Hi,

I've been lurking here for a quite a while, feasted at the FMM trough
had my all questions graciously answered, and benefited vastly from
the porch's pool of knowledge. Guess I better remember my manners and
introduce myself before Mom comes back from cutting a new switch.

My name is Bill Backstrom. I live in Eden Prairie MN, a suburb of
Minneapolis and St. Paul. I haven't run into any of the galoots in the
area, but I think I saw Aaron (TAAK) a few weeks ago lugging a #8
around Beau's tool swap.

I'm 37, and married to a wonderful SWMBO who encourages my vices and
finds tools for me. No GITs yet, but we share the house with three
knuckle-headed, pure hearted dogs who can't understand why anyone
would care about tools when you could be rolling on the floor with
them. I work as a software engineer for StorageTek designing network
accessable storage systems when the oldtools list is down.

I got a late start on wood working and promptly messed up by wasting a
bunch of money on power tools. I got curious about hand tool methods
when winter came and the garage got real cold and filled with salty,
dripping wet cars. Wonder why I didn't see that coming? I now have a
basement shop that is roomy enough for a bench, a workmutt, some
storage and a small Inca b*nds*w that I bought before the scales fell
from my eyes. The table saw still sits in the garage and gets used
once in a while when I need to do something that warrants cleaning all
the junk off the top of it, which isn't very often. I also have to
confess that it scares the pee out of me.

Haven't made much yet except for a torsion box workbench from a design
by Tom Caspar. Not very pretty, but it meets all my needs so far. Been
accumulating tools for about a year or so, and should have enough to
build something any time now, maybe. I'm currently taking a class
where we are building a simple single drawer desk from salvage lumber
that has been sitting at the bottom of the St. Croix river for the
last century. Everything is being done with hand tools from stock
preparation to joinery. Except for the fact that my top is kind of
thin, things are going pretty well.

I guess that's about it. Nice to meet everyone. Was that okay Mom?

---
Bill Backstrom, StorageTek - Network Systems Group.

"Bill Gates is only a white persian cat and a monocle away from being the
 villain in a James Bond movie." --Dennis Miller

         Replies Author          Date
   35738 BIO     Frank A. Auge   Tue  9/8/1998
   35760 Re: BIO Jack Kamishlian Tue  9/8/1998
   35868 BIO     Mike Stevans    Thu  9/10/1998
   35874 Re: BIO SWSCPA@a...     Thu  9/10/1998
   36202 BIO     Tom O'Neil      Mon  9/14/1998
   37487 BIO     Jim Tremain     Mon  10/5/1998
   37488 Re: BIO Ed_Balko@E...   Mon  10/5/1998
   37553 Re: BIO Jim Tremain     Tue  10/6/1998
   37501 Re: BIO Bill Clouser    Mon  10/5/1998

CtheL wrote:
> the slippery slope to neo-Neanderness.  I now own an old #4, #6
> (yes, I know), #60 1/2 and #80 (w/sweetheart iron ... does this mean
> I'm a collector?).

This doesn't mean you're a col*c**r. If however you had said '#80 (w/a
sweetheart od an iron' you would be branded with the c word. Welcome to
the list.

Tom Corey

Tom Corey wrote:

> CtheL wrote:
>> the slippery slope to neo-Neanderness.  I now own an old #4, #6
>> (yes, I know), #60 1/2 and #80 (w/sweetheart iron ... does this mean
>> I'm a collector?).
>
> This doesn't mean you're a col*c**r. If however you had said '#80 (w/a
> sweetheart od an iron' you would be branded with the c word.

   That one went right over my head.

> Welcome to
> the list.

   Thanks, Tom.

      Chuck Vance

amenex@E... wrote:
>
> Hi OldTools!
>
> Not having posted any Q's yet and anxious do
> do so, here's the prerequisite:
>
> George Langford, Sc.D.
>     (i.e., graduate metallurgist)

Cool!  You'll get *lots* of questions.  Pull a chair up front there, so
we can all hear ya.

