Relics from my parents barn

I went over to my parent's barn to look for goodies yesterday evening and was rewarded for my efforts with five trays of relics.

Some of these aren't in good shape, most must be items dad found at garage sales, he took very good care of tools. Nevertheless, there are some gems in here.
I posted this on the permies.com/forum under "What is It?"
I love that old oil can too. I cleaned it up last night and it has a copper bottom, I guess copper is more flexible for squeezing oil out by pressing the bottom.
This is also an excerpt from my morning newsletter. The BMN was established in 1999 at the dawn of the Internet, here in the mountains of northern New Mexico. The beginning of my wife Nell's and my homestead at the edge of the forest.
I've left Facebook this Summer and returned to writing my newsletter about life here with extreme DIY projects such as our completely handmade Axial Flux wind turbine, which is slated for repair soon. We're in our third year of aquaponics with a 2600 gallon trout pond and earth-sheltered greenhouse next to our dining room. I also have a a fully functioning DIY biodiesel processor which we'll bring back online in the near future or as soon as my health improves to get a few things off the front burner and it off the back burner.
i'll be posting here more often, but my writing style includes inline images and this is difficult to do here on the forum, so if you'd like to get the story directly in an unadulterated format I'd love to have you on my short list of BMNers brodgers{at}desertgate.com
I'll be following up on how I restore old tools right here if you are interested, please, I'd love to hear from you.
Brian Rodgers
   

A friend from BYAP saw my third-time-recycled tin roof and suggested this
LOOKING GOOD :headbang:
Boss many years ago I had relatives down on a farm in Gippsland that had a old Corrugated Iron Roller that straightened the sheets and made them look like brand new, it even reduced the nail hole size by squashing the metal back.
They used it to build all their farm sheds, they would gather old sheets of iron from the local rubbish dump and put a shed up at very little cost.
Jowblow
I thought ya'll might be interested in this thing? Am I right?  

Your last two "what is it" pictures are of a saw tooth setter. It bends one tooth at a time to give a wider kerf and make the saw work better.

Oh awesome!
Except now I want a corrugated iron roller.... :) Both for iron, and for abusing, bet that would squoosh a lot of things...

When I cleaned out my dad's sheds and warehouse, I found a LOT of chaos of old tools. He was an old school pack rat, well, so am I. I moved it all! Not all, but all the useful stuff. Sorted it out. My mother may not care about wrenches, but she's SO patient, will sort the pile all by size, so I could go through and figure out what was there, and put them into asst toolkits, and put the 6x duplicates into deep packed locations.

A random picture of part of the back shop shows what kind of chaos I was dealing with



Mom sorting wrenches!



Drill bits, from everywhere. The bin on the left is heavy, packed solid with dad's bits that I have only sorted into "useable bits worth moving," the one on the right is my collection, my years worth of pack-rattishness. I am my father's daughter! Actually, I am both my parents kid. I tell people "My dad was a packrat, my mom is organized, I'm an organized packrat!" And it's true. I have a ton of bizarre crap, all in neatly labeled locations.... That bin on the right came straight out of my tool area and got packed just as it was.

Glenn Herbert wrote: Your last two "what is it" pictures are of a saw tooth setter. It bends one tooth at a time to give a wider kerf and make the saw work better.

Come over to the what is it? game thread and post that! I bet you just won! What is it?

You sound like you might want to play with us!

That was fun! I will have to keep an eye on that thread

The fourth picture down: the pliers with wedges as jaws; is a Saw-Set. They are used in the manufacture, or the sharpening of handsaws. You set the pliers to make the amount of tooth bend that you want, then bend every other tooth to the right, and every other tooth to the left. This gives the saw teeth a saw kerf that is wider then the body of the saw so it does not get stuck.

Pearl...it looks like your father did a lot of plumbing from the looks of the tools???

The picture with your mother sorting tools; the red tool in the foreground of the picture that looks odd, keep that. It is an adjustable faucet wrench and used to tighten faucets way up underneath of sinks. They are not really rare, but when you need one, you need one. Today they are starting to use another method of faucet attachment, but I foresee them being valuable and collectors items in 25 years.

Travis: Actually my dad was a master mason, made his living as a tile setter. But we also owned rentals, and plumbing was involved, as well as everything else. He also fixed anything that got underfoot, built anything he wanted, and generally had tools of every sort in his hands all his life. But he was also a packrat, and would buy things at thrift stores, or need a tool while on a job, and buy another, and they got lost in the mess, so he'd get a few more... When I sorted it you would not believe what shook out.

