Machinist Tool Boxes: A Tour of Boxes Saved from the Scrapper

[Music] hello Keith Rucker here finish machinery org guys I was going to share with you some tool boxes that I was recently able to acquire from a lady down in Florida it's kind of a sad story really and truly her husband owned these toolboxes and the tools that were in them and he recently passed away she's needing to move and get out of her house and unfortunately none of their kids were interested in any of this stuff in fact there was these tools as well as a nice lathe that I was able to go down there and work out a deal and actually get everything the lathe is out of the museum I'm going to do a separate video on that one it's actually a pretty old lathe that's got a neat story behind it it's appropriate for the museum and that's where that lathe is going to end up at I think that's where it's at right now now these boxes on the other hand these these are gonna a lot of the tools in particular going to also go to the museum the boxes may even go out there to I got to figure out exactly what they at the museum are really capable of doing but I thought it would be interesting to do a toolbox tour and the story behind these is the gentleman that had them he was I think more of a hobby machinist but his father was a tool and die maker and his grandfather was also a machinist so he was basically a third generation machinist who had all these tools and had at least a lathe in his garage at home that he was able to use to do repairs and make things fix things up what-have-you and anyway we were able to literally save this stuff from being thrown away which is what the kids I think wanted to do was just my mom just throw that stuff away his junk it's not junk and fortunately she was smart enough to know that it was not junk and she advertised these and I was able to I was I was fortunate enough to be able to get down there and I work out a deal for this stuff so anyway let's go in here and just quickly go through these boxes and see what kind of goodies were in them alright guys so there were two wooden boxes and then also two of these Kennedy intermediate boxes that was in the tool collection I guess you'd say that was full of all these tools and again lot of these were the the gentleman's fathers and grandfathers tools and some of his tools as well and she told me that she thought that one of these boxes that her gentleman's father had made for him I think this box here is actually a homemade box while the other one I'm pretty sure or at least I think is a Gerstner I'm gonna have to do some research on that but I'm pretty sure this one was a homemade box so very nicely made homemade box but anyway let's just start going through it and look and see what's in this up here in the top this looks like some type of indicator holder looks like it has a magnet in it of some kind a lot of tooling dyestuffs there's a lot of stuff like this in here that was just things that were made over the years there's a piece of an old Center finder a couple of indicators test indicators in here I want to try to go through this fairly quickly just because there's so much of it let's see what we got here okay this is a tachometer it's a handheld tachometer this is pretty neat it actually has a timer built in until you push a button and while it's spinning and it times it for a second they'll actually do the math and calculate the RPMs are the feet per minute depending on which one of these you have on there which is a little bit different than some of the other tachometers I have here's some little jack feet for like a clamp set see we got in this box here's a brown and sharp 0 to 1 inch micrometer looks like it's in Nice shape see it's just a thousands model doesn't do 10000 got a bunch of indicator holders and snugs this is a bearing scraper Brown & Sharpe slow test indicator set this one was interesting this is a brown sharp this is a stair at last word so just like he may have combined some pieces and parts there and it's just an old compass like tells north south east west well that was kind of interesting and this was a mirror but anyway I thought this is neat 20th anniversary of the southeast National Bank 63rd and woodlawn 1935 of 1955 so this is a little piece they sent out and it's still in the original box and Herald dreaming was the gentleman that owned this box I think that was I think that was the the gentleman's father anyway there's just some pieces and parts in here top drawer here got some shim stock here's some angles 22 and 1/2 degree 15 degree a lot of stuff was obviously shot made so you probably put that on the side plate and ground them in there's a cutter and some miscellaneous stuff so this drawer here make sure y'all can see that and I'm not in the way again just miscellaneous stuff there's some ground rods in here that's some type of tool that looks like they ground to make little drift punch for our line that there's a boring bar that had been ground there's some tapestries back here just miscellaneous several boring bars this drawer here has a bunch of stones in there so there's a hard Arkansas stone and I noticed there were several sharpening stones in here here's a little slip stone in here good hard slip stone triangular stone I got some scissors in here a couple of chucks a couple of parallels I don't see a name on those anywhere miscellaneous stuff and then we've got a little box here says the brown and sharp and it's like he just has some sharpening stones in there there's some knurling inserts that goes on an earlier so this looks like it was mostly sharpening stones and what have you in this for my plan is is I'm going to go through all these boxes and get them organized and I've been needing to get a set of tools out of the museum that I can use when I'm out there because