Got the Sac

So last week I shared my haul-ette of venerable-ish writing implements and how, like an old war horse, my nostrils flared at the whiff of rust removal and tool redemption.

Now the two Parkers were a simple task; they just needed cleaning. Those aerometric sacs Parker made are, I won't say indestructible, but very resilient, and they proved to be sound. So after a lot of flushing with this 'n' that, thinking I'd got it clean, then finding another gob of ink had worked loose, and so forth, I go them inked and writing. The green Victory benefited from a light nib smoothing and now writes very nicely with a generous ink flow, while the Duofold Junior is a joy and feels like an extension of my hand. I can rather see why people like Parkers now; clearly the old uns' are entirely different animals from the ones of my previous acquaintance.

But the button filler of mysterious manufacture was always going to be more of a challenge. As I said, I'd already managed to straighten the seriously bent nib tine - not at all a professional job (there is now a "wrinkle" in the nib) but entirely functional, which it certainly wasn't before. But the sac had ossified and needed replacing (Good word that, isn't it? Ossified. Not one you get to use often), so suddenly I had a shopping list: sac of the correct size, shellac to stick it, French chalk to dust it and keep it moving freely against the pressure bar and interior of the barrel. Order(s) placed. I ended up having to go to two places - I thought I was okay for the shellac, but when I realised how old my shellac is now, I got cold feet and decided it was better to remove possible adhesive failure from this learning process.

So yesterday I was finally all equipped, and set about my task. The "nipple" was already cleaned of old shellac (and you know what fun crusty old shellac is...), so I lined everything up to work out how long I had to cut the sac. They come over-long, and you trim to size. I erred on the side of caution a bit, I suspect, and then trimmed a bit more because I thought I could get a straighter cut. I couldn't - rubbery ink sacs, it turns out, try to bounce knife blades right off rather than be cut to pieces. Who'd have thunk it? So I probably needed around 60mm, and probably got 58. But that's okay.

I expected the actual sac fitting to be fraught with angst, like any and all glue-up jobs ever attempted in the history of man, but it was laughably simple. Beginner's luck? Now it's probably worth mentioning I got the sacs before I had the shellac, so I trimmed the sac to length and left it in situ overnight, which I think helped to give it the idea of what it was expected to fit round. The shellac comes in a nail polish-a-like bottle, so a quick swipe of the (not-overloaded) brush round the nipple put a nice even film of shellac in place. Then just come at the thing at a slight angle so you get one edge in place, hold that, and flip the rest on. The liquid shellac acts as a bit of a lubricant, so it's actually easier than the dry runs I did. Make sure the sac is in line with the rest of the pen and it's evenly stretched and 'tis done. I'd been worrying about doing this for days, and it took twenty angst-free seconds, tops. Huh.

While I had the shellac, I also masked off the loose cap ring and syringed some shellac in there to get it to stop spinning. Seems to have worked okay.

Then you have to go away and not fiddle for at least half an hour. Anxious not to mess the job up, I was über cautious and gave it several hours. But the call to ink was very great, and eventually I had to succumb and get to the reassembly stage. First dust the sac for the aforementioned purpose of stopping it sticking to pressure bar or lever; darn stuff gets everywhere. Also, why do I always seem to end up with hobbies that require having to buy suspicious packages of fine white powder...?

At this stage, reading up before hand is about to pay big dividends. You'd naturally assume that you slide the pressure bar in, slide in the sac attached to the section, and screw the section up tight. And... no. That's apparently A Bad Idea. So first I screwed the section closed with the sac in place. Bye bye, little sac. Please work....

At the other end of the barrel, the blind cap was off and I'd already removed the button with some padded needle-nosed pliers (another nervous moment). Now in goes the pressure bar, through the buttonhole. Clever, huh? Also important to put it facing the right way so the bar will press against the sac correctly. In this instance I'm cautiously sliding the pressure bar in with the sac in front of it, nearest the camera.

Then comes the button, which slips over the top of the pressure bar and is a press fit into its hole. A cautious press, and the definite breathy sound of a squeezed sac. Yip! (Early days to be a full "Yippee")

Now at this point I should have pics of completed assembly, maybe the filling with ink, and such like. But the need to get the thing filled and to try it was too much, and I rushed on, camera forgotten. And, happy day, she works!

