Thread: Post your mystery tool.

I love the old tools because they are just so tough and you know they will out last any other modern tool and they generality have 50 years on the new ones to start. The very few wit-worth spanners I have are just the goods, solid and reliable. I even have a couple of 'stanly' hand drills, keep one in the deffer tool box all the time. Always reliable never goes flat.

My great grandfather in the UK was a bit of an inventor of various tools, devices and other things. Between WW1 and WW2 when costs were high, things were expensive and everyone was trying to make ends meet (a bit like today) he came up with a really simple tool to sharpen the old gilette style double sided razor blades (the ones with the jagged looking slot in the middle and an edge on each side). Of course your old cut throat razors can be sharpened with a strop but the gilette blades were a disposable item good for one or 2 shaves. His tool, made using a piece of glass, jewellers rouge (very fine polishing compound) and a carrier that held the blade and was pulled across the glass using a string. Apparently it only took a couple of "pulls" to resharpen the blade and he could get many months out of one side, then switch to the other side of the blade. As with all good ideas, it was "aquired" by gilette after he died and disappeared.

Amongst his other "credits" that he never received acknowledgement for was the aircraft inclinometer (to indicate sideways tilt, a common cause of aircraft loss due to uncontollable spins) which was a simple mercury switch that lit up a light to show excess tilt - very simple but very effective. He never wanted any money for it, just recognition as the designer. He was told it was a stupid idea and within months they were being fitted to aircraft and hailed as a breakthrough.

Interestingly, he also used to have a shop that sold valves for old radios and sold some of these valves (but was never paid) to the man who invented the television.

Nothing like homemade tools.

Originally Posted by easo

I love the old tools because they are just so tough and you know they will out last any other modern tool and they generality have 50 years on the new ones to start.

Yep, that's me. I try telling all the girls that.

Originally Posted by Mr Whippy

I had leaking transmission cooling lines on my Disco. The hydraulics bloke sold me some rubber hose and the fittings to weld to the steel part of the line. When I installed them one of them leaked from my weld.

As they are a bit of a bugger of a job to remove them, I made this tool to pressure test them before refitting. I seal off the other end of the hose and then fit the opposite end into the tool. I can then use my fridge gauges to pressurize the hose and check for leaks.

In my next photo it is obvious what it is. The question is, what was it made from? My father had this made about 50 years ago.



Dave.

i guess it is made from an aircraft engine cylinder head stud,
not gypsy, maybe cirrus, more likely rolls royce merlin or suchlike.

Originally Posted by Mr Whippy

I had leaking transmission cooling lines on my Disco. The hydraulics bloke sold me some rubber hose and the fittings to weld to the steel part of the line. When I installed them one of them leaked from my weld.

As they are a bit of a bugger of a job to remove them, I made this tool to pressure test them before refitting. I seal off the other end of the hose and then fit the opposite end into the tool. I can then use my fridge gauges to pressurize the hose and check for leaks.

In my next photo it is obvious what it is. The question is, what was it made from? My father had this made about 50 years ago.



Dave.

It is a Merlin head stud. I have a screwdriver made from one by my father when he worked for CAC in the 1940s.

John

i found one of these a few months ago

Originally Posted by jimmymc

i found one of these a few months ago

Valve spring compresser for side valve engines. I had one of those too! (not the side valve engine, the tool)

Originally Posted by jimmymc

i found one of these a few months ago

Ford side valve V8, valve spring compressor.

Cheers Greg