Nash Metropolitan

I guess in the ranks of cars designed by pubic polls, this one was more successful than the Edsel...

 

Kingsbury toys

 More here and here.

Flying Swallow wrench

Chinese tools have the best names...

 

Boxcar Books, Thorndike, Maine

I'm not sure why a couple of 80ish year old Swedish boxcars (goods vans?) ended up on this side of the Atlantic but now located in the middle of Maine they're enjoying a productive life as a quirky book store. Lots of fun.  Great place to visit. 

 I did come home with more books, but I'd maybe have a more comprehensive railway and train section. Just because.

 

Monday Mystery, Nail puller?

 At first glance this appeared to be a form of nail remover, locate the sharpish end in front of a nail head, hit the other end with a hammer and pry the nail out. But; the included angle of long pointy end seems too blunt to get underneath the head of a nail without severely damaging the surrounding wood, the curved short end is not shaped to be driven at all. 

Thoughts or guesses, anyone?

Suzuki XN85

This was Suzuki's entry into the short-lived turbo era. Everyone but Kawasaki missed the point, we don't want small turbocharged bikes that could run with the big bikes, we wanted big turbo'ed bikes that were insane!

The owner of this one had a theory that Suzuki put out the advanced fuel injected turbo-ed bike as a test program for the small car engines that came in the nineties. Only about 1100 were made, apparently 350 came to the US, no idea how many came to Canada, but Suzuki seemed to put a minimum number of 200 for any model. Who knows?

 Our local dealer had the demo model in for a dealer show. Someone had to ask, "Does it run?" Well, it did and we got a chance to try it out.  It needed some experience to use it effectively, the turbo took a long time to spool up.  I want one.

 

Sidecar Sunday

 Let's go racing!

 

Squirrel Nut Cracker

Made by the Alex Woldert Co, this is a wonderfully complicated ratchetting device to crack nuts, clamp it to the edge of a table and get to it!

 Because the company felt it had to cover the entire device with text, we know the company apparently had two locations, Tyler and Chicago and that the device had been patented.

Patent  US1567884A

 

Oldsmobile, 1903

 

One of my vices is vises, Royal 414

Here's a fairly ordinary imported 3 inch vice with outside screw, probably dating to the sixties. I suspect it was pretty inexpensive in its day... Unfortunately it's missing its swivel base plate.