HAMMERS

TOOLS MATTER
It is said -- and rightly so -- that a poor workman blames his tools. Elsewhere, the hobby woodworker with a collection of expensive tools but no skill is a familiar stereotype and we've all heard the story of a fellow who, with nothing more than a rock, a pocketknife and scrap lumber, produces wonders.

You can find real-life examples of all of this; they're all points on a graph. Most of us are well inside those limits.

Me, for years I owned one hammer. It was my Dad's, then it was his second-best hammer, then it migrated into my toolbox and when I moved out, well, it came along. It's a fine, smooth-face, medium-sized general-purpose claw hammer, probably made some time in the first half of the last century, and it did all the little craft-type projects I wanted or needed to do. When my library reached the point of either learning how to build bookcases or start selling books (the horror!), it did that, too.

Then I got a little better at it and a wooden mallet to tap things together looked like a good idea; learned leatherwork and needed a different mallet for that. Started paying a little more attention to fit & finish of my bookshelves and... H'mm, no tack hammer.

As a child, I didn't so much get along with the classic tack hammer Mom used when reupholstering; somehow the long skinny head always found my tender fingers. And there were these other hammers....
What you see there is my Old Dependable hammer at the bottom (you don't get wood and metal those hues without using them for a long, long time) and above it, a couple of cross pein* or Warrington-pattern hammers. Handiest small hammers I own. I've been using the larger of the two when fastening trim pieces to the window seat I'm working on; the smaller one (especially good for wire brads) is known to British woodworkers as a "telephone hammer" to this very day, supposedly because they were used to nail together the old wooden-type wall telephones, which were usually sent out as a kind of a kit, in order to take up less space on the installers wagon or bicycle.

Could I use different hammer (I use glue, too. Perhaps that's overkill but it seems to work) to tack oak trim to oak plywood? Sure. But this one fits the job. And that's the real secret: knowing which tool to pick up for a particular task. The right one can make your work a pleasure.
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* Or "peen" or even "pane." One story even claims the name comes from nailing together frames for multi-pane windows, in which the narrow "pane" end is used to minimize the risk of breaking glass. --In which case, was the ball-peen hammer for breaking the glass?

OLD & ADVANCED

There are some features not often found in a full-sized drill press that'd be nice to have -- continuously-variable speed, for instance, and maybe a torque-limited drive. And don't you just hate the ones where the heavy table is just clamped to the column, ready to take out a toe if you slip while adjusting the height?

It turns out those concerns were already addressed -- in the 19th Century. Meet the W.B. & J. Barnes No. 0 Drill, a smallish, elegant camelback drill that uses an unusual ninety-degree friction drive:Yes, it's an eBay listing; the photos and first link should take you right to the page for as long as it lasts. I don't think the seller or auction site will mind and if they do -- editing's easy.True, it's set up for line-shaft drive; not too big a challenge for anyone with the skills to restore it and the desire to do so. The simplest item to fix would be the missing lever(s) from the quill control; it may also have a broken quill spring or counterweight, it appears the friction disc and wheel are going to need new leather and all the bearings are condition unknown; expect babbitt, not ball- or roller-bearings.

Despite all those things, the price is good; camelback drill presses generally command excellent prices on the used market and offer a number of advantages. High on the list is one of my pet peeves: most modern drill presses are set up way too fast; every time I have to use one at work, I find myself resetting it to the slowest set of pulleys (or, rarely, one step up). "Faster" is not "better;" it's how you overheat and/or break your drills (sigh, drill "bits," for the language-impaired). Camelbacks were set up for a slower range of speeds. The present example is a little different; instead of the usual three or four-step belt-drive pulley, the setting of the friction-drive wheel determines the speed -- there's a rod behind the main shaft that carries its bearing and a handscrew, barely visible at the upper right in the photo above, that secures it at the selected height along the radius of the friction disc.

Table-height adjustment is not visible in my screencaps. It's an Acme-thread leadscrew with a crank at about the same height as the quill knob, plus the usual clamping arrangement to secure the table at the selected height.

Looks like the press was set up for Morse (or similar....) taper arbors; there's a characteristic slot in the spindle where one would tap in a wedge to remove the chuck. You might not much want to -- it already has a modern-looking three-jaw chuck installed.

The whole thing looks as if it stayed in service well into the 20th Century. Not a lot of rust and no signs of overt abuse past the usual line of spots where the table's been drilled into.

Patent dates, per the seller, are all 1880s - 1890s.

There are some hints of various bits and bobs from the original drive -- a fitting on the column and a cast-in saddle at the base. If I was in Columbus, Ohio, I'd be tempted to have a look; if I knew how to rebabbitt bearings, I might do more than look.

