Brass Eggbeater?

[Steve Branam]

I was at a class with Roy Underhill at Lie-Nielsen this weekend (you can read about it at http://www.closegrain.com/2012/08/taking-roy-underhills-joinery-class.html), and one of the students had this gorgeous toolbox containing among other things a solid brass eggbeater drill, kind of like a large Millers Falls No. 2. You can just see it at the front of the box in the photo below.

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It did have a few iron parts, but the body frame, the crank arm, the main drive gear, and the smaller gears were brass. It was beautiful (I should have gotten a picture).

No one else had seen a brass one of these before; this was the only one the owner had ever seen. Anybody know anything about them? I was thinking it might have been intended for use by a shipboard carpenter, since a lot of nautical fittings are brass to avoid salt corrosion.

[george wilson]

Here's one I made. I don't know if the old ones were all one-off's like this one or not. Very nice box and tools!!

Actually,mine is bronze. More pictures of it in the FAQ section.

What inspired me to make this one and a few other different models(which I don't have decent pictures of,I still have this drill),was a brass one I saw for sale in "The Mechanick's Workbench"(a seller of high class antique tools) back in the late 70's. I wonder if this drill in your picture is that same drill? I'm pretty sure such drills were made by the workman himself.