Internet Archive

[kxxr]

Some of you may be familiar with this website and have used it before, but for those who have not, here is the url: http://www.archive.org/
I have found catalogs from Williams, Snap On and Herbrand there, along with lots of interesting books and articles on many other subjects of interest to 'toolers'. I found the photo below in a little magazine called "Dispatch Volume 1", which also had a couple of good short articles about chrome and bakelite restoration. The trick is in the searching. You don't always find things where you'd expect to and the database is massive. Just try typing "blacksmith" into the search box and check out the books, videos and everything else that comes up. Also very interesting is "Technical Manual TM 9-867 Maintenance and Care of Hand Tools". Another good one is "Cutting Tools Worked by Hand and Machine (1882)", and "Modern machine shop tools, their construction, operation and manipulation, including both hand and machine tools ... a book of practical instruction .. (1903)", "Emerson Brantingham Commercial Truck Bodies (Chevrolet)". Type in "Tool Catalog" and select "Text" as the 'media type' and you'll get quite a list of available catalogs. Check it out and enjoy!

[Papaw]

I have used The Wayback Machine many times.

[rusty]

There are also very old carriage makers catalogs buried in there.
But, the search tools on archive are **awfull**

The good news, google has some of that stuff indexed, so sometimes you turn it up via google, if you craft te search just right.

The other annoying thing is, Internet exploder doesn't like 90 megabyte text files very much : (

Hint: Use the web book reader, if you like the catalog, download the PDF, most of them are searchable.

[kxxr]

I thought I'd give this one a little bump for those who may not have done any poking around here yet. Here's a link to start you off:
http://archive.org/search.php?query=tool%20catalog&page=1

[schnitz]

Thanks for the bump!