Tool Talk
Blacksmith and Metal Working Forum => Blacksmith and Metalworking Forum => Topic started by: pritch on November 04, 2011, 09:24:20 PM
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This school I'm tearing down had a full metals shop and these tools were just going to the dumpster.
(http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y55/gpritch/tools/oldshcooltools022.jpg)
(http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y55/gpritch/tools/oldshcooltools021.jpg)
(http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y55/gpritch/tools/oldshcooltools023.jpg)
(http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y55/gpritch/tools/oldshcooltools024.jpg)
(http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y55/gpritch/tools/oldshcooltools025.jpg)
There are some kilns, or forges or whatever. Mostly set up for small casting jobs, I think. They were too heavy for me to pack off, though.
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Yep, now that is a score!!
You keeping it all, or selling it? Those tongs aren't much good like they are, but a blacksmith would re-shape the jaws into bolt tongs in short order. You could have a pair for holding each size of square and round stock from 1/4" up to about 5/8 in no time.
Those crucibles aren't cheap, if casting is not your thing, you can sell them for quick money in no time in the right venue.
Lastly, that little lead hammer mold will bring $30 easily, as many people look for them.
Great score!
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NICE!!!!
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Those tongs aren't much good like they are, but a blacksmith would re-shape the jaws into bolt tongs in short order. You could have a pair for holding each size of square and round stock from 1/4" up to about 5/8 in no time.
Great score!
Looks to me like a couple pairs of those tongs are for round stock -- the light colored pair in the middle of the first pic look like maybe 3/8 round stock -- and maybe the first pair on the left. The rest are single pick up tongs, and useful as is. Or modified... You could just send me a couple pairs of those useless tongs <grin>
That's a terrific haul!
What people put in a dumpster just amazes me!
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Yes, Branson, some of those are made for round stock already.
But the bulk of them are gad tongs, which only meet with two flat faces at the working end (I've never heard them called anything other than gad tongs.) Single pickup tongs, at least the ones I have seen and used, have more of a pincher type jaw.
<iframe frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="border:0px" src="http://books.google.com/books?id=jX1IAAAAMAAJ&lpg=RA7-PA22&ots=aG14PkLw8R&dq=gad%20tongs&pg=RA7-PA22&output=embed" width=500 height=500></iframe> Click this link if you want to know the difference. Otherwise, ignore it.
I never said they were "useless"!!
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I'm not sure what to do with them, I just couldn't let them go to waste. Maybe I'll haul them down to the swap meet next time I have a chance. I have some other stuff for the swap meet, too. The problem with stuff like this is the weight, for shipping.
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Pritch you just don't understand.
The people who decided that junk had no value and the people who approved their decision all have advanced degrees that mean they do not get their hands dirty or ever grow a callous with the possible exception of on their ass.
They're better than those of us who get dirty, they make better decisions, and they are worth higher wages.
They are so damn smart they threw that junk in a dumpster so taxpayers could pay to haul it to a landfill. They ain't smart enough to put it on ePay cause they don't know what the hell it is.
You want to get scared? They are preparing the next generation to keep the country running!
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Believe me, I understand perfectly well, or should I say I don't understand at all. I was taught to fix the old one, if it ever broke, that is. And if I couldn't fix it, find someone who can, and have him show me how. And the last option of all is to buy a new one. LOL
Scared? Oh yeah. To say anything else would probably head into political waters, and I won't go there on this forum.
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You can't blame the advanced degrees so much. Lots of folks have advanced degrees and callouses. And I don't think it gets political, though it is scary. What's scarier is that it isn't new. We have come to routinely throw things away. It's cheaper to buy a new toaster than to repair the old one. I remember going with my grandmother to get our toaster repaired. Won't happen now. The Adult Education school here used to have a small appliance repair program. Gone these past 20 years -- no market for the skills. Packing gone in that old faucet? Cheaper to buy a new one from Taiwan than to bother fixing it. Makita expects me to throw away the cordless I bought in 1986 (for, as I recall, $140) since they made the new lithium batteries so they won't fit in the old drills. It's called planned obsolescence.
