Garage Sale Finds

Once a year my town organizes a city-wide garage sale, where people can have their sales listed on a downloadable sheet.  It includes the addresses, a map, and a short list of things they have for sale.  I saw one listing that indicated they have an antique hand plane.  Key word: "an".

When I got to the house, I saw not just one plane, but many planes (wooden and metal), many saws and many other things.  The owner was moving to the East Coast and wanted to thin out his collection.

If I was a collector, I would have spent far more money than I did.  But I'm not a collector (I swear, I'm not a collector), so I just bought a few items.

The things I picked up

There's a roll of double-sided tape for 50 cents - so many uses for this stuff.  Then there's an unopened can of milk paint from The Real Milk Paint Company - $2 (color: "black iron").  I've bought a couple of their products before.  I don't paint my projects much, but I like their milk paint.

There's a protractor head for a combination square, made by Union Tool Co. of Orange, Mass.  It didn't have the blade, so it was $1.  I'll write more later about using this with the blade of my Starrett combo square.  There's a small bubble level on it (on the back side in the pic below), a nice feature.

Union Tool Co. protractor head for a combination square

Then there was this cute little marking gauge, made by Sanderson (England).  I would have left it behind, but it was just $2, so I grabbed it.  I'm pretty sure it's made of rosewood.

Next to one of my homemade gauges for size comparison

Pretty sure that first letter is supposed to be "S"

Upon further examination, there is a pin on the fence, in addition to the pin on the beam.  My guess is that this gauge is for scribing circles using the fence pin as a pivot.

Pointing to the pin on the fence

Arc scribed on a scrap piece

It can leave a rough scribe mark, so maybe I'll file the pin into more of a knife edge.  This little gauge had a problem, though.  The thumb screw that tightens the fence onto the beam just spins in its hole.  I fixed that with some epoxy in the formerly-threaded hole, followed by a run-through with a 1/4-20 tap.  Good as new.

Fixing the tapped hole

Lastly, there was this small backsaw from W. Tyzack Sons and Turner.  Thirty bucks for it.

0.024" thick plate, 10" plate length, 12 tpi (13 ppi) rip filing

The owner thought this was from the '50s or '60s

The owner had made a very nice new handle for it from African mahogany, but he also kept the original handle with it.  That seems like something I would do - in case the next owner might care more about the original condition.  The handle he made is too big for my hand, so I may go back to the original, but spiff it up a bit with some judicial shaping - oh well, there goes the original condition.

The saw seems quite heavy.  Front-heavy to be more precise.  The brass back is massive.  Made me wonder if this saw was not the saw that came with this medallion.  I also saw a small amount of waviness to the plate at the tooth line.  I'll post later about cleaning it up and sharpening it.  If I use it as a dovetail saw, I'd prefer smaller teeth.  I'll consider re-toothing it.

Well, that's it.  Just when I was losing faith in finding things at garage sales, this happens.  I guess you just gotta keep trying and keep your eyes open.