Approximately 16 cubic feet of extension cords, unsorted, various conditions.



And I'm hijacking Brian's thread, apologies, sir!! I just get all excited when I see cool things people find! I love things like old barns, and mystery tools, and piles of chaos.
Wouldn't it be a blast to dig in each others tool piles? Have a Permies tool show off meet!

Oh, and yeah, I have used sink wrenches on sinks, but also had a Volvo that ate starters, and that engine was designed so you had to pull it to replace the starter, or get really weird under there with a sink wrench on that one impossible to reach bolt....

Good morning

How's it going?
Pretty good, I hope.

Thank you Jim, the Permaculture Designers book arrived yesterday. I'm looking forward to reading and learning about permaculture practices.

Alrighty then! One of the odd little items that seem to get me up and going in the interlude between rain showers and the major stucco project about to begin on Saturday, is the relics I found in Pappy's barn.
I've still got a long way to go to get the big tools like the tablesaw setup and functioning like they should, so refurbishing hand tools seems to keep my attention pretty well.
Antique-Monkey-Wrench-Stilsons-Sept-2018  I should have added something for scale. These tools are miniatures at 6 inches. For example, I've got one of the toothed wrenches also called a pipe wrench that is 18  inches long. The normal size Stilsons as these are also called are often in much worse condition as they can take a lot of abuse as they are used to break free heavily rusted two inch diameter and up pipes. The teeth on this wrench in the lower portion of this image has pristine teeth. Good teeth as you know make all the difference in the quality of the bite.

Antique-Monkey-Wrench-Sept-2018
I searched for more information about antique tools and one of the things i learned is they don't have much monetary value. That's okay, there is something about having a tool in hand with this level of craftsmanship and it just gives me a little chill thinking about the skilled laborers that building something like this required. It saddens me that humans may never create something like this ever again.

Cleaned-antique-tools-Sept-2018  I cleaned a few of the tools I collected the other day. I've got many more sitting in rust remover solution.

Oh and the oil can from this batch of relics! Have you ever seen such a cute oil can?

Again these are excerpts for my morning newsletter so the texts go along with the images below.

I want to say something in praise of the virtues of a monkey wrench.  Personally, I believe most of the best ones were made before 1950.  There was a wide variety of them made between the mid 19th century and mid 20th.  Some (like Brian’s, above) have lovely hardwood handles.  Monkey wrenches can sometimes still be found in second-hand stores (… sure, sometimes maybe needing a good cleaning or de-rusting).  Apart from exquisite specimens being sold at “collector’s prices,” around where I live you can usually acquire one for $10 or less.

Generally, they’re heavy-duty hand tools, and all the good ones have comfortable handles.  While more cumbersome than a modern “crescent wrench”, monkeys get a good solid grip on bolt heads (hex or square) or nuts.  They adjust easily.  Any of the common full-sized ones offer good leverage.  In use, they feel very solid.  As one used-tool sales guy pointed out to me, the classic monkey wrench has a flat back surface that in a pinch can be used as a hammer — such as when you don’t want to switch tools, but feel the need to bang something.

I bought the full-sized one I'm showing because I’d seen a blacksmith using one.  In terms of my own usage, the usual purpose of the wrench is to bend or twist flat-bar or square-rod steel that I’ve heated to yellow-hot with a torch.  With a careful pre-adjustment of the wrench, it works great for that.

Now here’s another use:  Lets say you’ve got the usual homestead or garage shop, with a substantial vise of the mechanic’s or metal-worker’s sort fastened to your bench.  You need a small-jawed vise for the occasional finer work with smaller bits?  Voilà!

I love old tools and grab them at yard sales regularly. I am constantly amazed what people throw out. I have found several metal tool boxes, and several still have tools in them! I have tools that were my parents, great uncle, and great grandfather. I recently purchased a 14 x 32 shed from a neighboring closed garden center. It came full of her stock for me to sell to pay back for the shed. Most of it is new product, some old, and some old, new stock. The Old-new refers to some WWII medical supplies. Somewhere she got her hands on a few crates that were meant to go to a field hospital. All white enamel, bed pans, urinals, waste pots etc. They could be used as planters and vases, I suppose. Some items are really nice like old apple picking basket.

I've got the same oil can.  It was my great-grandfather's and there's a little plate with our name engraved brazed onto it.  

I think the pipe wrench I got from him is the same as yours as well.  

If you still have this Corrugated Metal Roller please contact me: fasoldencraft@yahoo.com (we've got to talk)
Thanks, Michael