The Whole Garage Catalogue: August 2016

Sunday, August 7, 2016

A Two-Prong To Three-Prong Adapter Cord

This short (under four feet) extension cord has a two-prong plug, and a three-prong receptacle. Why would anyone make such a thing?

The answer to that question lies in an obsolete form of house wiring known as 'knob-and-tube'. My dad's house had that type of wiring, and the outlets that accompany knob-and-tube wiring are two-prong outlets, not three-prong as with modern wiring.

So, to plug in a three-prong cord, one would need an adapter such as the one pictured here.

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Monday, August 1, 2016

Gillette Safety Razors

Well, what have we here?

A couple of ancient Gillette safety razor kits, it turns out.

The one on the right is missing its blade box, and its lid is plain, except for the name "Gillette" embossed on it (now very faded).

The one on the left is complete and, as best as I can make out (it's very faded), says this on its lid:

"AVEC NOS COMPLIMENTS ALLUMETTES LAURIER"

Which translates to:

"WITH OUR COMPLIMENTS

MATCHES LAURIER"

The 'ALLUMETTES/MATCHES' bit makes no sense to me.^[1] Possibly I'm misreading it -- it's very faded.

Anyway, here's the razor out of its box and assembled.

And here's a view of it completely dismantled.

That was high-tech shaving gear back in the day. (The things were made in Canada, by the way.)

There's a Wikipedia article on safety razors here.

I guess I'll stash these on the shelf where I keep my spare disposable blades.

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Note:

[1] The "AVEC NOS COMPLIMENTS" bit seems to suggest that the kit was a promotional freebie, perhaps for guests at a high-end hotel in Quebec. Maybe "ALLUMETTES" has some obscure other usage, and doesn't only mean 'matches'. I just don't know.

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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!