A. Lapkinc, Pawel Plucinskid, Robert J. Watsonb, Jonathan M.J. Williams
Tetrahedron Letters, 52 (33), pp. 4252-4255
DOI: 10.1016/j.tetlet.2011.05.129

So I'm have a real problem here I completed the oximation using 1 gallon of methanol, 2kg aldehyde, 2kg hydroxylamine hydrochloride, and made neutral using sodium bicarbonate. After 12hrs of stirring no aldoxime precipitated. I was left with a giant green blob and the bottom of the flask which is not unusual from what I've read. The consistency had changed to almost slime, viscous. I figured the reaction is a success. I washed it a few times with water and proceeded to the beckmann rearrangement.

I used 5% molar nickel acetate (to oxime) in a solvent volume 1ml per gram of the oxime, xylene was used. This was allowed to reflux for 10hrs. At no point did it turn brown as others have mentioned nor was a reaction noticeably taking place at heavy reflux. After 10hrs .4l of xylene was distilled off and the reaction mixture was aloud to cool. No precipitate evolved. I know the hydroxylamine is good as I used it to form the oxime of MDP-2-P without any issues. I know the helional is good as well as the boiling point was spot on and it formed the bisulphite adduct readily. Any insight anyone could give me would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks lugh but it was distilled before use. I realized the temperature wasn't going high enough, worked out alright.

There is a whole lot of one-pot reactions regarding the subject aldehyde to amide, Ive looked through some reactions and it seems the metal catalysed ones are a lot less desirable over all other ones, especially when it comes to one pot reactions, and even more when it comes to one-pot reactions involving oximation and beckmann rearrangement

In my opinion those reactions which form a nitrile first then get that oxidised with hydrogen peroxide to the amide without any metal catalyst are the most good looking reactions here!
Of course iodine is very expensive, youll need also very much and its watched in some parts of the world anyway, so this long known nitrile preparation from an aldehyde is not really viable for you, and I dont like the idea anyway someone is playing with huge amounts of inital explosives...

So have a look at the first attached file, its maybe of use for you because it works with cheap and easy to get reagents and the reaction scheme is the same there, and as youve asked for practical experience, i saw someone on sciencemadness has claimed even three years ago to see his amide precipitate after the reaction is done, but couldnt filter it IIRC. 
But has also not mentioned to throw it away or that he tried extracting it, and then theres only a hint known to me hat the wanted amide should dissolve in DCM and the second attached file states like some others have too, that it has a poor solubility in hot aromatic solvents/hot aqueous alcohols, and that diethyl ether doesnt at all.
 
What i mean is you cant use the procedure theyre using for work-up, you have tweak this to got it to work... maybe extraction with a hot aromatic, filter and cool or something... theyre subjecting their product to column chromatography, which would be indeed possible with cheap materials but anyway.
You have in any case if youre doing a one-pot beckmann rearrangement to check when doing it the first time how long it actually takes for the aldehyde, the oxime and amide-spot to show up on tlc-plates, to adapt this specific synthesis to your substrate

If you and your working area are suited to work with the smell/hood is good enough, then a pretty straight forward swern type oxidation with acetic anhydride on the bisulfite adduct of your aldehyde followed by quenching with an amine to give an amide comes to mind...
But you have to request it first, can find the paper here:
hxxp://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040403900848935
Remember that Dimethylsulfide can and will remain your working area completely inhabitable, one would think several days or weeks for sure, maybe just hours idk and i dont want to find out 

Here is the full paper:

Copper-catalyzed rearrangement of oximes into primary amides
Sumeet K. Sharmaa, Simon D. Bishoppa, C. Liana Allena, Ruth Lawrencea, Mark J. Bamfordb, Alexei A. Lapkinc, Pawel Plucinskid, Robert J. Watsonb, Jonathan M.J. Williams
Tetrahedron Letters, 52 (33), pp. 4252-4255
DOI: 10.1016/j.tetlet.2011.05.129

if one were to want to use this patent would it need to still be run at 120-130 C in xylene or could the parameters given 110 C in toluene be used?  Jon mentioned earlier that something makes the stereo chemistry better at the higher temperature range could any of you wiser bees give me a push in the right direction?