Right you are Neil, The BEST for making gaskets that actually fit. I'd forgotten about that it's been so long since I twisted a wrench on a vehicle. 

Frosty The Lucky.

I left the house yesterday to go to a friends house to help him out on a project and right around the corner on the roadside was this old AND HEAVY wood lathe.  I couldn't leave it behind and got it into the truck with only a minor amount of back pain.  You can see the 1hp motor that came with it but not the homemade jack shaft.  The headstock spindle spins freely as does the live center in the tail stock.  I have been collecting old wood chisels over the years that have no handles and with sockets damaged from folks hammering on them.  I have straightened out some of these by reforging the sockets and now I can make new handles for them once I find a place for it in the shop and put it back together.

Nice score Gazz, certainly better than buying chisel handles for sure. Think the wife will buy that?

Frosty The Lucky.

Roadkill from the entrance ramp to the freeway: a very nice four-way speed wrench, with sockets for 1/2-, 9/16-, 5/8- and 3/4-inch bolts.

Later spotted a hammer and a broken motorcycle chain, but those were in places with too much traffic to stop safely.

JHCC, how do you just see those things on the highway? I would have never noticed that wrench much less a hammer and motorcycle chain. 

he drives with a magnetic bumper in front.

There's an idea....

(Might cause problems with following distance, though.)

On 9/8/2025 at 12:30 PM, JHCC said:

a very nice four-way speed wrench

Fix the cigarette lighter.

<sigh> I'm going nuts trying to think of a snappy comment for your find John, it's a truly wrenching experience.

I suppose if you'd found a second one you could apply to the cheer squad. 

See what I mean? There's no snapon that one.

Frosty The Lucky.

Okay, here’s the Quad-State haul.

First, tools: a handful of eye punches, a forming stake, a bending wrench, a top fuller, a pair of 1/2” Tom Tongs, an interesting little hardy tool, a grinder belt cleaning stick, a multi-divot hardie block for setting rivets, a drill press in desperate need of restoration, and a jar of honey.

Second, a couple of shirts, a bag, some flux, a new block brush, a pair of rivet setting tools, a pin vise, some finishing supplies, a few files, and two sizes of circular hammer wedges.

Books and a couple of tomahawk handles:

A nice Colombian vise missing its leg and mounted on a hefty table. I’m going to put this on a stand to make it even with the top of my anvil.

And finally, an armorer’s swage block from Holland Anvil. They were packing up and gave me a killer deal!

(It helped that I’d just gotten a decent chunk of cash from someone who asked for my “rock-bottom, I-really-don’t-want-to-take-it-home price” for the 35 or so remaining pieces of the W-1 drill rod I was selling.)

 

 

 

NICE haul John! The forming stake in the first pic is a "snarling" iron. You put one end in a vise with the iron horizontal the end arc up. You work it by slipping long hollow work, say a vase over the stake and hammer it from inside towards the outside by striking the shaft between vise and work. The iron is driven down but rebounds, up into the work making a snarling sound as it vibrates to a stop. 

Visualize making a long neck jug from copper. Form the tube and bottom, then using a snarling iron you can start sinking the center from the inside, raising the outside into a shape say like a thrown pottery jug or pitcher. 

Make sense?

Snarling irons are a good thing to make from coil spring. Neat tools, easy to make, very versatile and fun to use.

Frosty The Lucky.

It's not a snarling iron; it's much too thick and rigid. I can't remember if it has a specific name, but it's clearly a forming stake of some variety, designed to be clamped in a vise. I'll see if I can look up what it's called once I'm back home with my library.

Here’s a better photo:

Boy did I get the proportions wrong! Definitely not a snarling iron.

Frosty The Lucky.

17 hours ago, JHCC said:

a drill press in desperate need of restoration,

That vise will turn out just fine after soaking in Evapo-Rust or Electrolysis solution.

I can’t control the wind. All I can do is adjust my sails. ~Semper Paratus~

I’m a little low on homemade Evaporust, so I’m soaking one end at a time. 

13 hours ago, JHCC said:

clearly a forming stake of some variety

In a Facebook group discussion (now deleted, for some reason), Tony Swatton says that he thinks it’s a Japanese-style raising stake. He also notes that he would have bought it himself, but when he saw it, it had no price on it and the seller wasn’t there to ask. So, another thing that made this Quad-State special is that I beat out Tony Swatton on a purchase!

On 9/28/2025 at 8:25 PM, JHCC said:

So, another thing that made this Quad-State special is that I beat out Tony Swatton on a purchase!

We really need a like button.

I can’t control the wind. All I can do is adjust my sails. ~Semper Paratus~

MOD NOTE: Discussion of JHCC's cracked drill press vise has been moved to its own thread at 

 

A few finds from the ReStore:

And a mail call from Blue Moon Press:

(They were out of stock of this title at Quad-State, so I paid them cash and they mailed me the book without charging shipping.)

Got a big bucket of Morse-taper-shanked drill bits, which also included a bunch of taps, reamers, and other random goodies. Not bad for $15.

I’m pretty sure the MT-3 bits (in the middle row) are too big for my drill press, so I’ll probably resell them or get an MT-3 > MT-2 adapter. 

Facebook marketplace strikes again. Both of these blowers/forges have been outside in a hoarders nest for probably a decade or more. I grabbed both for a steal- all parts there on both!

 

 

 

Do the blowers turn, if so how? How well does the lever mechanism work?

I see two blowers but one forge, is there another forge somewhere off camera or just a typo?

Looks like a good score to me if you like price.

Frosty The Lucky.

Nice scores John and Ridge

Facebook find for me $35. not great, not bad. There are a couple marked Ford and a new looking Armstrong 1-5/8” that could be worth the whole box.

Frosty - 

 

I apologize for my sloppy terminology. I was on very low carbs yesterday as well as almost no sleep from insomnia. I promise I know my terms! lol. 

Both the blower and the rivet forge are frozen with rust; My comfort is that the rust looks rather uniform to me, so getting it off and getting the moving parts moving again seems like it will not be unduly difficult. I think that neither stood in water, but only received rain - my hope is that with some traditional rust-busting methods I will get them to work again. 

For 48 USD, I'm not out much if they don't...

2 hours ago, Ridgeway Forge Studio said:

my hope is that with some traditional rust-busting methods I will get them to work again. 

Check out the Homemade Evaporust Alternative thread. I don't know how effective it would be for unsticking corroded gears, but it would probably be a good first step for removing surface rust and maybe even more. 

3 hours ago, Rojo Pedro said:

could be worth the whole box

Old unplated wrenches are good starting stock for mechanic-themed bottle openers.