Old Tools

When I was 15 and left school to become an apprentice engineer..My Dad gave me a set of tools that he used to use when he was a Toolmaker in a large factory in Sheffield ...As he had now moved on from off the factory floor to a white coller job as a Metrologist for British Steel he didnt need them anymore....I used them in my job as a Marker out and then as a Toolroom fitter until I was about 24 year old in 1963 then I left engineering for the next 15 years to become a musician/entertainer in several bands..in 1975 I went back into the engineering again but this time it was Inspection and QA documentation stuff mostly paperwork, until I retired in 2003 ..and finally ended up making Ukuleles for some strange reason...Anyway to cut a long story short I went to Sheffield yesterday to my younger Brothers Golden wedding anniversary..and discovered my tools had been put into storage in1963 and they were kept in a chest ending up in in my Brothers garage..So a got them back again and today I spent several hours cleaning them up and they are now almost a good as new.
Here they are

Beautiful. What a nice surprise. I wonder if they are even more valuable to you now than they were back then when you were working with them.

Nelson

Thanks for sharing. Do you think having been a "sub-.001" " machinist ( or evaluator ) at one time drives you toward a certain perfectionism in wood working now?

pointpergame said:

Thanks for sharing. Do you think having been a "sub-.001" " machinist ( or evaluator ) at one time drives you toward a certain perfectionism in wood working now?

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Sadly yes! ....but with wood .005-010" is about all you can expect, then humidity and wood species can vary this all over the place..I recon a good fit with wood is an almost tight fit, then get the glue in and clamp it hard and hope the joint closes tight...compound dovetails are great for this.

I may share one day how we get a perfect fit with our bolt on necks... Tolerances of 100th's of a thou are pointless with wood. I work in 100ths of a millimetre but that goes out of the window as soon as the sandpaper comes out. There is a fine line between the cabinet/furniture making quality you are looking for and the engineering precision you expect. I recently attended a furniture school exhibition where a console table had a perfectly fitting drawer and one that 'stuck' slightly. What had caused this was a move from the workshop to the exhibition space which was in a different building. Wood is hygroscopic; if it has no finish and most soundbox interior are left unfinished en movement will occur!

That is wonderful Ken. I love old measuring devices with a dial instead of the "new fangled" digital read outs. Although digital read outs are much easier on my eyes there is just something so very reassuring as watching the arm sweep around then come to rest. Kind of like a good old time piece made from many precise parts.

Just lovely, enjoy your new found old friends.

Nice looking stuff, and a great story :cheers:

Pete Howlett said:

... Tolerances of 100th's of a thou are pointless with wood. I work in 100ths of a millimetre but that goes out of the window as soon as the sandpaper comes out!...

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That's why I don't use sandpaper. Well, that and it dulls my irons. But I don't want to open the hand work or the precision debates. I am no longer in production, so I have the luxury of ridiculous precision and strictly hand tools. Also, don't mean to steal away Tmbuck's thread.

Love old tools; planes 'n other stuff too. Funny, our past was somewhat similar. My 1st job after tech school and USAF was as an engineer technician for a large exhaust-systems manufacturer in 1970. Those tools you show were in high usage on the surface and gage plates we had. They still used some of them in 2011, when I retired; especially the magnetic height tool to check measurements.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Starrett-25...ce-Gage-w-12-Spindle-gauge-size-/112060336354

I only stayed in the shop for a couple of years, and was later transferred to development engineering (in Faurecia) for designing automotive exhaust silencers. That was paper, pencil, and later cad work which evolved into simulation.

I'd always wished for being a professional musician, and even more so when the Beatles came out during my younger years. I had to settle for playing (mostly bass) in garage bands, churches, and even pubs. Family and financial needs came first, and it was hard for a musician to survive on the local pay scale unless they hit it big.

I've always had a basement workshop, and started building guitars in 2001-2002. Then I stopped. Now I'm revisiting the prospect of picking up again, surfed into UU and saw what is happening with you guys. So yeah, hats off to old hand tools and measurement methods. Maybe slower, but still a nice thing to relax with in a man cave.

Good stuff; thanks for showing and sharing, Ken.

I just purchased an old hand plane no 4 off our ebay equivalent myself, made from swedish steel in Eskilstuna, Sweden. Some top notch quality on par with old Stanley baileys right there, and at 25£ it's about the price you pay for a really crappy new one at a hardware store (apparently there are forums for hand planes as well hah, and they call new cheap ones PLO:s, plane like objects ).

cml said:

I just purchased an old hand plane no 4 off our ebay equivalent myself, made from swedish steel in Eskilstuna, Sweden. Some top notch quality on par with old Stanley baileys right there, and at 25£ it's about the price you pay for a really crappy new one at a hardware store (apparently there are forums for hand planes as well hah, and they call new cheap ones PLO:s, plane like objects ).

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Gotta love old tools, they just ooze quality!

Timbuck said:

When I was 15 and left school to become an apprentice engineer..My Dad gave me a set of tools that he used to use when he was a Toolmaker in a large factory in Sheffield ...As he had now moved on from off the factory floor to a white coller job as a Metrologist for British Steel he didnt need them anymore....I used them in my job as a Marker out and then as a Toolroom fitter until I was about 24 year old in 1963 then I left engineering for the next 15 years to become a musician/entertainer in several bands..in 1975 I went back into the engineering again but this time it was Inspection and QA documentation stuff mostly paperwork, until I retired in 2003 ..and finally ended up making Ukuleles for some strange reason...Anyway to cut a long story short I went to Sheffield yesterday to my younger Brothers Golden wedding anniversary..and discovered my tools had been put into storage in1963 and they were kept in a chest ending up in in my Brothers garage..So a got them back again and today I spent several hours cleaning them up and they are now almost a good as new.
Here they are

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Ah, the work of human hands. Reminds me of my days as "plant engineer" for a steel door manufacturer. I loved watching the layout guys mark out the sheet of steel for cutting, punching, and bending with very similar tools. They were really good at minimizing the waste from a sheet. I'd been a design drafter. As plant engineer my job was pretty much just to keep the union guys moving and be someone for disappointed customers to gripe at. As a drafter the only things I actually made were drawings.

Interesting that they were in your brother's garage. There was a time when I was much younger, like in my teens, when my grandfather gave me a whole toolbox full of old hand tools. They were more mechanic type tools, not woodworking tools. So then in the late sixties I went into the navy and left home. When I finally came back I never even thought about those tools, as they weren't around anymore and I never went back out there to live. So just a few years ago I found out that my brother had them in his machine shed out on his farm. He wouldn't give them back to me. I didn't want them that bad anyway. It seems that he took almost everything that I left behind when I went into the navy, which was most everything I had at the time, and he still has it all. He is kind of a collector of stuff. He did give me back a bowl that I turned on a lathe when I was in ninth grade shop class.

Rllink said:

...It seems that he took almost everything that I left behind when I went into the navy, which was most everything I had at the time...

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Not just brothers, not just tools. I recently went back to my childhood home in Kentucky, visited my high school heartthrob from the early sixties (and her husband), to whom your quote so perfectly applies. Fifty some years later --- it's clear that I got the better of the deal . I think there's a song in there somewhere.

Thanks for sharing Ken. Always interested in your postings.