A Parisienne in Toronto...

 

HD Smith Perfect Handle wrench

Henry D Smith founded the self-named company to produce castings and forgings at Plantsville, Conn. for the carriage and wagon manufacturing trade. In 1900, with the writing on the wall for horse-drawn equipment, the company reorganized to focus on a line of  tools featuring rivetted wooden handles which they named Perfect Handle tools. The line included a range of pipe wrenches, adjustable wrenches as well as hammers, plain wrenches and screwdrivers, this 1914 catalog shows a few of their products.

 In 1929, the company was sold at auction to an oilman, George Lassen who planned on continuing the tool manufacture but Trimont acquired the company a year later and the Perfect Handle line was phased out.

 More history here.

Even more at Alloy Artifacts.

Corvette 1961

 

Small adjuatable wrench

 Seen at the Beaumont Mills antique market,  a small simple unnamed adjustable wrench, Wrenches of this type were known as bicycle wrenches in the late 19th C.

Aprilia V twin cross section

 What I like most about this modern cross section drawing is that it was someone's job to draw it out.

 After that, this is a Rotax designed and built 1000cc 60° V twin, with two balance shafts. One, quite obvious, is in front of the crankshaft, the other smaller one located in the rear head, presumably running half crank speed? Can we make an engine more complicated?

Planes in formation, Monday Mystery

 I'm trying to identify the aircraft and leaning towards Keystone LB-6 light bombers (biplane) but there are problems with that. The photo caption in the now-forgotten blog source suggested it was taken in 1935, by then apparently all the LB-6s had been scrapped. Are there any topnotch vintage plane spotters out there? 

This dayinaviation

Martin MB-1

Sioux Valve Grinder

   Another valve grinding tool. This one has a yet another mechanism for accomplishing the back and forth motion. The ad shows several adapters to interface to the valve head.
 

Sidecar Sunday

 

E type crash damage

Life in pre-5mph bumper times. Below, another view that Dave (in comments) found online. Wonder what the story was.

 Rumour also has it that Jaguar was unable or unwilling to fit the E type with bumpers to conform to the new regulations, so we got the XJ12 instead. 

Sidney Machine Tool

 

Lathe manufacturers from the turn of the last century continue to pop up. I swear they're like the software companies of today.  Sidney Machine Works set up shop in the Sebastian May factory in Sidney, Ohio in 1904 to build woodworking machinery. They added metal lathes to their line in about 1910 and the name was changed to Sidney Machine Tool Co. By WW2, the woodworking tools had been discontinued and metal lathes were their only product.  New owners came in 1961 in the form of the Buhr Machine Tool company who renamed the company Buhr Sidney. That company was bought up a few years later and the Sidney operation was shut down. More history here. And the whole story at Lathes.co.uk.

From the Practical Machinist forum; 

Serial Number reference book has serials from 1930 to 1962, when it says "all lines discontinued".  The first number is 5532 and the last number is 10629, so they made a little more than 5000 in 32 years, and supposedly a little more than 5000 from 1904 to 1930.  Sounds like a fairly serious effort, though nothing like the amazing output over at Monarch or Lodge & Shipley.   They made 14 to 32" medium and heavy duty lathes. Sidney was famous for their herringbone gear headstock.