Back to Work: Antique and Vintage Tools

Antique tools I've encountered digging through attics, basements, and working at Liberty Tool Company and the Davistown Museum. Photos by Sett Balise.

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Not really tools for work, but for serious play. Antique marbles...first image are all semi-contemporary Chinese fakes made out of granite or some kind of stone (I think they might be some kind of industrial biproduct with magic marker on them). Single larger one is an original clay marble. 

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Three types of S-curve adjustable nut wrenches (but don’t call them “crescent” wrenches or Apex Tool Company will go nuts on you! Even though the design is a total ripoff of Johanssen’s shift adjusted wrench...)

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An interesting bronze patternmaker’s mold for a centrifuge, kind of looks like a snowflake.

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The Stephens & Company No. 36 combination level, ruler, square and back scratcher. Relatively common but cool design.

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Good ol’ common as dirt Coes wrenches.

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One of the more steampunk adjustable convex/concave woodworking planes.

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Bookbinding (or cobbler’s) hammer with some attention to detail in it.

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A really well-loved timber scribing knife.

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Wrench on wrench action!

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Various Aestheticism movement era (1870-1890) cast brass door hardware. Very steampunk.

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Tanged chisels by The James Swan Company (new old stock). Swan bought out Douglass’s edge tool factory in Seymour, Connecticut in 1877 and operated until 1951. A number of Douglass’s tools were re-marked with Swan’s logo (Douglass used an anchor) and Swan also re-marked German tools. These are later examples.

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Winged divider.