Some reasons to go to Estate Sales: score amazing antiques, get great deals on collectables, furnish your first apartment on a budget, or even just scope out a cool house that may be on the market soon (yes, we see you guesstimating the square footage!) 😉 And then there’s the odd discoveries which you aren’t going to come across in any store: Behold the ingenuity of these homemade tools from the various garages, workshops, barns and sheds of QBO sales!
First is this little wooden “Push-me, Pull-you” found in the vicinity of an old table saw. About the size of a hand, it saves your fingers as you feed planks of wood into the spinning blade. Because while vintage table saws were sturdily built, (better than many modern saws) the oldest of them do not have safety guards, hence the precautionary tool.
Next is this …zombie tomahawk? welded together from hollow pipe, a length of all-thread, and a beveled piece of scrap metal. The original owner/maker was a welder with a full workshop of real tools who also apparently felt the need for this one, which most closely resembles a welding/chipping hammer. Obviously it fit the bill because the pointy end is good and dented.
Next, from another someone who could weld and who just needed pliers with longer handles badly enough to spend their time doing this, comes this modified commercially-made tool. The welds are solid so it is eminently usable, whatever its intended purpose.
These next three tools come from the well-stocked backyard workshop of a gentleman who BUILT HIS OWN AIRPLANE IN HIS CONVERTED GARAGE ALL BY HIMSELF. Of course all that avionic electrical wiring needs to be soldered and this small item that looks like a dead grasshopper on its back is in fact a soldering iron stand designed to keep the hellishly hot tip up off your wooden workbench. It is made of bent heavy-duty copper wire and a weighty reclaimed iron railroad spike that have been soldered together, of course.
This humble wooden clothes pin has had its normally blunt jaws sharpened into a ‘beak’. It shows some scorching so it was probably used as a form of non-heat transmitting tweezers to hold small parts while soldering or brazing them together.
This next device is beautifully engineered. The maker frequently used a table saw and needed a rear support when feeding very long pieces of stock through the blade. This sturdy stand has rollers on top to help the material glide evenly over it as the gentleman made long precision cuts. Long, low feet splayed off the bottom of the stand help stabilize it, while the upright pole is made of two wooden planks, each with a channel cut through most of their length. Two bolts with wingnuts fasten through the channels to hold the planks together but allow them to slide independently to adjust the height of the support pole when necessary. And if you are over the age of 50 you may recognize the red-painted metal wheels bolted to the top of the stand; they’re salvaged from a child’s roller skate! There were two of these stands made and both of them sold to happy buyers so hopefully they are being used again in other home workshops.
Last – what IS it? I do not know. But, someone Frankensteined it together out of old ax handles and bolts. Oh well, they can’t all be winners, but we do love helping you find the good ones!
Tuesday Treasures was started by our staff member, Jeanne Lusignan. Each week she will be featuring items that have been found at our estate sales. If you would like to submit a treasure for Jeanne to feature in a future installment of “Tuesday’s Treasures”, please follow the button below and send us an email! Please attach a few photos of your treasure in a beautiful setting as well as any details you have about your item such as manufacturer, use, age, region of origin. If you don’t know about the piece, that’s okay! We still might be able to research it for you! Don’t forget to tell us what makes this item such a treasure to you!