I brought most my tools back home and a lot of these tools will probably end up going out there just for that purpose so these are some little pieces that you do for finding a sinner and something or you screw these into a hole and a bicycle transfer punches this is a goes back up here so this is a set of radius gauges Lufkin also some dyes in here and DOSBox allen wrenches I think pretty much everybody's got a toolbox with a drawer full of Allen wrenches in it there's a few other miscellaneous things I hear some tools feel there's a interesting broach of some kind for that's a circle but it's got a flat on one side so it's a push through broach interesting so this is all dividers and compasses of calipers spring calipers all that kind of stuff this is his style drawer he's got a bunch of little small files in here full of files and some other miscellaneous stuff now this drawer has got an issue and actually I've taken it apart there's a wooden divider here in the bottom and the piece of wood has broken in the middle and it's dropped down just enough that this drawer won't come out there's not a lot in this drawer there's a angle divider it's like an old straightedge this kind of gotten rusty I'm going to probably have to do some repairs to this to get that drawer of a little work right you continue on down we got some micrometer so here's another Brown & Sharpe 0 to 1 that one reads the tents and it looks like it's in decent shape has carbide faces on the on there this one is a 1 to 2 this one here it's got a little rust on the surface rust but I think that will clean up all right that's also a brown and sharp this one looks like it's seen as better days here's a starett this one reads intense this is a 2 to 3 a little dirty but I think you'll clean up this fine and then another starett this is a three to four inch this one only reads in thousands and again it's got some surface rust on it but I think it's going to clean up just fine another Brown and sharp zero to one that one there has definitely seen this in better days but who knows I'm on throwing in some evapo rust it'll probably clean that clean up and be functional a lot of these inside hole attachments are going to indicator various shapes and sizes these are kind of interesting I don't see a name on them they got a little flexure on there that they rotate on there's a couple of different styles here this one is very similar to that one but it's a little bit different smaller anyway kind of interesting for some snap gauges that are a little rusty these were down in Florida right near the coast and he I'm sure rust was a big issue scale micrometer head stare at micrometer head it's got a little bit of surface rust on it but I don't think it's ever been used more indicator snugs and there's a little gear gauge very similar to the one that Bruce with them had made up with his channel of information on it this is kind of cool so down here in this bottom drawer there's a bunch of bore gauges and these are made by standard this is to 1/8 inch to three and a eighth inch there's several different sizes of these so these would be made to go down inside of a bore like us if you were working on an engine cylinder or something like that and you would use different pieces on here to make the length you actually had to calibrate these or hizdahr here full of the hardware and stuff that goes with these so you would have to have something to actually again calibrate this to a certain size but once it's calibrated if you're doing the same part over and over you can quickly go in there and check these and these are measured to a ten thousandth of an inch and I went through and looked at all these and a couple interesting things about them so number one a few of them actually say Chrysler on the dial and the other interesting thing about them is is on the back a lot of them have engraved on them you can see that says us a AF which is US Army Air Force and the United States Army Air Force was in existence from 1941 in 1947 so basically their United States Army Air Force started right at beginning of World War one or two and in 1947 they formed the United States Air Force as a separate branch of service so that's these are very likely from World War two war production the job is kind of neat I'm a history buff and like find that interesting and just just a little stare it dialed indicator set alright moving on down to the Kennedy intermediate box that's up underneath it this looks like it has mostly a lot of stuff you know for grinding in here in fact there's a grinding wheel here's some little more those little step pieces for setups whole set of these set of four some more here here's some more angles that were made there's a quarter of a degree half a degree these are actually real nice three degrees there's a planer gauge I believe this one was homemade it actually has his name stamped in the bottom Herald dreaming so I believe that this one was probably one that he made himself he was in this brown and sharp box oh yeah so this is a a transfer magnetic piece to use on a surface grinder so basically you can put this on there and the magnetic forces go through it interesting on the bottom made by Brown & Sharpe that's real nice I suspect no there's only one yeah I was about said maybe there was two in this box but not it's just one that would have been in there that'd be real nice to use over on the surface grinder like I said his his father was a tool and die maker so I'm sure you did a lot of grinding work we got some parallels in here different sizes here's some more angle pieces that were made 15 degrees and I believe all this stuff was stuff that he must have made himself another angle degree our angle block these are kind of neat so get that down these are some little little clamps kind of like a