A 12 Volt Car Battery

Hmmm.

I wonder what the odds are of this thing being fit for service -- slim to nil, probably. A voltmeter check showed me 5V open circuit voltage, so at least the thing is not completely open internally. 'Only thing to do is put my charger on it and see what transpires. I'll bring the battery over to the back of the house where there's an outdoor outlet, and try charging it outside. If it means to do anything obnoxious, it can do it outside, and not in my workshop.

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It's not looking good. I've had the charger on it for about an hour now. With the charger connected and powered on, the battery's terminal voltage reads normally -- about 13.2V. When I disconnect the charger, the terminal voltage falls off to just below 10V. That suggests a shorted cell that can't accept a charge. I'll leave the charger on it for the rest of the day and see if there's any change for the better, but it's probably futile.

So, it's probably off to the hazardous waste depot with it.

That's too bad, because a good 12V lead-acid battery can be a useful thing to have for experimenting with devices that draw a lot of current; not that I really have any such thing in mind at the moment

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Sure enough, this battery is past it. It'll have to go for a ride to the hazardous waste depot.

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A Corkscrew

Well, what have we here in among the garage gear?

A very nice Italian-made corkscrew. No garage should be without one. After all, one never knows when a particularly fine outcome of  some work on a vehicle will call for uncorking a celebratory bottle of wine.

This corkscrew is well made. The handle is securely pinned to the shank from one side, so the handle is never going to torque free of the shank.

The handle ends reveal evidence of the chucking method that was used to turn the wood to shape, like so.

Both handle ends are the same. It's a brilliant chucking method -- absolutely secure, with nothing to scar the end-edges of the handle. And the effect on the handle's ends' appearance is not unattractive.

I think this item deserves a place to hang on a toolboard, where it will be right at hand whenever need for it arises.

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A Stanley 'Sweetheart' 6" Try Square

Now here we have an old-timer.

It's a beautifully constructed tool, though a rudimentary squareness check shows it to be a tiny bit off. (God only knows what rough usage or accidents may have befallen it over the years.)

The blade very dimly reveals the Stanley 'Sweetheart' logo, like so.



I think that the 'S.W.' stands for 'Stanley Works', a corporate name from way back in Stanley's history.

What I ought to do here is get on with a little project that's long been on my mind -- devising a reliable, accurate squareness test apparatus from easily obtained materials. Then, I'd like to try truing this square; I'd be delighted to have it out on a toolboard and in actual use.

Meanwhile, I'll stash this square in my spare tools drawer.

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A Small Claw Hammer

It's fairly well made, though the hammer face is dead flat; it has no crown to it at all.

It weighs eight ounces -- for a boy's tool kit, possibly.

This might even be a relic from my boyhood. I seem to recall a boyhood episode when I went around the house tapping on things that looked tap-worthy to me. One of the things I tapped on was a fastening clip at the edge of a bedroom dresser's mirror. The mirror forever after sported a two-inch diagonal crack in its glass. That was probably the end of my unsupervised hammer wielding for quite a spell.

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An 8" x 12" Framing Square

This square is inch on one side.

And metric on the other.

That sort of inch/metric combination has always struck me as a poor one.

Whichever system you're working in, if you need to flip the tool over for the sake of convenience at any point, you lose the scales you've been using.

That aside, it's not a bad little framing square. It was made in Korea (South Korea, presumably).

The red label on the inch side says,

"8 x 12 SQUARE
Parkerized black steel with etched white markings. Scales in 1/16ths and 1/32nds. Distributed only through the wholesaler by Smith-Wolff Co., Inc.. Mt. Vernon, N.Y. 10553. Unconditionally Guaranteed"

There's also a partially obliterated catalogue number that may be "SW583", and a logo that may read "top-spec".

From what can get from the internet, it appears that the Smith-Wolff firm is no longer with us.

I still have space on the rack where I keep framing squares, so I'll stash this item there with the others.

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A General No. 1201 12" Steel Rule

General still listed essentially the same tool in their January 2014 catalogue, although it's catalogue number was 1201ME. There are slight differences in the scales between the 1201 and the 1201ME.

I already have all the 12" rules I need; this one can hang on the nail where I keep some other rules.

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Bates National Rule BNR-15 15" Steel Rule

It's a difficult subject to photograph well, but there it is.

It's quite a good steel rule, with a cork backing. I really don't care for cork backings on rules -- I can get by just fine without the alleged 'non-slip' feature of them, and the way that the backing raises the rule up off a surface is inconducive to accuracy because of the parallax effect that's introduced.

From what I can see on the internet, the Bates Manufacturing Company of Hackettstown, New Jersey has disappeared into the mists of time.

The rule has a hole in it at one end for hanging, so I'll hang on the nail where I have a few other rules hanging.

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