Some of can be blamed on "fiscal management." At their wages, what would it cost to list these things on eBay? To follow up on sales? Ooh! Not "cost effective!" Cheaper to dump than think.
And it's not just fine tools like these. What do you think happens to books culled from libraries? They sometimes get sold for a pittance, but after the sale, they get recycled. People rip off the bindings and toss the pages into bins along with old memos and used binder paper. You want stupid? A local library sent a 1998 edition of the Oxford English Dictionary to recycling, in near new condition. Some of us may be familiar with the OED. Last I looked, an OED was priced at over $3,000. I found and rescued two of the 13 volumes of the best, most authoritative English dictionaries in the world. "Well, it didn't sell ..." Well, who knew it was available? I sure didn't!
A lot of people know the price of everything and the *value* of nothing.
AP wrote: They ain't smart enough to put it on ePay cause they don't know what the hell it is.
And they're too lazy to find out.
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Used to be what was called Spring Cleanup around here every year, rich people hauled what they didn't want to the curb and theTown picked it up to haul off. Most of us called it Spring Shoppong week. We sure put a lot of traffic on the company radios, 'hey Larry you still looking for, I found it" and it got to the point we split the picking ground into territories and had want lists. That went down the drain when the cost of dumping went high.
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There was a nice affluent neignborhood we had to drive through to get to the place i used to work. We had sort of a standing rule, If you saw a gas grill, you grabbed it. We scrapped the alumnium, the company got the half full propane tank for the deicers.....
Everyone that worked for the company had a nice stainless grill in their back yard....
Don't think I ever bought a new garden hose , broom or shovel while I worked there either...
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I know Branson, I was Senior Horticulturist, for 16 years, at a University. Our mowing crew also took care of recycling. They picked up books at the library and recycled them (pulled of the covers and sent them to the paper recycler.) I had a standing rule. No recycling until I picked through them. I saved among others a foli Book of Kells and a full Geoffrey Chaucer "The Canterbury Tales" A facsimile and Transcription of the Hengwrt Manuscript with Variants from the Ellesmere Manuscript. It is a photocopy of the oldest copy with translation. I just saved this book from recycling. The waste you would not believe.
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We often put discards by the curb, and sometimes I will grab something someone has done the same with. There are some guys that seem to have divided the town into territories and drive around picking up scrap, especially metal.
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I saved among others a foli Book of Kells and a full Geoffrey Chaucer "The Canterbury Tales" A facsimile and Transcription of the Hengwrt Manuscript with Variants from the Ellesmere Manuscript. It is a photocopy of the oldest copy with translation. I just saved this book from recycling. The waste you would not believe.
They tossed a Book of Kells??!! That was $55 in 1973 dollars. OMG! And a good Chaucer?! I'm drooling just thinking of the manuscripts! Um, do you read Old English? I have a facsimile Kelmscott Chaucer that I dearly love, and the Kells. And two copies of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, one a nice translation, and the other has original text on one page, and translation on the other.
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Used to be what was called Spring Cleanup around here every year, rich people hauled what they didn't want to the curb and theTown picked it up to haul off. Most of us called it Spring Shoppong week. We sure put a lot of traffic on the company radios, 'hey Larry you still looking for, I found it" and it got to the point we split the picking ground into territories and had want lists. That went down the drain when the cost of dumping went high.
We have something of the same here. Nobody's supposed to dig through the stuff, but of course we do, especially the junkers. One of the DD people I know checks them all out. He lives in an older neighborhood, and widows routinely toss out their husbands' "old, dirty" tools. I have a lot of tools he found in the dump piles. A nice Makita for one thing. The one with an interesting history is a B&D 1/2 inch drill he brought me. Still in a box, looking unused, and I found the receipt for the drill in the box. It was made out to my friend's father. Guess his neighbor borrowed it and never got around to returning it.