A nicely generous flow of ink, and I was greatly chuffed that, unsolicited,  my mum declared it to be "smooth". She rather likes it, actually; I may have to watch that... I'm still tentatively going with a medium stub as the nib type, although I do seem to often view as medium nibs that others happily designate as fine.

So there we go; my first pen repair. As with tools, I seem to favour the lived-in look rather than all shiny and new. But heck, the thing has survived a fair few years; it can show them with pride, can't it?

And yes, I'm absolutely certain doing this is addictive. No cheap, unloved fountain pen in need of rescue will be safe...

It's rust removal, Jim

...but not as we know it.

You know how I said I absolutely wasn't going to get into old pens in a car-boot-sale-scouring way? Well, a lucky break in an antique shop doesn't count, does it?

A black Parker England Duofold Junior with, astoundingly, a soft-ish fine nib and aerometric filler! It may be love. Bit scratched up, but apparently that's their fate. Am hopelessly confused by the Parker timeline (Think of when you first tried to type a Stanley bench plane. Yeah, that bad) but I think it may be from the 60s. Possibly. A later one, anyway.

I think I also said I wasn't going to buy any Parkers, didn't I? Well if you're going to break a resolution, I always say you might as well go big and do the job properly. Another English one with aerometric filler; this time a Victory with a less lovely medium nib. I may grow to like it, you never know. If not, the box may help it find a new owner. This one has a Parker date code, which is supposed to be helpful. Not to me it ain't. But someone did write "25-1-55" on the box, which seems to fit as a likely date of purchase as far as I can tell.

Now that Conway Stewart box. Yeah, about that... Here's the actual Conway Stewart bit in it; a "Nippy" pencil (with five spare leads - handy). I'm not a big posh pencil person, but it's kinda nice, isn't it? I could easily take it as a sign that I need to find a matching pen. Any excuse.

Conway Stewart still makes pens - or rather a new company uses the name and makes pens. They're not cheap, and they're in Devon, so that's two good reasons why I shall likely never own a modern one. ;)

And finally the mystery pen. Utterly unmarked blue and brown marbled button filler. Judging by the rather poor quality bent metal clip (loose) and the three-rings-in-one-piece cap band (also loose), this pen may well aspire to be by a third tier maker. Funky colour scheme, no? Wouldn't have chosen it myself, but it grows on you. Like mould.

Poor thing had suffered in a water attack on that Conway Stewart box (you may have noticed the staining) and lost a good deal of its wafer-thin plating to the resulting oxidisation. Once again I indulged in the heady excitement of crusty rust removal and, I suspect, as a result may be hooked by pen restoration. Dammit. What is it about taking the unloved and unusable implement and making it work again? I just love it. 

Anyway, "Button filler"; meaning you unscrew the end cap and press the little button which pushes on the bar that flexes another bar out to push against the ink sac to squeeze it closed so when you put it in the ink and let go of the button the ink is drawn in. (Clear as mud? How about a demonstration using a cutaway pen here on YouTube.) Except, funnily enough, ingenious though this system is, it doesn't work so well when your ink sac looks like this.

*Shudder*. So I see a steep and exciting learning curve of button removal and sac replacement in my near future. Another one, because I've already tripped the light fantastic on the bent-nib-straightening curve when I cleaned the crusted on ink off the nib of this thing and found unhappiness. But I managed that hurdle okay, and a dip test shows it to be a rather nice medium - I think- stub with a bit of give to it. Very pleasant to write with, so worth getting it working again.

Incidentally, guess what I'll need to stick a new sac on with, kids? Shellac. Hmm, now do I have any of that around here, I wonder...

My initial impressions notes and scribblings while dip testing the three pens

Steamboat Arabia

Any Kansas City readers out there in virtual land? What can you tell me about the Steamboat Arabia? I ran across this sort of Missouri River obviously-not-as-old (1856) Mary Rose-a-like-ish archaeological find by chance, but unfortunately my patience (and connection) runs out before their site finishes being pretty and what there is appears naturally aimed more at getting me to visit than spare me a trip. But I did find these pics elsewhere:

She seems to have been pretty much carrying the contents of a hardware store when she sunk.