HOW TO TEST HEADPHONES

To check or test old-fashioned magnetic headphones use a very small battery, a 1.5V AAA cell is fine -- or just use an adaptor and plug them into your iPod. Important Note, if it says "Brush" or "Clevite" on your headphones, they are crystal headphones and will be ruined by any DC-type test. Check the label. Most Brush headphones have octagonal instead of cylindrical backs and a cast-in label.

Really old ones with tip plugs on the ends of the leads will often "click" just from touching the tips together in a damp palm. (The tip plating was porous -- so, brass, nickel, a little salt water, you get a current flow).

The adapter/iPod trick may be okay for even Brush-Clevite crystal headphones, I don't know and would not advise it. If you're an electronics type, a series condenser, say .01 or .05 mF, would make it safer. A 1:1 transformer might be even better -- 600:600 ohms, like a coupling transformer from an old modem, would do. (I've ruined a Brush earpiece plugging into the headphone jack on a reel-to-reel, so trust me and be careful).

Someone, malicious or ill-informed, is going around on eBay, asking headphone sellers to use a nine volt battery to "test" them. Please don't do this. It can do damage to some types. The wire used for the windings is tiny and can be melted by excessive current. Use a 1.5 Volt cell at most. Or use an ohmmeter; the current will be limited. Anything other than open or dead short indicates some degree of function.

Another thing -- if you're selling headphones on an auction site, why oh why would you unscrew the caps and take the diaphragms out? There's a permanent magnet in there, one with some oomph, and it will grab any little ferrous particles around. They'll get between the pole pieces and the diaphragm and make for trouble. The diaphragms themselves are a bit fragile; bend 'em and they are ruined. Last of all, the caps -- and often but not always the backs or "cups" -- are brittle Bakelite or hard rubber. They can chip, jam and break when unscrewed or dropped.

Be nice to old-style headphones. They will never make balanced-armature, mica-diaphraghm Baldwins (very complex inside) ever again. You will not find new Brush-Clevite cans (with their high-fidelity sound -- hams even used them as microphones) and the last stocks of Trimm "Commercial,*" "Professional*" and even the ubiquitous "Dependable" model ran out decades ago. What we have is all we'll have. Every set you break is gone. (But save the parts! Sometimes three broken sets add up to one working pair).

Related, Modern Radio Labs sells the definitive handbook on maintenance and repair of old headphones. It's worth owning.
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* Highly recommended. My fave set of radio "cans" for years have been Commercials. Trimm's little "Featherweights" are nice, too.

RETROTECH MEETS MODERN

I was taken with it at first sight; then I wondered if it was sacrilige. The USB Typewriter, though it is mildly invasive, doesn't ruin the function of the typewriter and should be reversible -- though I do wish he'd pad the platen:

I would not do this to a rare machine but as typewriter mods go, it is among the better. There are ways to slick it up (Pogo[tm] pins for the keybar contacts, for instance) but it's not bad.

GERSTNER TOOLBOX RESTORATION

Someone hit this blog, looking for "Gerstner toolbox restoration." Interestingly, Gerstner is your best source for this; sure, their professional toolboxes are expensive, but they are selling quality and durability for that money -- and they stand behind their products. They offer an extensive array of replacement parts including felt lining, pulls, hinges, handles, locks, replacement keys and labels. This level of support is unusual for any product other than an automobile, industrial machinery or a major appliance and I think it's plain wonderful.

So, if you're out to restore your Gerstner toolchest, go the source!

TOOL ABUSE 101

The author (?) calls it "The Pennsylvania Dutch Handbook" but you find examples anywhere you find old tools for sale.

TELEGRAPHY: ONE CITY, TWO COMPANIES, SEVERAL THOUSAND JOBS

There must be something about Thief River Falls, Minnesota.

I've known for years that modern-as-tomorrow RF switching manufacturer Dow-Key started U.S. operations there, building interesting and unusual semi-automatic telegraph keys, then branched out into coaxial relays, which eventually became the entire business. In 1966, they left Minnesota for California -- but that wasn't the end of the telegraphy connection for Thief River Falls.

In the early 1970s, then college student and amateur radio operator Ron Stordahl began selling an electronic speed-key kit, which he called a "Digi-Keyer." In the process, he found that a lot of hams and others were looking for a source of modern electronic components; in 1972, his home-town smaller-than-garage kit company became a fledgling parts house called Digi-Key and today, Dr. Ronald A. Stordahl is CEO of the fifth-largest electronic distributor in North America, the biggest employer in Thief River Falls.

In my career, I've seen their print catalog grow from a skinny magazine into something the size and heft of a big-city telephone book, small print, thin paper. No tubes but Digi-Key is Retrotechnologist-approved: like the famous mail-order outfits of yore, they carry a huge variety of items and are happy to sell to anyone. Orders go out the door the same day, too.

Both companies have sold parts in use from Kansas City to geosynchronous orbit. And it all started with telegraph keys. Twice!