tool and die makers clamp but they'll be small ones and there's a pair of them so these would be real handy for their grounded the same height so if you need to put like two of something onto something you were grinding on anyway I could see where those would be really really useful he knows I think two were shot made I don't think those were we're bout anywhere go down to the bottom drawer and we got a bunch of VBox here's some clamps IV blocks I have no idea what this little fixture was for but it was for something even did the little julienne on there which is kind of neat this I think is an angle dresser for a surface grinder and I've never seen one exactly like this that's the only thing I can come up with I can't figure out exactly how it works there's a little slot right here but anyway I think this is an angle dresser some of you guys have you know better you can tell me there's not a name anywhere on this thing either where it was purchased or where toolmaker put his initials in it so I don't know if this was shot made or store-bought it kind of looks store-bought to me but yeah I just don't know this is kind of neat so this was a little fixture that was made to hold a piece of high speed steel let me grab a piece and show you all right so you take a piece of high speed steel and put into this piece and it's got angles at different places on your ice I think it would go there like this but you would put that down on your surface plate and go through the different angles and when you got through it would grind a tool to the certain geometry and probably kind of matching that geometry right there where you got the relief going backwards and so forth so so just a little quick tool for I don't think this tool is groundless just a piece I grabbed but that's a little grinding fixture for high speed steel you know a cutter so that's something we might put back into use you know a little plainer jack we've got this is a mandrel for putting a a like a cut-off saw or whatever in your milling machine anyway I actually need one of those I stood this I'm not exactly sure what that was for but it was obviously cylindrical ground to a very precision diameter and it's got a handle on the end here it was probably a gauge for checking something would be my guess but who knows what it was something that they they made and over here just miscellaneous hold down clamping stuff a bunch of different individual little pieces and parts that would be handy to have around for sure and what was in this little box alright so there's a bunch of basically I think that's like gauge blocks or some that he had ground up and made himself though it's also some standards in here for checking a a micrometer has a stare at 1 inch standard full adjustable parallel down there in the bottom some wrenches for adjusting micrometer 's and what-have-you so anyway just some miscellaneous stuff in there oh yeah and there's a little machinists vise back here for grinding this is the probably also shop made I would imagine and this is for using on the surface grinder for you know you need to do something 90 degrees or whatever you put in here and you could turn this in surface grinder and it would be very precise so I've got one that I use with my grinder but it's a bit bigger than this one so this will be a nice addition as well to use over on the grinder we don't have a surface grinder out the museum so but I do here at my shop so a lot of this grinding stuff will probably stay here with me where I can I can utilize it so now we're over at the second box and I believe this was either his this was his dad's box it's definitely an older box and I believe this one is might be a Gerstner again I need to go and and do some research on that I don't I don't see the name anywhere on here the Gerstner name but anyway it's a nice box nonetheless so a bunch of ball bearings some of them have a little weather you can see that but a little piece braised on to it these were off the news for like in pattern and they're used for all kinds of different things all right so we got a sign bar this one was made by James revving there so I mean it's got a nice fitted box for it homemade got a spirit box here I don't know that's a brown and sharp box excuse me and inside we have a brown sharp depth micrometer these are some starett they called tool buttons so you would if you were making a dye or a fixture these were very precision ground to a certain diameter and you would could screw these down and it was used for just indexing pieces and they stare at sold these in sets of four with different diameters there's a compass for drawing circles with rounding sharp box they like brown hot tools and again that's another inside hole attachment Brown sharp it's just kind of neat that kind of shooting some nails in the back so if you hear any noise that's what that is it's a little name badge mall Tool Company Chicago zeller lil and has her lady's picture on there the mall Tool Company I happen to recognize that name they made hand tools power hand tools so anyway that's kind of an interesting artifact there I know some people collect those I've got a couple of bottles of Prussian blue here and see Ike in the back we got a set of uh Brown sharp dial calipers my very first set of dial calipers ever owned were very similar these I still have them said that might looks like plastic I'm not sure this is a real old one or not but it's in great shape and this quality this is a Swiss made one too so that's nice in the box and has a little piece them that goes in here on the bottoms for measuring down inside of a you want to use it as a depth micrometer economies you would put this on the end there you go put that on the end tighten that down and then you could use that I don't have it set just right but you could use that