Unca_Sam

Recent purchase

They aren't in use, but I've been asked recently when i wanted to adjust a Raleigh headset on a 1973 Supercourse and my 12" adjustable wrench couldn't open wide enough for the 42mm flats, nor the 43mm flats on the DS cone on the one piece crank on the Schwinn 3 speed. Thanks to the Schwinn, I also needed a small adjustable wrench to handle flats (because finding a 15mm and 9/16" combination wrench is a tall order, or junk). I saw a posting on the marketplace for a bunch of wrenches for $15, so I made a drive.
From top to bottom:

• a Barnes '98 adjustable bicycle wrench with much of the nickel plate gone on one side.
• A no name F type wrench, cheap and soft but with a wide capacity
• An L. Coes patent adjustable wrench, roughly used, with a nice, intact wood handle
• A Bemis & Call 1906 pattern adjustable wrench, roughly used
• Two newer pipe wrenches, though the smaller trimo wrench is the smallest pipe wrench I've ever seen.

These soaked in Evapo-rust to get off the scale. I've hammered the mushrooming on the adjustable wrench heads back, because the steel is harder than my files. I'll be cleaning and stabilizing these, then placing them into service as needed.

madpogue 

One of my first purchases after getting my first programming job after community college was one of those 100-ish-piece Craftsman tool sets, about the same "vintage" as these. I still have most of them, or their warranty replacements. Sigh, I guess they're "old" tools now.

Sadly, I broke the open end of a 15mm combo just like yours, on a recalcitrant pedal. I didn't have a Park pedal wrench yet at the time, and I should have waited. Yeah, the warranty still applies, but the replacement won't say USA.

bikingshearer 

Some VAR goodness. Not sure how old the actual tools are, but the designs have been around a while.The headset press came from a bike shop that was have a "clean out the basement and attic" sale. The pin spanner and the headset wrench came from eBay. And yes, there are pins in the pin spanner - they are on the underside so I could show the "13 V.A.R." and was too distracted or lazy to put them where they could be seen.

steelbikeguy

jeez.... I haven't thought about that in a long time!
I used it all the time when doing avionics work on A-4 Skyhawks in the Marines....



I seem to recall that the springs in the knife had a tendency to break, though. Maybe that was only if you used it 8 hours a day?
The aircraft had a lot of fasteners that only required a quarter-turn to open or close, so the screwdriver/bottle-opener got a lot of work. The knife got a lot of use when stripping wire insulation or cutting zip-ties to length.

thanks for the little memory jog!

Steve in Peoria, but used to be at MCAS Yuma for a few years

merziac

So cool.

This why old tools, bikes, parts, bits, pieces and much else can be so valuable.

They take neglect, abuse, brutal long term day to day use and can keep going, sometimes forever.

The ability to have, get and make them do so is priceless as it translates to so many other difficult tasks that can kill a project with out the mindset.

Nothing better than old stuff ready to do battle again, still, bring it on.

BFisher

@steelbikeguy, you are certainly welcome, and thanks for your service. Great pic!

rootboy 

Sears/Craftsman contracted out most of their tools back when. Metal working lathes, milling machines and shapers branded Craftsman were made by Atlas, etc.
Craftsman hand planes and block planes were made by a few manufacturers over the years. Stanley, etc. I have an old Craftsman block plane
that was made by Sargent.
Ah...old tools. Don't get me started.

merziac

rootboy

Have a grade school buddy that worked at Proto tool here in Milwaukie OR years ago.

He got in good with the chroming guys and had some things done that were the best I've ever seen, good prep, tool chrome and the some tweaking from the guys pulling the levers came out with the toughest by far, best looking chrome and it was Gratis.

Unfortunately he witnessed a horrible accident in the stockroom when a bundle of barstock came loose from the crane and wasn't there very long.

branko_76 

.

I had the same knife when I was 15, it got taken away from me when I got arrested for carving my name in a CTA bus....

JohnDThompson 

This was my Dad's favorite knife. Given to him by a Finnish PhD student of his:

BFisher

@branko_76, Damn teenagers!

When I was about 10 or 11 years old my grandfather gave me a pocket knife just like the one I posted. He got it in the Navy. Unfortunately I lost it. Bummed out big time!
Fast forward to a couple years ago, my wife and I saw one at an antique shop and I told her the tale. She went back and got it for me as a gift.

Prowler 

Every tool tool tels a story: Here's a few that talk to me each time I reach for them. I have a lot others as I'm quite fond of old tools. Often they are better quality than what I can buy today. And the tools today have no stories yet.....




Clockwise from the top:

a) a spokeshave from my Grandfather. He was a US Treasury agent who probably knew Elliot Ness. He stuck with it for his career, Ness did not. Yes, I know how to sharpen and use a spokeshave.
b) A very nice old SnapOn 1/4" drive found in a house clean out. Now a standing member of my bike tool kit.
c) Utica Tool side cutters from my Father's work bench.
d) German made metric open end wrench. This was also from my Father's bench. The ONLY metric too he had and I've often wondered why he had it and where he got it. He probably never worked on a metric fastener. I'm always reminded of my Dad when I use these two.
e) Nice old Crescent wrench, an actual Crescent vs what we now generically call all of these adjustables. I almost lost this recently. I forgot a valuable lesson from working Nuclear plants and did not tether this to my arm when working on my well. Yup, I dropped it down the well. But it landed on a wee ledge about 5 feet down. I creeped back to the shop to get one of my magnetic grabber tools, and a tether line, and carefully, slowly, creepily snagged this tool and brought it back up. What luck. Another story...

ltokuno

Most my taps and dies are inherited. This Greenfield is the thing I tend to use the most.

Jmpierce

Off topic but I worked on A-4's in the 70's at Miramar, Fightertown USA. VC-7, we were Topgun's sister squadron. One of our birds got reassigned to the Blue Angles.






and to get it back on track, I have a set of 1/4" drive socket set I bought at the PX that I still use.

steelbikeguy

pretty cool!
I kinda miss working on A-4's.
The F-5's must have been somewhat similar.. i.e. it's a tiny airplane and all the stuff is crammed into inaccessible corners of the fuselage.
... but the F-5's were much sleeker and sexier! I got a few photos of some Top Gun (a.k.a. Naval Fighter Weapons School) F-5's when they stopped in at Yuma....

buno 160964




that blue camo paint scheme was sooo cool!

digging through my boxes of crap, I realized that I do still have my stainless pocket knife, along with the belt sheath that one of my seat shop buddies made for me. The belt sheath includes a velcro loop to hold my "ears" (i.e. hearing protection) and a pen (used for filling out maintenance forms and other mundane purposes).






it turns out that the springs aren't broken, but are pretty weak. For some reason, I also have problems with weak or broken springs in my SunTour derailleurs.

Like other tools at that time, it had FOD tape on it. "FOD" stands for Foreign Object Damage or Foreign Objects or Debris. This is a term for anything that gets sucked into a jet engine, or any damage caused by such an object. The tape is reflective, making it easier to find a tool that was dropped or misplaced.


Steve in Peoria