I really don't think there was any intent to scrap anything, he even saved the rotten tires and old cables.
The boxes marked with particular bike models look like he tore a bike apart, stuffed everything in the box, good or bad and either stored the frame and wheels or got rid of it. The boxes aren't marked whether the bikes were men's or ladies models, so he may well have been just parting out ladies models and keeping the men's models. I did ask the wife if he sold bikes and she looked at my funny and said "He never sold anything, EVER".
She didn't seem to see anything wrong with having a house full of old bike parts. Let alone dirty greasy parts.
He was cleaning and boxing parts but the clean parts were mixed in with the dirty parts, he had one box marked Misc. British Headsets, inside the box were about 10 bags of used headsets, and one bag of brand new Raleigh headsets. About half the used headsets were cleaned and bagged, each one wrapped up in newspaper with the bearings in small bags. I just opened a box full of prewar pedals and found another chopped bb shell. Another box was full of new 1" pitch chain rings, plus about 20 'new in the package' Diamond brand 1" pitch chains.
I also found this today, an odd width 1" pitch, 1/8" wide, block chain. It won't fit on most chainwheels, only the thinnest of them. Its sort of crudely made, the inner links are just stamped steel and measure .125" thick, making them an interference fit on a true 1/8" thick chainwheel. Each inner link has a slight curve to the one side due to the way it was punched out. It fits on a few thin chrome versions I've got here but none of the heavier gauge ones. It was in an unmarked box along with a a bunch of Bayliss Wiley cups and crank axles, plus a few odd English headsets.
There was also a big bag of axle adjusters, like those used on track bikes in the same box, maybe 50 pair or so new in a bag, plus about 100 used or slightly rusty ones. The chain is long, too long to be just a normal balloon tire bike chain, I didn't measure it or count all the links but its roughly 6.5ft long.
