The Whole Garage Catalogue: November 2019

Friday, November 15, 2019

An Atrocious Pair Of Eyelet Pliers

There are cheap tools that are remarkably good value for the money, and then there are cheap tools that ought not to exist. Here's an example of the latter.

It's a pair of eyelet pliers, for crimping 11/64" inside diameter eyelets.^[1] Overall length of the pliers is about 5 3/4". Moment length is about 4 3/8". That moment length is inadequate to yield sufficient leverage to successfully crimp an eyelet. Here's a view of an eyelet 'crimped' by the pliers.

Barely crimped at all. Here's a view of an eyelet crimped by a proper pair of eyelet pliers.

One wonders why the manufacturer of the pliers even bothered to make them.

I've been racking my brain to try to come up with a way to modify or re-purpose these pliers to some useful end, and I've come up empty. I think they're about to go in the garbage.

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Note:

[1] Eyelet sizing is arcane. According to this chart, what I have here are #000 1/2 eyelets. (Between #000 and #00.)

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Wednesday, November 13, 2019

A Florist's Shears Without A Closure Ring

I'm not certain that these are florist's shears, but that's what they look like to me.

They have a torsion spring tucked away in the pivot that makes them self-opening. What's missing is a closure ring at the end of the handles to close them up for storage. Let's see if I can fabricate a reasonable facsimile of a closure ring.

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And here's the beginnings of a ring fashioned from 1/16" diameter steel rod.

Here's the tool with its ring installed and clamped up in a 'third hand' for soldering.

And here's the ring closed up with 60/40 tin/lead solder.

I used regular plumber's paste soldering flux to solder that.

Here's the tool closed up with its new ring.

And here's a close-up view of the closure ring doing its job.

It's not perfect , but it'll do what I need it to.

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Introduction

This blog is in honour of my deceased father, Nick Gaspick.

It sprang from what had started out as merely a post on my workshop blog, Rouge River Workshop. Here's my introduction to that post:

"My son has been clearing out my deceased father's garage, so he'll have a place to restore an old car, and he's been finding all manner of stuff. I've begun one post about an old woodworking vise that I mean to restore. This weekend, my son brought me four toolboxes full of items. As a small honour to my father, I'll 'catalogue' them in this post, in no particular order, little-by-little as I go through the boxes."

The nature of the post was for it to grow ever longer, and that can be dangerous. Blogger has some quirks that I've experienced in the past, and I was getting tired of always backing up the entire post so I wouldn't lose it should Blogger vapourize an editing session. I finally decided to make a full-blown blog with an index out of the post. Here it is.

I'll leave the original post as it is, where it is, but I'll bring over all the items in it so far as individual, indexed posts here as well. Needless to say, new material will only appear here.

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A Little About My Father:

My father emigrated to Canada with his family from Croatia at about the age of seven. His family took on a homestead up Sudbury, Ontario way, and made a living there through the great depression.

My father loved school, and yearned to continue his schooling past grade eight, but that was not on. He had to leave school to make a living -- trapping, mining, whatever. Eventually, he and his made their way to Toronto -- the big smoke in Canada.

My father was built like a brick shit-house; he was a sturdy guy, unlike scrawny me. My father was a guy who could clear an acre of Canadian bush before breakfast, have it tilled and planted before lunchtime, with the plants sprouting before dinnertime.

Jesus H. Christ!-- a guy like my father ought to have lived forever!