But the glimpses of tools are just enough to be interesting. Boats and tools? My kinda place. Just where is Missouri anyway...?

The Thing

An exchange on one of the woodworking fora over the weekend reminded me that I don't think I've ever shared a particularly useful, but oh-so-ugly, homemade tool that lurks here at The Towers.

I call it the Thing.

As in "Where's the Thing?", "Oh, the Thing will do that", "Good grief, I really should make a nicer version of this Thing". It's not so much a tool for woodworking per se, although it's been used on a fair few handles in its time. But there are very few pre-owned tools in the w'shop that haven't been on the business end of The Thing at some point.

Yes, this is the glamour shot. Envious, aren't you? Even with that little bit of damage to the custom-made handle, the Thing exudes toolish loveliness.

No? Well, no. It is pretty darn hideous.

It came about quite by chance, many years ago. Early in my learning curve of cutting up old saw blades, I ended up with a new plate for a Sorby 18in panel saw, a number of scrapers, some scratchstock blades (in potenia) - and a 5in length of really vicious splinter-like saw plate. Somehow the usefulness inherent in this utterly fortuitously created piece of steel grabbed me immediately, and I kept it.

Within 20 seconds, I gave it a handle from electrical tape. Go on, wonder why...

One end is pointy and can get into all sorts of little areas of tools that need cleaning out. Screw head hopelessly gummed up with the detritus of the centuries? The pointy end of the Thing will clear out the slot in a moment. So much gunk in your knurled chuck you'd think it was smooth? The Thing can, with applied patience, do a cracking job. And so forth; you can probably easily imagine the sort of things it helps with. For a while I used to use an awl for those kinds of jobs, but why spoil the awl with such work? And anyway, often the shaft of an awl widens too quickly to fit in the necessary hole. The edge of this end also works pretty well for scraping widish areas.

The other end provides the scraper element. You can push with the end, or pull with the hook. Many a paint spot on a tool has been popped off with this, and you know how old tools were always apparently owned by Jackson Pollock when it comes to paint splatter. The point of the hook also comes in handy, especially when you want a very controlled movement to avoid creating damage on the surrounding surface. Just treated like a carving knife really.

Of course, after many years of service, those viciously sharp edges are getting rounded and not quite so effective anymore. On the other hand, a less aggressive edge/point can be equally useful to have. So rather than refresh the edges with a file (which does rather strike me as faintly ridiculous) I may have to actually see if I can deliberately make myself a new one.

What are the odds that it'll be harder to do it on purpose...?

Beaters

Frustration here at The Towers; keep wanting to get down to the w'shop, only to be thwarted by coughing up a lung like someone with a forty-a-day habit. Pesky colds.

So confined to barracks as I am, I need cheering up. Non-woodworking comforts in these times of feeling sorry for oneself traditionally veer towards re-reading Pride and Prejudice and having an inexplicable desire to eat Marmite and honey on toast.

Yes, together. No, it's not weird. People eat sweet and sour combos all the time.

Okay, it's a bit weird. Moving on then...

What woodworking thing will cheer me? Ooo, I dunno. It's a truth universally acknowledged that I do like a nice chisel or two though... (Okay, who saw that coming? Predictable, ain't I?)

Cast you mind, or even your browser, back to the acquisition of the contents of a tool chest that proved to be that of a coachbuilder. More specifically, the chisels of same. Not being a big fan of picking up a chisel and coming away with an orange palm from all the rust thereon, I'm gradually getting round to cleaning them up. In this case, a pair of socketed beauties by Thomas Ibbotson & Co.

That's no six inch rule there either; them's a big ol' pair of chisellin' devices. 1in. and 5/8in. 'Cos I was curious I threw them on the scales and they came in at 1lb 3oz and 15oz respectively, but they don't feel at all unwieldy. Just really nice chisels.

Now inexplicably I don't have an Ibbotson catalogue about my person (cries of "Shame!" and that's just from me) but I do have a 1934 Marples one handy, and also because Salaman's Dictionary copped out and lumped all the firmers together with gay abandon, I referred to Bill and his boys compendium of toolish goodness.

