Curio's, Curiosities and Artifacts

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

Wow an original WWII  Fairbairn–Sykes dagger (fighting knife) is truly a wonderful family treasure, especially engraved like yours.

I can't control the wind, all I can do is adjust my sail’s.
Semper Paratus

 

[George N. M.]

Billy, since the "Elenor Shaw" is etched into the blade it probably was done as a special order.  She could have been the wife or girl friend of someone in the British Forces who ended up trading it with your grandfather for, say, American cigarettes, after Elenore "Dear Johned" him.  As good a speculation as any.

G 

[Davor]

This topic will be little treasure trove of curiosities. Here is my little collection of French wrenches, that is how we call them here, the T shaped adjustable wrench.

The three on the right side are rescued from the scrap yard and needed to be fixed. The small one I bought on the internet. That leaves the second one from the left, my grandfather gave me that one, and he inherited it from his father in law - my great grandfather, who at some point punched in his initials with a center punch.

[Frosty]

Adjustable French wrench or spanner is what I had to use in the search terms to find images online. To be honest I stopped searching when I found images. 

Neat wrenches I'll have to keep my eyes open for them when yard and garage saling come warm weather.

Frosty The Lucky.

[BillyBones]

Georeg, my aunt speculates that she was some one that grandpa... uh... "knew" when he was stationed there. Him and my grandmother were married after the war. 

[George N. M.]

UK census records are sealed for 100 years (in the US it is 72 years IIRC).  So the most recent UK census available through the UK National Archives website is 1921.  Depending one Elenore"s age (say early 20s during WW2) she might show up as an infant or small child in the 1921 census.  If you know where yur grandfather was stationed in the UK you might check the area around where he was stationed.  

My wife is a geneologist and you can see that some of it has rubbed off.

GNM

[Scott NC]

Old locks and skeleton keys are something I collect and you can pick them up at flea markets for next to nothing.  More so if they have no keys.  I know somebody for that tho. 

  Also a photo of an ammonite I bought in Morocco in a little shop in a bazarr.  I wish I could go back in time and really look at what they had to sell.  I want to make a tri spike mount for my ammonites as shown in the sculpture sub forum.  Someday.

[BillyBones]

Scott, i found one of those ammonite things in a load of gravel  got for my driveway a few years back. Up the road from my house, about 5 mins if you get caught by the light, is Oaks Quarry park. People come from all over the country to hunt fossils there. The park is maybe 25 square acres i am guessing and they have had to send in "search and rescue" to find people lost. If you walk in any direction for 15 mins you come to a road. 

My granddaughter started collecting rocks so i have taken here there a few times. At work in the gravel parking lot i found a rock that a quartz deposit, a pyrite deposit and what i assume is a hemotite deposit all on it about maybe 1 1/2" square. So of course it is now in her collection. 

Also, i make parts for Sgt. Greenleaf locks. They are definitely not your run of the mill Master lock. A combination lock from them is in the $400 range. They make mostly door and vault locks. Many are sold to the military. If the part is brass is is for the public, aluminum goes to the gov't. 

The brass one is the "big" one. From the end to the shoulder i have a +/- .00035" tolerance. Running on a screw machine. If you know anything about screw machines that is pretty impressive to hold that. It is a rivet for their locks. 

[Frosty]

You're smack in the middle of good fossil hunting territory Billy. If you're interested check out the local rock club, gem and mineral society, etc. If you cant find one call or visit a rock shop, they'll know. 

Rock hounding is fun if you don't get greedy and have to pack out a lot of weight. What ME? Naw, I've never collected more than I can carry in the pick up. There are some nice plant and the rare insect fossils in the coal mines where we collect forge coal.

Frosty the Lucky.

[BillyBones]

Frosty, you are actually the one who told me how popular that park is and kind of spurred me to go there and really look around. There have been some pretty rare fossils found at that old quarry as well i read about. To me though it was the old quarry my dad drove a dump truck at for a couple years that i now use to walk my dog. Kind of weird how something in your own backyard is no big deal but something far off is exciting to see. We are also just outside of Dayton, home of the Wright bros. and we drive by their bicycle shop, or Huffman prairie where they tested their plane with out a second thought. Or the Wright Pat Air Force museum, people come from all over the world to see it. Just another building here that my granddad helped build. The past few years i have been looking into what is around me. We actually have some really cool stuff. From like i said the Wright bros. and aviation, to Indian mounds. You can find arrow heads and spear points in almost any field. I could go on about many of the historical sites we have but my point is it is weird how people will be like oh cool i get to see the ruins of Athens but miss the Indian mound right in their own back yard. While the people in Athens are yeah, yeah, just the temple of Athena, tell me more about that Indian mound. 

