Here's a mystery that looks like a vise, but there's no way to attach it to a bench, maybe parts are missing and there is some clamp arrangement on the half round recess? (bottom picture).
Jaws are about 1 3/4" across. The fixed jaw has a sort of clamping screw (3/8 UNC?) and the moveable jaw has a v-groove which doesn't line up with it. There is a moveable eyebolt sort of thing which is bored to slightly over 3/4" next to what looks like a clamp (missing the other half) for a cylindrical piece. The whole thing is either brass or bronze except for the 3/8 screw, but I think that's a retrofit. So high voltage electronics or combustible chemicals? The only markings are a '1' and an '8' (separate places) on the fixed jaw, as well as '25kA', all cast in. There's an 8 on the moveable jaw as well. 'CT' is stamped on the fixed jaw, but it looks like an owner's mark.
Any ideas or guesses?
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| Thanks Glenn, keep digging! |
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| Sidney Olson, Young Henry Ford, A picture history of the first 40 years. Wayne State University, 1963 |
After building and driving his first prototype, the Quadricycle, Henry Ford started working on the second car. Design and construction of the car began in late 1896. a bit more than a year later it had morphed into the car shown below. Henry Ford was an experimenter, no sooner than something was built than he modified it, always chopping and changing things, anytime anyone had an idea, he would try it out. Progress was slow, but the design was continually improving.
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| Thanks, Glenn! |
This beauty was found while tidying up a toolbox at the Waterloo Central Railway.
Made for large fasteners, the wrench is adjusted by pulling the pin and sliding the bottom jaw the correct distance, then reinserting the pin. The grooves/ways for the moveable jaw are a good close fit, so the 7/16" dia. adjustment pin (bolt in this case) really just holds the jaws at the correct spacing. The size range seems to be 1 3/8" to 2 7/8" in 1/8" steps.
The wrench was manufactured by the Owatonna Tool Company of Minn. which is still around, operating as OTC Tools, these days making automotive diagnosis and specialty tools.
Apparently it wasn't fine enough. Built in 1889, it was replaced as the downtown station in Montreal in 1993, the building designated a historical site and is now an office building, the concourse a pedestrian mall.
No sizes given but there shouldn't be any confusion... A search for the G in a triangle logo led me onto a Freemason rabbithole.
The Gruppo Velox is an Italian kit manufactured by the very enterprising Luigi Parena in Turin immediately after the war in order to transform a side valve engine to an OHV high-performance engine. It consists of an aluminum cylinder, an 82mm piston and an aluminum cylinder head with crossed pushrods using (if I translate correctly) a single valve spring. Intake valve diameter was 1.250" exhaust 1.813".
Apparently there were kits to fit either a BSA M20 or a Norton 16H- many of which would have been "available" all over Europe. No idea how many were sold, the link below suggests only 30.
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| Motorcycles-for-sale |
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| Classic-motorcycle |
Stock flathead M20
According to the caption in the Feb 1968 Cycle World, these are people heading north to Alaska to find work. It was the sixties, mannnnn...
This ad was a tribute to the Italian motorcyclist, aviator and would-be Moto Guzzi cofounder Giovanni Ravelli. He seems like a pretty happy guy.
Dunlop gets their name in there too. Poster by Giorgio Muggiani
And the competition; Fiat X1/9 and Pontiac Fiero.
I'm trying to decide of this stylized aircraft is actually from the 40s or if it came much later- the materials look like the decor of the seventies. The lack of airfoil and propeller contours put me off and I guess the plane is an uncomfortable blend of Boeing 312 Clipper and Lancaster bomber morphing into a 50s airliner.
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| ebay |
Nice looking wrench to have hanging around but too expensive for that, and the 85mm or 3.35 inch size is pretty specific. The company was located across the street from the Pierce Arrow factory in Buffalo, I wonder if there was any connection.
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