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Branson now I'm drooling, about the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles. The Chaucer has a photocopy front and back of a page of the oldest copy and and the facing page is Middle English. About "The Book of Kells," I know in the 70's my wife Kathy, who is a calligrapher, and me drooled over it but could not afford it. I guess the old saying 'if you wait long enough, it will come at lest worked this time. Do I read Old English? No but I read Middle English or as it is better known Chaucerian English. My favorite class in college.
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Branson now I'm drooling, about the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles. The Chaucer has a photocopy front and back of a page of the oldest copy and and the facing page is Middle English. About "The Book of Kells," I know in the 70's my wife Kathy, who is a calligrapher, and me drooled over it but could not afford it. I guess the old saying 'if you wait long enough, it will come at lest worked this time. Do I read Old English? No but I read Middle English or as it is better known Chaucerian English. My favorite class in college.
Anne Savage's translation of the Chronicles (1983, by St. Martin's/Marek) is an excellent translation. I had to translate a photo copied page from a manuscript for my final exam in my first Old English class, so I checked her translation of that page. Very well done, not an easy task. The other copy I have is titled The Saxon Chronicle, translated by Reverend J.Ingram (1993 by Studio Editions, London) -- left half of the page in Old English, right half in Modern English. Also a good translation.
We had to read, write (caligraphy) and speak both Old and Middle English for the classes. I can still recite the Prologue to Canterbury Tales from memory.
On a lark I translated from Modern to Old English:
Naefre onginn laeran swyne hwistilan. Thu gethagh aenne geswincan thine thrag, ond wen is that thu gremma seo swynne.
"Never try to teach a pig to whistle. You'll only succeed in wasting your time, and probably pissing off the pig." Robert Heinlein
Does your wife have a copy of Celtic Art: The Methods of Construction, by George Bain? He has almost all of the alphabets used in the Book of Kells in a format that shows how to produce them. It's available in a Dover edition for about ten bucks.
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Back in the 60's when I took Middle English, after the first 2 weeks, if you could not read, write or speak Middle English you could not participate in the class. You could not ask questions, answer test questions etc. The whole class was held in Middle English. My favorite class.
We have the Dover book. I used it a lot in leather carving.
I have a Beowulf book that is Old English on the left page and Modern English on the right. This is one of the books that the University saw fit to throw away along with a 1926 "Students Handbook of the Facts of English Literature" and a 1898 "Old and Middle English Reader."
Thanks Branson, I will look for the 2 translations that you mentioned. You must have been an English major or minor.
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English major second, anthropology major first. A lot of post graduate work in both.
What's in the 1926 "Students Handbook of the Facts of English Literature?"
I recently picked up a copy of H.L. Menken's 1937 The American Language at the dump. A very interesting read.
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I'm not sure what to do with them, I just couldn't let them go to waste. Maybe I'll haul them down to the swap meet next time I have a chance. I have some other stuff for the swap meet, too. The problem with stuff like this is the weight, for shipping.
Maybe we ought to get back to blacksmithing and these tools you found. Tongs sell on eBay regularly. I bought all the tongs for the Civil War artificer's tool chests on eBay, and didn't find the shipping too expensive. I'm strapped for cash now, but a pair of those gad tongs would be nice. I might be able to find a home for a couple of pairs among the folks I know here in California. Do you have a price for shipping? and what would you want for a pair of tongs?
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Branson/Pritch:
On the subject of shipping tongs:
The USPS has a large flat-rate box available for 14.95 shipping that they market for shipping board games. Box measures 23-11/16 x 11-3/4 x 3 inches. I would say most of those tongs would fit in one. Might be a good option if a person were to buy several pairs from you. That would cut the shipping price down per item. Also, flat rate can ship up to 70 pounds!
I know several blacksmiths that would be interested in them as well. We always have newer members looking for tools in our association.
They wouldn't be hard to get rid of in the right place.
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Awesome score!
I don't know a thing about 'smithing but I'm smart emough to know it certainly wasn't garbage! ... Awesome.
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I've been fortunate to find tongs cheaply, but where I come from, any decent, working pair of tongs is worth $20.