Now isn't it interesting that the ones like these Ibbotsons, with no overly mannered shoulder, are just "Socket chisels", while the ones with the obvious shoulders get the "Firmer" moniker. I wonder why. I included the others just for kicks and giggles, and who doesn't like playing the Time Machine Game and pricing themselves up a set of bevel-edge cabinet chisels?

Many of us also like to play the "What can this tool tell me about the labouring woodworker of yore and his (or, it's remotely possible, her) habits?" In this case we meet the complete antithesis to the story of the planemaker's flat backed paring chisel. You can easily see with the naked eye just how not flat the 5/8in one is; it's well clear of the bench surface at the edge. The other one's none too hot either. Is that David Charlesworth's low scream of horror I can hear from over the border in Devon? It might be.

Depressingly, I know damn well that certain folks will take this and declare it supports their assertion that no-one bothered with flat backs until the modern era. I'd argue that it merely supports the evidence that the canny woodworker puts only the effort into a tool that's required for the tool to do the job. Like not sharpening a rough jack plane iron to a superfine edge; there's just no point. I don't suppose these two chisels were doing much paring to nths of a gnat's pay slip.

Also, we should probably bear in mind that in the same kit of tools was this error of chisel-using judgement, so, y'know, maybe this guy, or possibly gal, is not the ideal example of what to do.

It also struck me as interesting that there was a noticeable hollow grind and at a not especially sturdy 25° too. Heavy duty chisels though these clearly are, no concerns about the edge not holding up.

And finally, because not everyone will have the opportunity and it's really annoying when you read about this stuff but can't see it, the very obvious lamination of the hard steel to the blade.

So a nice pair of chisels that leave me with all kinds of decisions over how best to get them working. Add in some rusting on the backs, and I'm looking at quite a bit of effort needed there. i.e. Those backs aren't likely to be getting much flatter, unless I want to kiss the steel goodbye. Heigh ho. On the up side I already have a similar Marples in a 3/8in size (if I recall correctly), so it'll be worth doing to get something of a "set".

You know how people advise you to have a set of "beater" chisels that you can safely whale on without worry? Yeah, I reckon they might fit the bill just dandy.

Listing a little more

Having recovered from that heady foray into yer akshull wood butchery, chipping away at the To Do List continues on. First up, you may recall my fortuitous finding of a possible wheel to fix the Millers Falls #2 wheel brace? And the rather botched temporary installation of same.

Well it's still a trifle botched - apparently a guaranteed way to drill a hole in the centre of a circle is to actually want to drill it off-centre and it aims for the centre like a missile homing system... Anyway, it's better, and it seems to work okay. I may get picky and have another shot at it some time, but somehow I doubt it.

While still on a finicky metalwork high, I dug through the box of largely unidentifiable assorted fixings, but they may come in someday. You know the sort of motley collection of "bits and bobs"; bet most of you have one. Well one of the screws did come in someday, and it was this day. The thread isn't strictly correct - Marples helpfully used a Stanley-esque odd-ball thread - but close enough to work. Had to file the head down almost to the slot (and recut same) to get it small enough, but 'tis done.

May not look like much to you, but that spur cutter has been floating around loose in a bag for years, always in danger of being lost forever. So that's a weight off my mind. Trouble is, it now makes the Marples 100% more qualified as a candidate for another loving home, given that I have approximately 700% more rebate planes than I have the hands to use them with. But it's always, inexplicably, been a favourite of mine.

Yes, it's the oft-derided single fence rod garden variety 78-a-like, and there's a wee crack where the fence rod screws in. But it works. It doesn't care how little love it gets, it just ploughs on. Or rebates on... in that ridiculously loud and shameless red outfit.

It's funny really, which tools capture your heart. It's often not the ones you expect it to be.

Listing to one side

Gradually - oh, so gradually - I make small inroads into the ever-lengthening To Do List. Cast your mind back to March, um, 2011 (Zoicks!) when my fit of Spring Cleaning hit the Brace Bit Blockage.

I managed to get through all the stuff on the left, but came over all faint at the thought of cleaning up all those auger bits - and put them away again. Shame! Horror!

