Mini gloat and a couple of questions

[Walt Nicholson]

I went to a heavy equipment auction last week to look at a pallet jack for work. About halfway through they held up a wooden box and said "don't know how these got in here, but here is a bunch of old drills and stuff. Somebody give me $2.00 to start." I couldn't see all the contents but could see some "eggbeaters" so started bidding. I won the box for $40 and hauled it home. Felt like I just won the lottery. 8 braces (4 Stanley, 1 Craftsman, 1 Durex, 1 Fulton and 1 Frey) and 6 drills, (3 MF, 1 Stanley, 1 Mowhawk Shelburne, and a Yankee 1530). I'll probably sell off most of the braces and keep the drills for a "mini collection". The question I have is I have heard a lot about "patina" and leaving the older stuff original or "as found" or you will ruin the value. I know none of these are very valuable but might be someday for the grandkids. Will I destroy any future value if I take them apart, clean, strip, repaint, stain, etc.? The bottom left closeup shows one that I cleaned with some WD40 and a wire brush compared to one untouched and also what two of the handles look like. Any thoughts?

[David DeCristoforo]

It looks like one of those braces is the very rare "belly drill" It's the one in the middle and you can tell because it looks like it was made backwards. You can see this very clearly when you look at your picture in which this rare brace is pictured alongside several "normal" braces.

BTW, it's against my philosophy to "restore" old tools unless there are functional issues and I want to use the tool. The rule of thumb with antiques is to do as little as possible to them and to maintain as much that is "original" as you can.

[Walt Nicholson]

You're right about that rare "Belly" drill. It is completely backwards from the others. I think it came from the original company that also created "belly laughs". Thanks for pointing that out. I can see your point on keeping things original but what about surface rust? Do you feel you should leave that alone as well?

[David DeCristoforo]

I think it really depends. If you can clean off rust by lightly oiling and maybe a mild steel wool rub, it's probably not going to hurt anything. Also, this really only applies to "collectible" pieces where there might be some intrinsic value lost by stripping off a patina or the last little bits of paint or original finish. There are certainly a lot of guys on this forum who regularly refinish old tools to original condition without worrying about decreasing the value. I don't really think you would harm these by cleaning them up. I just don't do this with my own old tools because I like them to look old. If they need repair or some restoration to make them work properly, that's another thing. If I want to use the tool, I'll go ahead and fix what needs to be fixed. Otherwise I think the closer to original the better.

[Jim Koepke]

Most of the time my tools are left as is. Mostly because I don't want to take the time to spiff them up. I will remove rust and clean them up. I have even repainted plane bodies. It is amazing how much better a clean freshly painted plane feels to use.

If you wish to take the time to fix up an old tool, then that is your prerogative. If the tool is a valuable collector item, it would be advisable to sell it to a collector and buy a lesser but useable one for one self.

My Miller Falls eggbeater drills had loose handles. So, the retaining pin was driven out and the handle unthreaded from the stud. One should take any drills out of the handle. They will likely fall out the bottom if you should forget.

I trimmed some leather shims off an old scrap of leather belt with a block plane and wrapped it around the base as the handle was reinstalled. The pin was driven home and the leather trimmed. Viola! A nice tight handle on an old beat up eggbeater drill.

Let some collector have fits about this 30 or 40 years from now, won't bother me one bit.

Now, if one came my way in pristine condition, I would likely leave it alone and see if there was a collector who would pay enough for it so I could buy a good user and a bunch of other goodies.

jim

[Jim Koepke]

BTW, that belly brace looks like it might be a bigger sweep than 10". If this is the case, you may want to keep it for your own use.

jim

[Johnny Kleso]

I think if your do a half fast job of refinishing a tool, you do more harm them good..

You have to go all the way and whole hearted...

Wiktor Kuc's site has a tutorial you have to load the PDF to see the whole thing that may help you

http://www.wkfinetools.com/z_tDownL/restoration/eggBitter/eggBitter.asp

[Gary Herrmann]

With braces and drills, I do take them apart and get the caked on grease and grit that has accumulated over the years in the chuck, under gears etc. You can use mineral spirits to get this stuff off, but it will probably affect the paint, so you may want to use something more benign.

