Al Williams again

With the R3C-1 Curtis racer in which he won the 1923 Pulitzer Trophy Race. I read somewhere that in his military career he specialized in speed record attempts and inverted flying. Nice work if you can get it.

Lead hammer: Lawrence H. Cook Inc.

The company was started in 1937 in Providence, R.I.  Making lead hammers is quite an art, and apparently an alloy of lead and antimony gives the best results.  According to the website of the Cook Hammer Company, they're now out of Warwick, R.I., but as none of the hot links on their site works, I'm thinking they may not have survived.  If so, another fine old American tool company down the drain.

See Mister G's earlier post on this company.  His hammer's had a harder life than mine, but he always was a soft touch!

Lysander and Crew

Hugh Verity.  We Landed By Moonlight.  Secret RAF Landings in France 1940-1944.  Ian Allan Ltd., 1978, 1979.

For sale, used glider

Horsa Glider, landed successfully. As is, where is, located in Normandy, June 1944. 
Just one of hundreds used, abandoned and left for the locals to pick over after the D Day assault.

Model Railroading: America's Fascinating New Hobby

Augie's Diner

A 25 year old picture of a nice classic diner located near Rome in upstate New York State. I expect Augie has moved on to that great diner in the sky but hopefully the building is still there. I may have to take a trip to go look for it!

Kids and planes

The World Book Encyclopedia.  Chicago:  Field Enterprises Educational Corporation, 1971.

We used to make things in this country. #117: Automotive Hardware Limited, Toronto, Ontario

Automotive Hardware Limited (AHL) of Toronto was a large Canadian manufacturer of fasteners.  

It has a connection with Russell, Burdsall and Ward, one of the largest U.S. fastener manufacturers out of Cleveland, Ohio.  This latter company had begun in 1845 as wood screw manufacturer in Port Chester, New York. The founders were Ellwood Bursall, a stove foundry clerk, and William E. Ward, a mechanic for a novelty company.  Ward subsequently invented the first cold header and automatic feeder for a bolt machine.  The company rented space in a button factory operated by Russell, Mackay and Beach, and they later bought out McKay and Russell, forming, Russell, Burdsall and Ward in 1851.)  In 1981, Lamson & Sessions, another very large American fastener manufacturer also out of Cleveland, terminated its fastener manufacturing operations due to continued operating losses.  Russell, Burdsall & Ward then purchased most of Lamson's manufacturing equipment, and simultaneously sold controlling interest (50.1 percent) in their own company to Automotive Hardware Ltd.  The following year, Automotive Hardware Limited had a very bad year, posting a loss of $5.9 million during a 9-month period, which included losses from Russell, Burdsall & Ward.  In response, AHL reorganized, amalgamating with three of its wholly- owned subsidiaries   (Automotive Hardware, Automatic Screw Machine Products and Federal Bolt & Nut) to became a single unit - Federal Bolt & Nut. The new company operated with three units:  Docap, Federal Bolt and Nut, and Arrowhead Metals Limited.  (The last company was at the time Canada's leading manufacturer of copper and copper alloys. It had started as J.F. Brown's Copper and Brass Rolling Mills in Toronto in 1919, but was acquired by the American Anaconda company in 1922.  According to the New Toronto Historical Society, they were remarkably good corporate citizens, but as Arrowhead Metals they closed their doors in 1989, leaving as their immediate legacy a controversial brownfield site.)

AHL also sold back its controlling interest in Russell, Burdsall & Ward to that company for the same amount it had paid originally.  In 1983, the Cleveland company changed its name to RB&W, and through the late 80's continued to have a nut manufacturing plant in Toronto.  In 1985, Montreal-based Ivaco, a steel producer, bought controlling interest in AHL from the executors of the estate of Irwin Goldhart (an inductee into the National Industrial Fasteners Expo 'Hall of Fame'!).  Ivaco is now owned by Heico Holdings Inc.  AHL has vanished.  In light of this, their logo seems especially appropos:  a courtly gentleman tipping his hat as he vanishes into history.

The Greatest Sailing Ship ever built

http://www.caphorniers.cl/preussen/ships_valpo.htm

 The five-masted full-rigged ship Preussen was the only ship of her type ever built. She was a steel ship 430 feet long with a beam of nearly 54 feet, displacing over eleven thousand tons and carrying 8000 tons of cargo. She was propelled entirely by her 60,000 square feet of canvas and the only power aboard her was for working her cargoes and raising her heavy anchor when she was getting underway. She set thirty square sails, six on each mast and from 15 to 18 fore and afters. Her mainyard was over a hundred feet long. Her best speed was a shade over 17 knots- no more. Tank experiments made with a model of her, years after the ship herself was lost, showed that, to shift her 8000 tons of cargo through the sea at a speed of 17 knots, her sails had to develop and maintain more than six thousand horsepower. The whole great fabric of her tremendous driving power was controlled by a total crew of forty seven officers and men. Excepting perhaps the steward, cabin boy and two cooks, every one of these was a sailor in the true sense of the word. Her  master was a veteran of the Laeisz Flying "P" Line, a man trained in the Potosi under the genius Hilgendorf.
 The Preussen was without a doubt the greatest sailing ship the world has ever seen. Her career was brief, for a blundering steamer,  was unable to judge speeds or to comply with the International Rule of the Road, knocked her down at the Channel mouth when she was outward-bound. She was built in 1902, she sailed only a short eight years. But in that time she moved large cargoes faster through the water, over long distances than they had ever been shifted under sail before.

Alan Villiers, The Way of a Ship; Charles Scribner and Sons, 1953

Model Planes I Never Built; A Spitfire by Eagle Solids of B'klyn NY