Well I finally mustered up the will to finish the job, hence my recent mild obsession with lead screws. And here they are; cleaned up, sharpened as necessary, and the spare-spare spares put in the One Day I Will Get Off My Behind and Sell Something box.

Technically I still have the l'hommedieu or shipwright's augers to clean, but honestly I think their best kept in their mummified state, deep in their coating of linseed oil. Until I need to build a boat.

Anyway, in amongst that lot are no fewer than five different patterns of bits (You want to see a bit without spurs? Just holler. I have, um, four types) and absolutely no complete sets. Oh well, variety is the spice of life, is it not?

Better Buns

Right, need a break from going round the twist with auger bits for a moment, so instead I revisited my not-terribly-beloved infill plane. If you recall in December, I found to my horror, that it was rusty. So in a fit of guilt I cleaned it up, and gave the iron and back iron a bit of a going over too.

It looks considerably better. It's also a lot more comfortable to use than I remembered. But really the iron is in a poor way and not conducive to setting the cap iron just so.

I went to the box o' spares and thought I had found just the thing in a tidy and nearly full length Hearnshaw Bros. 2 1/4in tapered iron and cap iron. Alas, turns out the plane takes just a hair under that, so I'd have to reduce the iron's width to get it to fit. So that may get on the To Do List.

Or maybe I'll just sell the thing and have done. It is a bit 19thC stylee for me.

Leading by a nose

Partially prompted by the comments, something of a follow up to the last post. Some 19/20thC advertising blurb to ruin your confidence in what you think you know about lead screws:

Quote:

  "The bits in this set are our Fig. 100 and have our standard double thread point, and are unsurpassed for accurate work in seasoned woods not extremely gummy or hard. It is the thread used by cabinet makers.

  "We also have a similar bit, our Fig. 101 with single thread point for quick boring which is especially adapted for hard or gummy woods, end grain boring, mortising doors, etc."


And from Josh Clark via the Old Tools List:

  "The 1911 Sargent catalog says that the RJ bits with the double lip, double twist, and double thread screws (the bits everyone wants these days) are "not adapted for rapid boring or in hard wood where fine lead screws tend to clog. .. fine double thread screws are intended for pattern-makers and are for use in soft wood"

and:

  "Sargent is also quite definitive as far as the distinction between the double and single thread bits: 'It should be clearly understood that the double thread bit is intended for soft wood, the single thread for hard wood, as the latter will not clog up as readily as the former.'"


So if, like me, your initial introduction to auger bits was an all encompassing "coarse for soft woods, fine for hard woods", like me, you're probably either a) Grumbling a little about this, or b) Going "Ahhh, so it's not just me then" as personal experience is finally explained.

Going through my Irwins yesterday, they threw me another loop. Bit after bit, pretty much, was single thread - and then the numbers 6 and below all went double thread. Didn't see that coming at all.

Lead Astray

Occasionally I delude myself that I've got a bit of a handle on this old tool business - and then I clean up some auger bits and confusion descends like a familiar cloud.

Auger bits are not simple. Auger bits are complicated little blighters. F'rinstance, early in your auger bit orientation you've probably come across the revelation that lead screws can come in coarse, medium and fine. You may have tripped and fallen in the quagmire that is the uncertainty over whether coarse lead screws are for soft woods and fine for hard woods, or... not. But it's not even as simply confusing as that. Take the lead screws on these two Cornelius Whitehouse and Sons Jennings pattern bits. At least I thought they were Jennings pattern, although they surely don't look like it in the picture... But that's not the point. #11 on the left, #10 on the right.

The lead screws appear to be much of a muchness, no? Yes, the one on the left needs a little attention, but that's not the point either. Well it is the point, but it's not the point.

Wrap a length of cotton thread round those screw points, why don't we? Top tip of the day there, incidentally, and possibly the only useful thing you may glean from this blog entry. Having wrestled and sworn over trying to trace the spirals with a marker in the past, it dawned on me that a piece of thread wrapped round the, um, thread, did the job in a fraction of the time and inconvenience. Unless it occurs to you that the nearest piece of thread is the loose one on your shirt and you start pulling, at which point your inconvenience quotient can increase dramatically. So don't do that. Anyway:

Can you see it? The cotton goes round every spiral on the left like a kiddie on a helter-skelter; it only goes round every other one on the right. Yes, the blighter on the right is a double thread. Cunning swine. Which means...