Welcome to the porch.

Ed

At 07:42 PM 7/13/98 -0000, you wrote:
>Hi OldTools!
>
>Not having posted any Q's yet and anxious do
>    non-Normie acivities with machine-tool
>         building, e.g. hand scraping and
>         general restorations (make it work
>         as good or better than new)
>
>George
>
>--

     Hi George

     I am also very interested in old machine tools, how they were built
and how to restore or reproduce them. Unfortunately I have not found any
that I could afford. :-(    Welcome to the list.

                           Ian

Hi Larry !

Thanks for commiserating.  I took apart a P&W planer once,
down to the last nut & bolt, then cleaned it all up, painted
the surfaces that originally had paint on them, and put it
all back together.  Wasn't that hard; the nuts only went on
their original bolts, they were all so different.

I don't understand OldTools' aversion to the wire wheel.  If
used carefully, all it does is remove the red rust, leaving
the blue/black magnetite (the hard stuff) underneath to form
that magical "old tool" patina.  Of course, used to XS, the
wire wheel does make an ugly white mess ...

Antique microscopes are routinely restored by polishing them
to the nth degree; and those fetch the top'est dollar.  Old
furniture is worth umpteen times as much when left in the
ugliest possible condition; I guess the dolts with the biggest
bucks want to reserve the refinishing of those "gems" all to
themselves.

As to old machine tools, the only reason we can afford them is
that they have been worn out or have been neglected to the point
that they look worn out.  So, if we want to use them, we have to
fix them up.  To me, that means doing it as right as we'd like
to have found the thing in the first place.  I scraped & fit a
South Bend shaper to better than new (0.0005 inch in six inches).
It's run 30 years and still there's no metal-to-metal contact
between the ram and the dovetail in the head - no scratches at
all.  It usually makes a surface flat & parallel within 0.001
to 0.0005 inch.  But that's a recreational.crafts.metalworking
gloat, I guess.

Best regards,
George
amenex@e...

Lawrence H. Smith wrote:
>
> Welcome to the porch, George (I just got back here myself)!
> >The old machine tools also have to pass the usable hurdle; I'm way behind
> >in restoring
> >the ones I already have, so "usable" is a
> >touchy subject in this context.
>
> Oh yes, sounds fairly familiar. The big metalworking lathe was bought in
> Februrary and moved in May, the big woodworking lathe was bought and moved
> in November, and the little wood lathe was bought last May. The little wood
> lathe has had some use, but needs an idiot bearing replacement fixed
> (babbit replaced with bronze - but the bronze is (very) oversize, so the
> thing stalls if the caps are tightened, and worse yet, is out of line with
> the tailstock). The big ones are scattered over about half the shop trying
> to get cleaned up so I can put them back together without perpetuating
> years-o-filth. Eventually I'll worry about way-scraping, and I'd take
> advice on that if you have any to offer, but there's plenty to do yet
> before I get there...
>
> -Lawrence H Smith, Librarian/Computarian for Buxton School and Woodworker
> -lsmith@s...      Cats, Coffee, Chocolate... Vices to live by.

Hi Ian !

Keep trying.  I subscribe to an agricultural newspaper called
Lancaster Farming.  It's a Pennsylvania publication, but it
lists want ads (both freebies (one per month, the rules say)
and paid ones.  It also lists all the farm (and some machinery)
auctions in the Northeast.  Every weekend there are about 500
such auctions.  It takes the patience of a saint to read all
the copy in the auction announcements, but one can get some
real gems that way ... cheap, if you've got the patience and
the nerve to know your (and your competitors') limits.

