OldTools Archive

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265392 Ed Minch <ruby1638@a...> 2018‑03‑12 boxed stone
I have posted this before but this is about the coolest tool I have.  It is not
a sharpening stone - it is a sharpening rock.  The recess has a piece of
something like pasteboard at the bottom, saturated in oil.  The lid shows the
lead screw holes where the waste was removed with an auger - did augers have
lips and lead screws in 1817?

https://www.flickr.com/photos/ruby1638/17348545835/in/album-72157652309439462/

I was watching Paul Sellars recently and he was using an auger, and he calls the
lead screw the “snail”.

Ed Minch
265394 John Leyden <leydenjl@g...> 2018‑03‑12 Re: boxed stone
Ed inquires: “did augers have lips and lead screws in 1817?”

According to DATAMP, apparently at least as early as 1809.

http://www
.datamp.org/patents/search/xrefPerson.php?id=7871 <http://www.datam
p.org/patents/search/xrefPerson.php?id=7871">http://www.datamp.org/patents/searc
h/xrefPerson.php?id=7871>
265395 Bill Ghio <bghio@m...> 2018‑03‑13 Re: boxed stone
Sent from my iPad

> On Mar 12, 2018, at 7:08 PM, Ed Minch  wrote:
> 
> I have posted this before but this is about the coolest tool I have.  It is
not a sharpening stone - it is a sharpening rock.  The recess has a piece of
something like pasteboard at the bottom, saturated in oil.  The lid shows the
lead screw holes where the waste was removed with an auger - did augers have
lips and lead screws in 1817?
> 
> https://www.flickr.com/photos/ruby1638/17348545835/in/album-72157652309439462/

Could be a center bit.

Bill
265396 Bill Ghio <bghio@m...> 2018‑03‑13 Re: boxed stone
Could be a center bit.

Bill

Sent from my iPad
265397 Ed Minch <ruby1638@a...> 2018‑03‑13 Re: boxed stone
Doh!  Of course it could be

Ed Minch
265398 John Leyden <leydenjl@g...> 2018‑03‑13 Re: boxed stone
Yeah, this guy and likely one of his namesake sons, since the elder Ezra,
correspondent of Washington and Jefferson, seems to have died in 1811.
Regardless, I gather that he/they are both to be credited for bringing the
screw-tip auger and its manufacturing process into being.

Like all good ideas, it seems so simple in retrospect, doesn’t it?

John
265399 John Leyden <leydenjl@g...> 2018‑03‑13 Re: boxed stone
For the record, Bill’s point is also well taken. Equally plausible, and absent
some in depth analysis of the actual artifact it’s hard to tell from here.
265401 John Ruth <johnrruth@h...> 2018‑03‑13 Re: boxed stone
Ed,

This is certainly a very interesting artifact. Tell us more!

Where did you get it? (Hope I didn’t miss something in an earlier post.)

What kind of wood is it? Chestnut?

The screws on the hinges; do they have a handmade look? (Such as off-center
slots?)

Do the hinges look like a blacksmith job?

Does the smell suggest whale oil ? Tallow ?

Last but not least, how well does it sharpen?

This brings back memories. My family vacationed in the area of a glacial
moraine. Pop was always hoping to find a whetstone “in the wild”. Looks like
somebody did, back in 1817.

John Ruth
Expecting the third winter storm in 12 days. 



Sent from my iPhone
265402 paul womack <pwomack@p...> 2018‑03‑13 Re: boxed stone
Ed Minch wrote:
> I have posted this before but this is about the coolest tool I have.  It is
not a sharpening stone - it is a sharpening rock.

I LOVE irregular sharpening stones. That's beautiful.

> The recess has a piece of something like pasteboard at the bottom, saturated
in oil.  The lid shows the
> lead screw holes where the waste was removed with an auger - did augers have
lips and lead screws in 1817?

I (very) strongly suspect (given the period, and diameter of the holes) that
those are the traces
of a centre bit. Cheap to make using hand methods, and very effective.

  BugBear
265404 "John M Johnston (jmjhnstn)" <jmjhnstn@m...> 2018‑03‑13 Re: boxed stone
I second the notion that the excavation were made by a center bit. I have seen
this same pattern in the bottoms of excavations of the recesses for the firing
lock mechanism in 18th and 19th Century muskets and shotguns. Often the marks a
two or more diameters of centre bits are visible in the bottoms of these
recesses.

Cheers,
John

“P.S. If you do not receive this, of course it must have been miscarried;
therefore I beg you to write and let me know.” - Sir Boyle Roche, M.P.


I (very) strongly suspect (given the period, and diameter of the holes) that
those are the traces
of a centre bit. Cheap to make using hand methods, and very effective.

BugBear
265405 Ed Minch <ruby1638@a...> 2018‑03‑13 Re: boxed stone
John

I got the thing form a local old guy who has perhaps 9 local tools chests - we
live on the Eastern Shore of MD.  I think it must be somewhat local.  So much
oil on the whole thing, hard to tell - it appears to be a softwood.  I don’t
think it is Yellow Pine, perhaps cedar.  The hinges also appear to be regular
enough in appearance I would have to guess they are manufatured.  There is,
again, so much crud it is hard to see the screw slots and I don’t want to clean
anything up.  I don’t have a good smeller so it just smells oily to me -
petroleum based?  I have not tried it on an edge - I should do that.

Ed Minch

hereis a hest I have shown before owned by the same guy:

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