Well that's where I get confused. More confused. It means the thread pitch is coarser than it appears. I think. But the number of threads is doubled for better grip, maybe? If so, in what exactly? Which lead screw is preferred for what type of wood? Does it matter? Do I even need to know? Most books, however ancient, and the few catalogues I have are all oddly silent on lead screws and the differences in same, so maybe it's no big deal. But I can't help wanting to know, and so I wonder. In circles.

Around this point I feel a headache coming on and silliness ensues.

Oh come on, I can't have been the only one thinking it.

On Safari

I love the smell of rust in the morning - it smells like... well, lots of work to clean up, to be honest. But aside from that, fresh rust means new old tools and discoveries. In other words I had a little relapse on Saturday (that'll be an old tool hunting relapse, as opposed to the other things I've had a relapse over recently, such as chisels, books, and so forth).

Set aside the plane and the four hunks of lignum vitae cunningly disguised as lawn bowls for the time being. Yes, I know, I know. Another brace. Not a brace of pedigree either - indeed it's already been described in terms of "Woolworths". And not in a good "Lovely pick'n'mix" kind of way. But have I not already confessed to a weakness for braces of unusual size or design or make? Yes, I have. This one ticks the middle box, because I can't recall seeing a brace with a Yankee-a-like ratchet mechanism before.

Mind you, my memory's not what it was. Apart from that, this has very little merit really, apart from being a handy 8in. sweep and if not half, at least two thirds lighter (and 100% better balanced) than the Stanley equivalent already in my arsenal.

Having cleaned it up, alas it speaketh only unto the word "Foreign" on both the frame and the chuck shell. Somewhere or other I read that indicates likely between the two wars of German manufacture as, for understandable reasons, German stuff wasn't the first choice of the average Brit at the time. It's been a bit hammered by the aforementioned rust, and it's not going to win any prizes as a superior example of brace technology, but I kinda like it.

Reckon it'll make a good screwdriver when I next need to talk the torque.

Reversal of Fortune

In that arse-about-face way that I so often seem to find myself in, having had the rusting chisel discovery earlier last month, last week I had the leaking roof precursor. Except it came afterwards. If you see what I mean.

Folks, there is no sadder sight that a Veritas Small Router sitting in a small puddle of water. You may have heard the screams of "Nooooooooo!" from there. (Yeah, that's what's it was. Not some natural phenomenon such as someone pulling the toenails from a bull elephant.)

Oddly enough it was the only thing in the line of fire (apart from a few splashes on a Stanley #71 1/2 and the head of my panel gauge) and there wasn't even enough to seep through the join in the tool tray. Which was nice, 'cos let me tell you, I pulled those boards out in the full expectation of finding some horrific Lido type affair in the original tool well below. There was enough to cause some rust though, but a word of love and affection for those Garryflex abrasive thingies, which sorted it out in no time. Well worth having the fine grade at hand even if you're not naturally a devotee of ferrous oxide bargains. If it wasn't for the one single line staining the sole where it sat on the join of those tool tray boards, you'd never know. So Awww Buggerit, but mainly Phew.

Whilst on the subject of the Veritas Small Router Plane, I have to make a confession. Every time (and when I say every time, it's not like it runs into dozens of occasions. Three or four, tops) But every time I read on a forum or some such that people find the cutter slips or twists in the clamp, I feel the hot flush of shame that I utterly failed to notice this at the Beta stage. Honestly, I feel terrible. That's exactly the sort of thing The Elves have every expectation of even your dim-witted correspondent picking up on, and I failed utterly. I liked it almost unreservedly ('cept I found my digits are sufficiently not Canadian - i.e. Small - to risk squashing between the jaws of the bullnose area when loosening the cutter clamp - see above). But aside from that, not a problem. So when I had cause to use same again the other day, I bethought myself "Dammit, I must face this failure square in the face. Or sole." and thus did not baby that cutter and clamp at all. Indeed I positively encouraged it to slip.

It still didn't.

