The Whole Garage Catalogue: April 2014

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

A Rabone No. 1176 Folding Carpenter's Rule

The firm of John Rabone & Sons is no longer with us. There's a bit of information on it here.

This rule is not in great condition -- it's a bit warped, and doesn't fully close properly.

I'll stash this in my spare tools drawer. I'm unlikely to ever use it.

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A 3 TPI, 5" Long Jigsaw Blade

I'm not even going to try this out. This is way more blade than a jigsaw was ever meant to power.

To the scrap metal bin with it.

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A Knife Blade For A Jigsaw

Something tells me that this was not one of the world's great innovations.

I doubt that it's very useful. I'll hang it up with my jigsaw blades. Perhaps a good application will come to mind some day.

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A Strombecker Razor Saw

The saw is pretty much a ruin.

Strombecker was a huge player in the slot car business way back in the '60s. They appear to be no longer with us. There's a brief history of the firm here.

I may as well toss this in my scrap metal bin -- its useful days are behind it.

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A Bicycle Inner Tube Repair Kit

Let's see what's inside.

The usual stuff, along with three automotive tubeless tire plugs. Hmmm.

I'll sort this out, and stash it with my tire repair things -- automotive with automotive; bicycle with bicycle.

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Tuesday, April 29, 2014

A Virgin Package Of Thirty Clear Push Pins

It's never been opened.

I guess I'll open it, and dump the pins into my little drawer of spare push pins. This will keep me in push pins for a long time.

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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!