piece on the end down here kind of like a depth gauge alright we'll continue on down the box here top-drawer miscellaneous stuff in here it's for tweezers some bar clamps pencils piece of chalk for drawing on metal Lake Hamilton champion 1956 fr Zieler it's kind of interesting that looks like it was hand engraved some keys old 22 bullets a little bit of everything in here that's kind of neat so we got a bunch of inside hole snap gauges or telescoping gauges as well as a ball gauges here's some an inside micrometer set and it looks like he had made a little fitted drawer to hold all that stuff so this is all for measuring inside holes kind of neat got some more of these little punches where you screw these up into a hole transfer punches so we got some end mills and high-speed steel it looks like a reamer so just some tooling here what have you in this drawer more high speed steel we got some tap holders these are number one Morse taper tap holders there's some thread gauges in here some high speed steel that's been ground there's an ACME thread gauge handy thing to have around there's fish tail tools for threading so anyway all kinds of little tools and tooling in there more miscellaneous stuff so a little square got some counter bores in here in meals high-speed steel again just a bunch of miscellaneous stuff bottom drawer here this is a little angle protractor our angle gauge this is probably made by Stanley yep I got some of these I've use them for woodworking so you can transfer a angle off of something Jaguar cars so there's a lubrication chart from a Jaguar some more paper stuff in Mills tooling of miscellaneous kinds there's a little mixture of some kind so continuing on so down here we've got a slightly the parts of a starett I'm doing this combination set combination square set yeah that's the spirit I've actually got some pieces to one of these but I didn't have the whole compass so maybe I can put them together this is kind of interesting this is a lapping plate Tom Lipton's been doing some lapping stuff lately and making some lapping plays it's a carbide end mill and here's some diamond compound for using with the lapping plate so it's like someone made a leather pouch for a 12-inch scale stare at scale that's nice a little starett combination square piece there there's a nice brass plumb-bob oops another micrometer a little rusty but very smooth I think you've cleaned up fine cotton swabs there's some more snugs for indicators there's a strop set some type of jig for something who knows what a little criterion boring head that's nice to have around I think those are drill bits for center finding on a hinge or woodworking a bunch of miscellaneous cutters and what have you in here there's a little wheel lapping wheel a bunch of key seats little fly cutter they go ball bearing there's a countersink so just miscellaneous stuff down here so this was just a collection of various dial indicators test indicators that were in these boxes and in other places laying around the shop that we were able to gather up some up more over on the lathe and some cabinets and what-have-you but nice selection these are all in various states of repair some of them you know still you know kind of work some of them you know real sticky that one there you see it's just not coming around some of them like that one there I mean this just froze up right now what's interesting though about these let's see well number one most of them are made by federal I think all these up here made by federal there's two here made by the standard gauge company incorporated our three these three and then this one was made by the sheffield corporation and what's also interesting is like these two have Chrysler printed in tone to the actual plate back there and a couple these other ones like this this one this one this one this one they all have dodge printed on them so dodge so these I'm assuming came out of a automobile factory at some point in time and I know that I think the gentleman's father I think they told me actually worked I know they said worked at Cadillac I don't know they worked for Chrysler or Dodge at one time as well but anyway nice set of indicators I talked with mark rutowski who's the guy who does tool repairs work and has prepared a bunch of indicators for me I think what I want to do is I'm just going to take all these indicators I'm going to box them up and send them to him and he said he'd go through them some of these I honestly I don't know that they can be fixed some of these I think they can definitely be fixed and he said what he could do is maybe try to take parts and pieces out of some and use them in the other it's a lot more the same type these through the same type these three I think of the same type these through the same type so anyway that's kind of game playing we'll send them up to mark and let him salvage what he can out of them and and send them back you can tell all of them kind of had this yellow look on them that yellow is just the age of that plastic has just turned yellow most of these federal indicators and I'm pretty sure these two to have a blue kind of a blue or greenish blue background on them there's one that that mark repaired for me and you can see the actual color of the the background and I suspect that when these come back with new crystals on them you'll see that nice federal color right there in the background also but anyway that we're gonna box all that stuff up and send up to mark another nice item here that came with this set of tools starett box and got a nice height gauge in here I thought it was interesting it's in a starett box this is a brown and sharp height gauge vernier gauge and looks like it's in great shape it has some different parts and pieces years well and guys there's more so this is uh most of the stuff