[David Keller NC]

Walt - Millers Falls and Stanley braces and drills were made by the hundreds of thousands around the turn of the 20th century. Pristine ones in the original boxes (especially those two brands) are highly collectible and fetch strong prices at tool auctions, but at the present time no one really wants the well-used ones.

THe hard thing to know is what the future value will be. If you'd told someone that was into antique tools 25 years ago that some people would pay nearly $3000 for a pristine turn-of-the-century Stanley #1, they'd have called you an idiot. #1s are not rare - Stanley made huge numbers of them, but certain individuals consider them "cute" and bid them into the stratosphere for a good one.

So - If they're for your grandkids, I would conserve them, but not restore them. The distinction for old tools is generally preventing any additional corrosion by lubrication, perhaps removing accumulated hardened grease from ring gears and chucks, and providing them with a stable storage environment (the back of the closet, not the attic, and definitely not a basement!).

Scrubbing any of the surface with mild abrasives and aggressive solvents gets you more into the "restoration" side of things, and generally removes the collector's value. However, for highly usable tools like you have, restoration increases the user value, so for things that are not rare doing this may actually increase their value.

[Lucas Bittick]

There is a difference between rare and old (some things are one or the other, and some things are both). Just because something is old does not necessarily make it valuable. If some of those tools truly are rare, and if you want to resell some of the tools to antique aficionados, then you are better off not doing anything to them.

I look at it this way: you know the utility value of the tools right now, that is, whether they are useful and interesting to you. You don't know the value of the tools to other people in the future (unless you have genuinely established rarities). We assume they will be worth something, but when you factor in inflation, value of other investments, market demand for old tools... no one knows. For all the trouble involved with protecting and caring for an object in order for it to age on a shelf for an unknown future value, you are better of using it if you have the desire. Then, there is a definite return on investment.

[Johnny Kleso]

I know that well restored tools bring much more than the old tired version of the same tool..

When I started refinishing hand planes 5 or 7 years ago everyone said I was ruining them.. Now its pretty common to see tutorials on cleaning them up and not much negtive stuff about doing this to a bench plane..

Wiktor has another website where he sells these eggbeats and fetches around $100 for these $20-$30 eggbester..

As I said you much refinish them completely and just a 5 min cleaning job will make it look worse IMHO that doing nothing at all, most times..

[David Martino]

By the way, something of great importance to finding and restoring old tools which it seems everyone else has overlooked is... YOU SUCK!

Seriously - nice batch of drills and braces, for the price of one good one. Hard to tell from the pix but they look to be in pretty good shape too. Congrats on a good haul.

[Matt McCormick]

It looks like one of those braces is the very rare "belly drill" It's the one in the middle and you can tell because it looks like it was made backwards.

I looked this up on Giggle and it seems these were used at the navel academy. ;)

[David Keller NC]

"I know that well restored tools bring much more than the old tired version of the same tool.."

Johhny - one comment about this as regards to the collector market. You're absolutely right that a restored, well tuned tool intended as a user is worth a good bit more than one that's tired, broken, rusty or grimy.

However - Make sure you don't have a tool that's rare and collectible before you do this. Collectors want superb original condition - collector's tools that have been restored generally bring considerably less than the tool would've brought before the restoration, grimy though it might have been. A really good example of this are Davis Levels/Inclinometers - many of them were stripped and painted black in a misguided but well-intentioned attempt to "repair" the original japaning. These levels generally bring next to nothing at the big antique auctions - grimy but original examples of the same model bring much more.

I've seen other examples of rare wooden planes where someone's actually scrubbed the plane with steel wool and/or sandpaper to remove the grime and dark color the wood's acquired over the last 200 years. One of the more tragic examples of this was a Nicholson plane that came up for auction 5 years or so ago. It still brought about $500 because it was, after all, an example of the work of America's first documented plane maker. If the consignor hadn't done this, it would've brought $4000 or more, easily.

Even Bailey planes can fall victim to this type of restoration - a #4 type 11 is at no risk of being de-valued by restoration and use, there are thousands upon thousands out there. A type 1, however, is worth many hundreds of dollars in original condition.