Champion "Our Pride" hoof trimmers

This is a pair of hoof trimmers, patent number 908969, nicely made with replaceable jaws and ball bearings in the pivot. Patent date is Jan 5 1909,  a few months after Model T production began...

First Torpedo launch from an airplane

A torpedo is successfully dropped from a Short Type 166 during tests in 1914 .  The plane had a wingspan of 57 feet and was powered by a 199 hp Salmson engine.  It was classified as a "folder" to be used on the seaplane carrier Ark Royal. The wings folded backwards 90 degrees for storage. 

 

1929 JAP Flat track racer

This machine would have been the British response to the HD Peashooter. J.A.Prestwich made engines, not complete motorcycles, I wonder who made the frame.

OHTM

 

Craftsman 7" Disc Sander-Polisher

Here's a beautiful but awkwardly styled heavy duty commercial angle grinder dating back to probably about 1960, old enough that it only has 4 digits in the model number 315.7762. A nice big heavy cast aluminum unit that's nice to look at but my arms get sore just thinking about putting it to work.

Know your stationary steam engines

 

Alfa sighting

 

Nice wheels, I believe they are Italian FPS (Fratelli Pedrini Sarezzo)

One of my vices is vises, unknown (updated)

The only markings on this one is the V-27 on the body. I haven't had much luck with Google or image search finding the manufacturer, ideas? 

Update. It is a vise from Milwaukee Tool and Equipment, age unknown. Thanks, Dave!  Company is still around making vises and clamps etc.  https://www.milwtool.com/

 

Monday Mystery, Clamp with roller.

 We've covered the A.B. Chance company but I wonder how whatever this is fits into their product line. Ideas?

C-47 flyover

 “Love the sound of those big round engines…”

Sidecar Sunday

 British motorcycle hooligans.

Grumman aircraft, 1957

To a downed pilot in a life raft, the sound and sight of an approaching flying boat would have been nothing short of a miracle, below is a dramatization for advertising purposes. The ad is from National Geographic, as if the typical reader might call up the military to urge them to buy some more of these.

 

Blue Point Boxocket 928

According to Alloy Artifacts, this interesting 7/8" wrench was promoted as a Water Pump wrench by the company and was made from 1928 till about 1939. The patent applied for is number  RE17417.

 

Canadian Pacific flags and lamps

1913 Model T production line

 Here's an interesting one. Seen at the Boothbay narrow gauge railway museum, a diorama of the 1913 Model T production line. There was no one to ask details but it seems to be about 1/32 scale (at a guess) and in monotone grey, it could be pewter. I wonder if it was someone's labour of love, or a professionally made model for some unknown purpose.

 The other problem is that it was behind glass so I apologize for the reflections and shadows. 

Waterproofing the spark plug, 1949

 

 

Champion waterproof spark plug cap

Bugatti Type 53 cutaway

 

Artist Yoshihiro Inomoto, Classic Cars June / July 1986

Avon motorcycle tires, 1969

 I don't know what to say...

Farmers Ever-ready Multi-tool

These multi-things just keep cropping up! 

Winner, winner, winner!

 I love everything about this, as does the 1979 version of myself. 

Evans tape measure

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We've done a post on the Canadian branch of the Evans Rule company, this American-made 100 ft tape showed up in Scotland recently, There doesn't seem to be a connection between the companies but the round tapes from the two companies very much resemble each other. (bottom - Lufkin)

Thanks, Derek!

 

Union Pacific, 1955

 Union Pacific with its head office in Omaha Nebraska, was always a western railway, this ad touts their Portland, Oregon connection. In 2025 the company has acquired the Norfolk Southern, which was the result of the 1986 amalgamation of the coal-carrying Norfolk and Western and the Southern Railway. Early mergers with the Virginian Railway, and later Wabash and Nickel Plate lines. Union Pacific is now a coast to coast freight carrier.

Thomas Motor Company

A price tag of $5150 in 1912, for comparison, a Model T started at $690. By 1912 the company was on its last legs and had been sold by its founder, the financial company that bought it couldn't turn it around and closed it down a year later.

The Thomas company had started out as a bicycle manufacturer, in 1899 they produced a successful one cylinder car and in 1908 gained great fame when their Thomas Flyer (the only American entry) won the 24,000 mile New York to Paris race. Despite high quality and innovative ideas like the hill holder shown below, sales plummeted as the Model T took over the market.
 

80th anniversary! B-25 hits Empire State Building, July 28, 1945

 On Saturday, July 28, 1945, a B-25 Mitchell bomber, piloted in thick fog by Lieutenant Colonel William Franklin Smith, Jr., crashed into the north side of the Empire State Building, between the 79th and 80th floors.

One engine shot through the side opposite the impact and flew as far as the next block where it landed on the roof of a nearby building, starting a fire that destroyed a penthouse. The other engine and part of the landing gear plummeted down an elevator shaft. The resulting fire was extinguished in 40 minutes. 14 people were killed in the accident.

Despite the damage and loss of life, the building was open for business on many floors on the following Monday. A year later, another aircraft narrowly missed striking the building.

One elevator fell from the seventy-fifth floor with a woman Betty Lou Oliver aboard—an elevator operator. (The operator of the other one had stepped out for a cigarette.) By the time the car survived a plunge of 75 stories and crashed into the buffer in the pit (a hydraulic truncheon designed to be a cushion of last resort), a thousand feet of cable had piled up beneath it, serving as a kind of spring. A pillow of air pressure, as the speeding car compressed the air in the shaft, may have helped ease the impact as well. Still, the landing was not soft. The car’s walls buckled, and steel debris tore up through the floor. It was the woman’s good fortune to be cowering in a corner when the car hit. She was severely injured but alive. That still stands as the Guinness World Record for the longest survived elevator fall recorded.

Harley Davidson BA (Peashooter)

 When the AMA proposed a new 21 cu. in. Lightweight racing class in 1925, Harley Davidson didn't even have a motorcycle to enter, but they got busy designing two 350cc  ( 21 cu in) singles, the A  sidevalve and the AA OHV single (called the BA if fitted with electric lighting). That would be the machine above.

  The class was jokingly referred to as the peashooter class, compared to the big Vtwin racers. The AA engine was immediately competitive against the Indian and Excelsior racers and in 1926 won 6 of 14 races. The arrival of the HD Peashooter coincided with the growing popularity of dirt track racing in New Zealand and Australia and when those riders appeared in England it was with short wheelbase racers powered by the HD engine. Those machines were the basis of the first speedway races in England.

 Harley discontinued the model in 1930, some said it was too competitive against their new 45 inch side valve750 V twin.