that you see on the table here actually goes with the lathe that is out in the museum right now and I'm going to be sorting through all this and most of this will end up back out there with that machine because a lot of it is specific to that machine or accessories to go with it but just a collection of stuff here a lot of braised on carbide bits here this old bucket here was full of a high speed steel mostly there's a couple of brave stomp pieces in there and most of this is high speed steel bits that have been ground over the years and and put up for just for future use I've got some lathe dogs there's two change gears that go with the lathe a little four jaw Chuck that goes up in looks like a Morse taper or maybe that's a brown sharp taper I'm not sure got a little bit of indexing indexing tool cutters here that take inserts some boring bars these are all the old Armstrong type tool holders that go on the tool post I believe there's actually a tool post here too somewhere maybe it's out on the lathe I can't remember indicator holder some oil cans there's some surface gauges there's a faceplate for the LEI there's some chucks over here for the lathe this is kind of neat over here this is a homemade tool post grinder that they made for that lathe is actually pretty well built so anyway they got some bearings in here and this blocks this up on the on the tool post on that lathe and anyway they put a little motor on there and made their own tool post rider got some clipper belt lacing which is nice to have around and will carry out the museum because we use a ton of that stuff out there but just miscellaneous stuff like I said most of this actually will go with the lathe there were this nice set of two long ground parallels in here those will I'm sure you use for something those are about 18 inches long roughly anyway just a collection of different things and we'll be going through this and getting it back up with that lathe soon well there you go guys massive tool haul here and you know it's really kind of a shame and it's really kind of a sad story in one sense that there was a man who had all the stuff most of it belonged to his father and his grandfather had been passed on through the generations and you know like seems to be the case so often now the younger generation is just not interested in it I just throw it away mom I don't want that old junk but fortunately we were able to save this stuff and gonna be able to pass it on and be able to continue using it again my plan for this of course we got delayed I'm gonna do a separate video and feature that lathe it's a really really nice machine I think you guys will enjoy seeing it and it's really just perfectly period-correct for the museum it's a line shaft machine and it is just in immaculate condition and it is pretty much complete which is really two nice things but we're going to get that out the museum hopefully one day we can get that set up and running and on display where people can see it and it can actually be used now as far as the the tools go of course anything that's specific that lathes we're going to keep it delayed the tools and the boxes here is hate bad as I hate to do it I'm going to go through these and we're going to sort through the tools and my goal is and my goal for some time has been to get a good set of machinist tools out of the museum in the shop out there where I used to work and make videos that because I can still go out there work on projects at the Museum and not have to bring things home right now when I moved to into this shop I brought all of my tools back with me and I've still got a couple tool boxes out there and I've got some bare-bones tools at the Museum in the shop but with the stuff to send these boxes most obvious is going to probably end up getting relocated out of the museum I'm actually going to go through it sort through it figure out what else I've got in my boxes over here that are duplicate and we're gonna try to put together a really good complete set of machinist out there which is going to be a huge help and again giving me tools in both locations where I don't have to drive back and forth or bring stuff home every time I need to work on something when I'm at the museum the boxes right now the museum really doesn't have a good place to put these so I'm gonna probably just hang on to them if and when we ever get a machine shop set up out of the museum that people can see you know the one that one or both of these boxes will end up going back out there because these are period-correct for the museum now in the shop that I'm working in that's not a period work area it's more of in a maintenance area so and honestly I don't think these wooden boxes are going to hold up too well in the environment that they would be in at the museum so I'm gonna probably hang onto these here I don't know that I really need both of them but I am gonna hang on to them with the hopes that at some point in time we can get a good machine shop exhibit out of the museum and these will these will go out there as well thought you guys would enjoy seeing this and with that now I've got the job I got to go through all these tools get them cleaned up get them sorted out and that's probably gonna take a couple days all in itself so thanks for watching guys as always if you haven't already please subscribe to the channel leave you some comments if you like and we'll catch you next time around [Music] you

Channel: Keith Rucker - VintageMachinery.org

Views: 60,735

Rating: 4.9410715 out of 5

Keywords: Machine Shop, Machinist, Vintage Machinery, Metalworking, Keith Rucker, VintageMachinery.org, Keith Rucker Latest Video, Tool Box, Gerstner, H. Gerstner & Sons, oak tool box

Id: Bx2QfbN5rfM

Length: 37min 13sec (2233 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 15 2018