My granddaughter has not learned the lesson of dont try and take more than you can carry yet. She is only 10 though and her idea of rock collecting is anything that has a pretty shape or color. 

I have not found anything like leaf imprints or anything in my coal. Best i get is a vein of pyrite. I gave my mom a lump of coal i thought was pretty cool. Had about a 1/2" vein of really bright gold pyrite contrasted with the really dark black coal. I also have one i keep on the shelf in my shop that is the shape of the state of Ohio. 

[Scott NC]

Billy, I only have a passing knowledge of screw machines so I looked them up.  Very interesting.  The closest I have as a hobbiest is a tailstock turret for my benchtop lathe.... Thanks for showing your rivet.  Close tolerances indeed and I would say that is more than a wee bit smaller than my camshaft...

  It's good you are encouraging your granddaughter's interest in rocks.  I collect rocks and minerals too and that led to fossils.  One thing leads to another, I guess I have too many hobbies and interests, maybe I need an intervention.  Oaks Quarry sounds like a fun place to explore, I remember you mentioning it when I was talking on here about moving cross country, I think, because our route took us right past you.  But, we were on a mission to get moved and so never stopped for a look-see.  I want to go to the coast and find a shark tooth.  We went once but had no luck.

  There's a lot to be said for local interests and I have been spending a lot of time learning about this area, but that may be because I am knewish here.  There's logging history, some mining and on and on.  More hobby's and interests..... ......  And probably some new curiosities and artifacts to show.

6 hours ago, BillyBones said:

the shape of the state of Ohio

  Dad hauled home a quartzite boulder the shape of texas once.  There was enough stone on the southern tip of it to bury in the ground to hold it upright in the yard.

[Frosty]

I thought it sounded familiar, I was boning up on fossil sites hoping Deb and I would get to do some snow birding but Covid sort of wet blanketed that. We still might bet a chance now things are opening up again.

Driving past the neighborhood sights dulls the desire to stop and take a close look at them. It's like aversion therapy, I know I we don't go "see" the sights around us unless we're taking visitors to see them.

There's cool stuff everywhere you go.

Frosty the Lucky.

[Will Brouwers]

This thread started right as my wife and I put a cabinet in our kitchen, that I promptly put my artifacts (read knickknacks) in!
 

The first artifact is a Native American axe head that my grandpa found while he was plowing at his farm in northern Indiana. I am very proud to have it! I have always wondered if the straight lines across it are from the discs of the plow.

The next three are really cool. They are byproducts of the smelting process of the Bay Furnace in Munising. I found the green, glassy thing when I was in high school when my family went on a vacation there. I thought it was cool, and some kind of green obsidian.

Then, years later, I was bit by the blacksmithing bug and in reading about metallurgy and blacksmithing, I saw something about slag being a “glassy byproduct of smelting, sometimes green, etc…” I thought to myself “I have something green and glassy!” Turns out it is slag from the Bay Furnace. 
 

Later, my family and I now with a wife in tow, went back and I combed the beach and found a TON of other byproduct. The first picture is a mass of slag and iron and charcoal, just showing all the different ingredients in making iron, and the next picture are two iron clumps, magnets stick to them and they have the rust color. There is a part of me that wants to try and refine and forge them, but I like how they are now.

The second to last picture is of more slag that I found. The last picture is of me in front of the furnace. There was one more level on top, but that has fallen away through the years.

It is pretty cool there, right on the shore of Lake Superior, you can camp there too. 
 

I do feel a little guilty for taking the stuff, especially since the beach was eroding pretty bad, but I don’t think many other people would see anything special in the stuff I took…

I also thought about things like ground contamination after the heavy industry that was there. 