So yeah, I feel slightly less guilt, and can only apologise that I seem to have a perfectly working example. Some coarse abrasive applied to the shaft of the cutter is apparently the remedy. And yes, the cutter will fit in a Stanley #271 (there's always at least one person who wants to know that).

If you're waiting water-related w'shop mishap numero tres (as I was, things being what they are in coming in threes), I offer up the observation that it turns out the dye in tool rolls can be markedly fugitive. Thus what was once a classic off-white carpenter's apron chez Alf, is now a delicate shade of eau de nil. Sigh.

Further to the Further Adventures

First, electrolysis. Coupla folks have mentioned it, and pretty much someone does every time I play with citric acid. I know many folks swear by it, and it's probably brilliant. But I am fundamentally a coward, and as far as I'm concerned electricity and water don't mix. 'Course, if I happened to have the means to try it about my person, I probably would have been tempted, but as I don't, well, it seems a pricy option to go out and buy a battery charger in order to do so. So yes, I believe you, but no, I haven't tried it and have no plans to.

I should also have probably clarified that I don't actually like any chemical form of rust removal at all. The end result always looks just that little bit bleugh to my eye. Only the serious "Oh dear" cases that are absolutely hopeless without drastic measures will get thrown in the soup. My first thought is always can I do the job with the lightest possible abrasives, because to me, it simply looks so much better. But that's just me. For example; one of these ball pein hammer heads has never been in any soup, the other has. Go on, guess which.

Anyway, I put a couple of sacrificial spanners in their respective soups for 24hrs. Notice how much darker the Restore solution on the left is getting compared to the citric acid on the right?

Then fished them out this morning. First observation is that the Restore victim on the left is much blacker.

A brief scrub under running water, and the second observation is how flippin' cold the water is... Third, and more useful observation though, is that the black comes off the Restore one a lot easier than the citric acid, and leaves a more liveable finish. Not pretty, but liveable with.

Now whether this is because the citric acid clings to the blackness, while the Restore seems to release at least some of it into the solution, I don't know. Or has the citric worked faster and got to a later stage than the Restore? i.e. Buggered up the metal a lot quicker... I do get the gut feeling that the citric does move a little quicker from some of the other things I've been cleaning, but it could equally be a happy or unhappy coincidence of certain steels that react more dramatically happen to have ended up in the citric acid bath and not the Restore. I honestly don't know, which is why this is strictly "workshop science". i.e. Not science.

Anyway, polished up, they're both pretty equally revolting; the citric acid may have just pipped the Restore to the post of horror though. Bottom line - don't put stuff in for 24hrs unless you really, really don't care how they look. Or possibly if you're sharpening a file or rasp. Ooo, ought to try that too.

A couple of pairs of pliers were also cleaned up and then re-dipped in the Restore solution and allowed to dry. It's classical West Country weather down here - fine steady rain - so if they're gonna rust, they've had plenty of opportunity. So far, they haven't. I'm impressed.

The pair on the right are apparently Billings model M slip-joint combination pliers. c.1911-1926. Fancy.

Finally, the identification of the dividers. Brian hazarded a thought that it might be a J. So did I. And a G, a D and even an F at one point... BugBear, however, did something about it and wrote a program that created a search string for each possible letter, which he then applied to Google. All way over my head of course, although I can't help loving the irony of it all to find out about a hand tool. But if you want to find something via Google, he's your man - and he did.

"I found a J T Jolley in google books;

Worrall's directory of Warrington, Wigan, St. Helens [&c.]. 1876

Hughes Joseph, toolmaker (J. T. Jolley & Co) Brookfield Cottage, Latchford."

Plus a rather fancy Lancashire pattern hacksaw.

Armed with this info, I did a quick search of the Trade Directories but only came up with one likely entry in Kelly's Directory of Cheshire, 1902; Jolley & Co, Ironmongers, 19-21 High Street, Crewe. Nothing in earlier directories at all in that general area (i.e. not just Cheshire), which was a bit disappointing. I may have another go and take a more manual approach though; I have less faith in the power of the search engine than BugBear.

Phew; think that's covered everything. From this you might have guessed that my choice for box number two was the hammers, mallets, screwdrivers, etc. Going pretty well too, if we put aside the number of handles various I now need to make...