A Flailing Paint/Rust Stripper

It's a wicked, scary looking thing -- I can hardly wait to try it out on something.

It can be dismantled.

There's a 3/4" A/F, left-hand-threaded nut that holds it together. (Shank diameter is 1/4".)

The maker, Intl. Hardware, Inc. of Bridgewater, N.J., appears to be no longer with us, which is a shame.

I'll stash this in the drawer where I keep small wire wheels and the like.

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A Kohler Rope-Start Pulley

There was a part number on the box, but it's been obliterated.

It's a very nice pulley. It's the sort of thing that really only has one very specific use -- one is unlikely to ever find some other purpose to adapt it to, but, one never knows. To paraphrase Winnie the Pooh, "You never can tell with rope-start pulleys."

I'll stash this on a shelf where I have an old Clinton engine.

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A Hank Of Galvanized Steel Wire

This is useful stuff. That hank is approximately 125' of wire.

The pictured wire is 0.045" diameter. I find it helpful to tag all my hanks of steel wire with their decimal fractional inch diameter figure, like so.

I can't be bothered with gauge numbers -- I find them quite unhelpful. Machinery's Handbook, Twenty-First Edition, concurs with me on that. Here's what Machinery's Handbook has to say about  it (from p. 463):

I make an exception for electrical wire. In North America, the gauge for electrical wire is always and only American Wire Gauge (AWG). That gauge I'm familiar and conversant with, so I do use it. (Also, I have an excellent AWG table in the back of an Alpha Wire Company catalogue that clearly and fully documents the gauge.) But for other types of wire, and for sheet metal, there are just too many different gauge systems, and one is never explicitly told which system is being referred to when a gauge number is 'specified'. Hence, I agree completely with the above paragraph from Machinery's Handbook.

Anyway, I need to go hammer a nail into a joist, to improve the workshop's wire-hank-hanging-capacity a little.

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A Couple Of Arrow H & H Toggle Switches

These are hefty switches. They're rated at 16A for 125V operation. I'm glad these turned up because I have an immediate use for one of them, and these things are not cheap to buy new.

Arrow H & H (Arrow-Hart & Hegeman Electric Company) appears to no longer be with us. (I discovered the full name of the firm in this law case account.) I have no interest at all in matters of business and commerce, so I won't bother looking any further into what became of Arrow H & H.

Anyway, one of the two switches is spoken for; the extra switch can go in the drawer where I keep toggle switches.

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A Ball Caster

It looks to me like a 1" diameter ball. The maker, "REX-MATHEWS", appears to no longer be with us.

There's only the one, which renders this thing a bit useless.

Ball casters are something I have no experience with. I'm impressed by the smoothness of the ball's rolling action. I must keep this type of caster in mind for when I next need to put casters on something. Depending on the application, these could be a good way to go.

Meanwhile, I'll stash this in the box where I keep spare casters.

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While feeling the action of the ball in the caster, who should come to mind but Captain Queeg, the fictional American warship's captain in "The Caine Mutiny". [Go to 1:30 in the movie clip.] Captain Queeg would have been a ball caster aficionado for certain.

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A 6" Bench Grinder

This brings back memories. This machine was my boyhood introduction to the grinder and the wire wheel and what they could do.

It's a fine brute of a thing; the bearings still feel ok; it wants a new grinding wheel -- the wheel that's on it is very worn down in diameter.

This is going directly to the workshop -- I have plans for this.

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An Electrical Power Frequency Meter

It's from my dad's years as a generator mechanic. Permit me to explain the instrument briefly.

Gasoline or diesel engine powered electrical generators all run at a fixed, governed engine speed in order to produce a fixed frequency of electrical power output, just as the utilities do. In North America, that frequency is 60 Hertz (Hz -- cycles per second or cps).

One could set governed engine speed by using a tachometer, but a more direct, fool-proof method is to measure actual generator output frequency; that's what the pictured instrument does. Here's a view of it in operation.

Note the oscillating vanes. The instrument is reading just shy of 60 Hz.

I'm disinclined to believe that Toronto Hydro's power would be off at all from exactly 60 Hz, so I'll open up the instrument and see if there's a calibration adjustment.

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Nope. The meter appears to be a sealed unit, with no provision for adjustment.

Anyway, that's ok. The meter's accuracy is plenty good enough to be useable, and it wouldn't be hard to remember what Toronto Hydro's 60 Hz indication looks like.

This instrument can go in a bin along with some other electrical test gear.

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