At the Steam-Up

We made our annual pilgrammage to the Brooks Steam-Up yesterday. Don't worry, you can also go next weekend if you forgot about it this week.

Hijinks on the electric trolley.

The huge railway steam crane.

Some neat junk-art at the flea market.

A Stirling fan.

Henry hands our trolley tickets to the conductor.

Max is enjoying himself at the fire apparatus display.

Another year, another picture in front of the huge Caterpillar.

A lovely lathe of some sort.

In the suburbs, teenage girls hang out at the mall. In rural America they drive small locomotives.

Hanging out at the roundhouse.

Drinking and Driving

I'd write more, but am completely exhausted from the experience...

Carter, Gough & Company

My great, great grandfather Aaron Carter had a jewelry company (under a variety of names as partners changed over time, by 1915 it was Carter, Gough and Co.) that was at one point reportedly one of the largest jewelry companies in the world. His was also the first to use a steam engine, in the 1850's. He died in 1902, but the firm was continued by his son, William Tuttle Carter (who would be my great, great uncle)
After trying for some time I was finally able to buy an affordable piece that Carter & Gough had made through Ebay. $39.00 including shipping, which is a "snip". I certainly couldn't make one for that!

About 2-3/8" long, the head is about 1/2" diameter.

4 small pearls, lovely blue guilloche enamel work. There is a small fracture that you can only see if you look very close with a loupe.

It is marked on the stick, "14K" followed by the Carter, Gough & Company mark, a "C" inside an arrowhead. It is also engraved with a date on the back – "7 . 6 . 14" and the name, "M’S. Obw."

I would love to find some earlier pieces from the period when Aaron ran the company, and I keep hunting for bargains. I am also saving any pictures from auctions that I have not won, in hopes of documenting what pieces the company produced.

Short and Sweet Toolblogging

Henry, Max and I went to an estate sale and the Habitat for Humanity thrift store today.

At the estate sale I bought:

12" Utica Tools combination wrench, rusty but it works, 75 cents
die stock, 35 cents
S-K 1/4" socket extension, 50 cents
Bausch and Lomb pliers, $1.00
ball head for camera, $1.00
weird dental bur chuck for a polishing lathe, 50 cents

(not a tool, but...)
Lamborghini model car kit, still shrinkwrapped, $3.50

At the Habitat for Humanity store I bought a good condition Jacobs 31BA 3/8" drill chuck for $2.00. This is one of the precision chucks, not the cheap ones they make nowadays.

We also got Rockem Sockem Robots at Goodwill. It's the old Marx produced one, but was missing one of the ring posts. Works well though. Henry and Max now beat each other up in the same style as the robots.


Felice reading Henry a book in the playhouse Aunt Betsy sent. Notice Max snoozing on the couch in the background...

Two Fawns

Two fawns in our backyard yesterday.

Henry started up Rhino, then drew two circles to represent part of his wooden train turntable (the red thing on the desk). Where does he learn this stuff?

This is a test I did for Paul from Bits&Bits. He came by the other day to learn how to run the Taig CNC mill he bought from me. I used one of his .003" radius tip 10 deg. wax profilers.

That pretty much sums up the past weeks. I had a summer cold and was tired and unproductive otherwise. Now my shop is a mess, there's a huge backlog of work and I'm wasting my time blogging.

I did manage to save up a bunch of links for you to peruse:

Copper Work: An Illustrated Text Book for Teachers and Students in the Manual Arts By Augustus Foster Rose

Honest Ed Died. I walked by his store every day on my way to classes at UofT

Even though I won't have time to play it, I preordered the new Combat Mission game.

Ann Coulter is a deadhead.

Wireless is getting under our skin This is some real science fiction!

The Kemp Micromanipulator

Making selected diatom slides

The Imaginary Toolstore

Today's Metal Detecting Finds

Delft University of Technology Ornamatics Programme

The Speedy Stitcher is always useful, you should buy one.