Ian McKinley wrote:
>
> At 07:42 PM 7/13/98 -0000, you wrote:
> >Hi OldTools!
> >
> >Not having posted any Q's yet and anxious do
> >    non-Normie acivities with machine-tool
> >         building, e.g. hand scraping and
> >         general restorations (make it work
> >         as good or better than new)
> >
> >George
> >
> >--
>
>      Hi George
>
>      I am also very interested in old machine tools, how they were
> built and how to restore or reproduce them. Unfortunately I have
> not found any that I could afford. :-(

> Welcome to the list.
>
>                            Ian
>
>

George Langford writes :

>I don't understand OldTools' aversion to the wire wheel.  If
>used carefully, all it does is remove the red rust, leaving
>the blue/black magnetite (the hard stuff) underneath to form
>that magical "old tool" patina.

I've noticed that no one is answering this kind of statement
anymore.

You may not get an answer, these days, but you would have
started a long and very interesting discussion had you asked
it two years ago.  I find it a shame that the subject has
become taboo, there are surely more people on the porch now
that haven't discussed the matter than those that have.

I started out being the type of person that felt that a
tool, regardless of it's age, was something that required
keeping in pristine shape, and if one that I acquired wasn't
in such shape, it was my duty to make it so.  I figured
that had :I: owned the tool the last hundred years I would
have continuously maintained it and it would look today
as new as the day I bought it.  So it was natural for me
to want to make an old tool look like I'd been the owner
all that time and make it new again.

Part of it was also that I didn't want someone else to come
along and think that it was :me: who had been neglecting the
tool (I grew up under heavy criticism and ridicule so what
others think has been a pretty important thing in my life,
at least until very recently).

This point of view is based strictly on mechanical engineering
type reasons and does not touch anything like history,
aesthetics or feelings.  Rust is bad so rust goes.  Period.
So I polished the brass, reground the machined surfaces,
stripped the crackled varnish and refinished the wood.

Trouble was, when I put the tool on a shelf with a bunch of
other old tools, this one didn't look old anymore.  It didn't
look new either.  It looked :gawdy: .

This, to me, has become :the: reason for leaving an old tool
the way it is.  I have found that it is impossible to make
an old tool look new.  You end up with clean surfaces with
dirty dents, rounded over corners, dull japanning, wood that
looks nothing like it's supposed to, and that awful shiny
brass.

If I look at an un-restored old tool, one that has been given
a bath to at least be presentable, there's something warm about
the tool.  There's a glow to it.  It's mellow.  It's got
everything to do with feeling and nothing to do with mechanics.

There might be some interesting aspects of wear, as well, like
being able to see how and where previous owners put their
hands.  Seeing some long-dead person's hands come alive on a
tool suddenly brings back the long-dead person.  What did this
person do for a living ?  What working conditions did they
labour under ?  Who were they ?  Sometimes there's an owner's
mark and you can refer to the spirit by name.  Everytime I
see the mark on a tool it's like I'm meeting the guy to start
our day's work together. "Good morning Mr E.COLE !" or "Hi there,
S.ROBBINS, how's it goin' today ?".

Now, if I renew a tool (and I still do at times), I kill the
spirit.  It'll be a good tool, a nice tool, but it'll be empty.
Sometimes you don't have a choice, it's either that or throw
it in the garabage.  Hopefully once I pass those on they'll
have accumulated a little bit of :me: and future owners will
be able to resurrect me for a few minutes of galooting together,
every once in a while.

Paul Pedersen
Montreal (Quebec)
http://www.cam.org/~perrons/Paul/Woodwork/woodwork.html

Adds Paul Pedersen:

> George Langford writes :
>
> >I don't understand OldTools' aversion to the wire wheel.  If
> >used carefully, all it does is remove the red rust, leaving
> >the blue/black magnetite (the hard stuff) underneath to form
> >that magical "old tool" patina.
>
> I've noticed that no one is answering this kind of statement
> anymore.

The faq says somewhere that we don't reveal our secrets to the new guys
right away.  Truth is, we use belt sandahs, moves the metal twice as fast.

--Steve--
Stephen Butti
University Hospital
Denver, CO                  w 303-372-2215
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Being Politically Correct means Always Having to Say You're Sorry.
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