[Scott NC]

  Those are some great items Will, thanks for sharing them.  Try not to take over that whole cabinet.  Those could very well be disc marks.  Very nice....  There Is a place I want to visit within range called Endor Furnace, it's the remains of a furnace that operated during the Civil War and then made railcar wheels before going bust.  I think there are preservation plans for it.  So much I'd like to see & do.

  Here's someone's souvenere/curiosity I picked up at the flea market for .50 cents just because I like RR stuff.  It's cast and about 4" long.  It's suprisingly heavey, they don't make stuff anymore like this.  I like it also because "The General" is one of my favorite old movies with Buster Keaton.  Also a few arrow heads and what I like to believe are hide scrapers.

[Frosty]

I LOVE the General Scott! That must've put a real smile on your face when you picked it up, I'd still be grinning.

A scraper maybe or knife, the other one is broken up enough it's hard to tell what it was a couple few hundred years ago still a scraper maybe.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Scott NC]

  It is funny how such a small find can make your day.  I do still grin when I look at it.    

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

I have been collecting kerosene lamps ever since I got out of the USCG and left my last Light Station in '68. I was the last service member stationed there as it was scheduled for automation. As a remembrance the Civilian Keeper gave me the main light's stand by lamp, an Aladdin mantle lamp. I still use this lamp if the lights go out and I don't feel like starting the generator for such a short outage. Since then I've probably acquired another couple of dozen lamps.

I can't control the wind, all I can do is adjust my sail’s.
Semper Paratus

 

 

[Frosty]

That's a beauty Randy.

Aladdin is the Cadillac of kerosene lamps. My old one disappeared in a move and I miss it on those rare occasions when the electrons stop flowing but cringe at the current asking price.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Davor]

Years ago I used to work as a mechanic, fixing heavy trucks (not cars). And I found this knife on the engine jammed in between the heads. I'm guessing that whoever worked on the engine before lost it there. I have no information on it, but it is obviously forged. I cleaned it up and sharpened it and just used it in the kitchen today. The fuller is just on one side.

[BillyBones]

Davor, your hands a looking a bit furry in that last pic. 

I have never heard of Aladdin lamps, except of course in the story about the genie, so i looked them up. WOW those are expensive but very nice lamps.  

[Frosty]

Aladdin lamps are mantel rather than wick lamps and typically put out the equivalent of a 40watt incandescent bulb though some non-special use ones go as bright as 60+. The light is much higher temp than a wick about the same as a Coleman mantel lantern, almost white. They're also more fuel efficient. 

I had to go to the site to see what kind I had, it was a brass shelf light. It wasn't as pretty as one of the table lights with the tall stand and shade but it was a LOT more stable. I got it while living in a cabin in the woods with limited free flat surfaces for lamps and wanted it more mobile than a hanging one. If you live in a log cabin, stabile fuel burning appliances really count! While they aren't likely to collapse, log cabins tend to really shake in earth quakes. A 4.0 quake is likely to have you re-chinking the logs. 

Most of us had car batteries and 12v lamps so we could read without squinting or firing up the generator except to charge the batteries. I rigged mini jumper cables so I could charge while using the snow machine.

The Aladdin was a joy, bright almost white light you could read by easily, if it was on the table or counter next to you, turn it down.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

Just a couple more Aladdin lamps.

Some wick lamps mixed in. What can I say I like kerosene lamps.

I can't control the wind, all I can do is adjust my sail’s.
Semper Paratus

 

[Frosty]

NICE collection Randy, I like kerosene lamps too. Mine was like the second from the left, second picture down but brass rather than nickel. I was going to make a wall bracket and reflector for it but moved back to town and it got rehomed in the move. Yeah, like I didn't pack my Aladdin lamp!

Sorry but I still miss that lamp.  

Frosty The Lucky.

[gewoon ik]

Where i live the pressurised ones are or petromax or tilley lamps. Amd you call them by the brandname you know to make the difference between a normal oil lamp. (Bit like all diapers are called pampers)

But thank you, i have now a fueurhand stormlamp (wicked) in order. Ideal as lighting when going camping. 

 

[Frosty]

The general differentiation is Wick lamp or Mantel lamp. Aladdin lamps are Mantel lamps. I've heard of Tilly lamps, now I'm going to have to look them up. Darn something new to stuff in my mental tool kit. <sigh>

Frosty The Lucky.