My Dad and a few old tools

[oliver2-44 9,746]

My dad was a Jack of many trades.  He caught the last month or so of WWII and then stayed in Germany as part of the Occupied Forces.  He wanted to join the Air Force as soon as he graduated High School, but was sent to the Army.

 When he returned home from Germany he attended Aviation School in Dallas, Tx and received his Airframe and Powerplant  (A&P), Private Pilot and Flight Instructor certificates.   He returned to the farm just outside the small town of La Grange, Tx.  Over the years Dad ran a dairy, raised beef cattle and hay, did custom tractor work, fence building, contracted to built field terraces for the Soil Conservation Service, worked as a Ford tractor mechanic, worked in Bryan and Austin as a Aircraft Mechanic and contracted to fly pipeline inspections. He was a self taught electronics repairman and later in life as his health declined he did CB and Business Band and ham radio installation and repair work. But most of all he loved airplanes. Some of you may remember I previously posted this picture of him flying

Santa to town and landing on the Highway to deliver Santa to the Fire Truck for the Christmas Parade. I believe the plane is a Stinson. 

Shortly after returning to the farm he laid out  grass runways on the farm. 

He also built this irrigation system for the farm which used a 6 cylinder engine he converted to Propane.  If I recall correctly, it had a 8" suction and 6" discharge and irrigated the 45 acres of hayland. 

 

In the mid-50's he built a large cinder block hanger and shop that could hold 5 private planes. In the picture below a group of pilots were assisting us to paint  the La Grange location on the roof.  On the backside of the roof (opposite "La Grange") you can make out the "Guenther Flying Service" name.

 1964ish the City of La Grange, extended and paved the runway. For a $1 a year lease, the city could say it had a airport.  It was a good deal for him too, as it gave his shop a paved runway.

  One skill he had, was he knew how to sew the fabric sox's and recover the older cloth airplanes.  He also knew how to work on the aircraft with wood frames, ribs and thin plywood covering. He continued to do all sorts of work, but in the winter he would try to contract and rebuild a fabric plane for someone.  Needless to say, as a youth I grew up around all kinds of equipment!

 

@formariz I greatly appreciate your sharing the wealth of knowledge and experience.

Your current writing about the " Carpenters Brace" has prompted me to pull out and clean up 2 Braces I had saved in a box in the barn at the farm.  I can remember he built a cattle doctoring squeeze chute that was bolted wood construction. There was no electric power down at the cattle pens, so I suspect it was all built with a Carpenters Brace, probable one of these.

These had been in my dads shop/airplane hanger when it was destroyed in a windstorm in 1979. Everything was moved to a barn on the farm.  While all the other tools made it to his new "electronic's shop a few years later, these have sat there ever since.

One is a Stanley No.66, 8" brace.  I disassembled and cleaned it with scotchbrite and thinner and gave the wood several coats of linseed oil.

The top pad moved very stiffly and when I unscrewed the wood pad I was surprised to find it actually contained tiny ball bearings.  It just needed cleaning out years of barn dust.  Its exciting to find such precision on such a simple tool,  In light of the low quality found on many tools,

The other Brace is a no-name, but I'm guessing dates back to the 50's, just judging on my dads age. I remember as a kid hanging around he shop and drilling holes in scraps of wood with these braces.

it's interesting to lay they side by side and see the Stanley used heavier round rod, and the no name's top pad had no bearing or even a bushing.

There also was a Stanley No. 78 Plane. I've cleaned it up and waxed it. Did these originally have 2 blades or did you move the blade from one position to the other?

I suspect he would have used this to make a rabbit to flush some of the thin wood veneer or other task on the wooden plane parts.

Edited August 19, 2022 by oliver2-44

[RJ Hamner 1,007]

I think "WOW" says it all!

[formariz 11,987]

Awesome stuff about your Dad. It exemplifies the term “ the greatest generation “. They were the most creative, resourceful people with a love and interest in many different areas. The stuff that was invented and innovated in that era were the building blocks for everything we have today. I consider myself very lucky to have been surrounded every day of my earlier life by such people. I was a bit of an oddity always being around all these older men that took me in to their midst and not understanding why they cared so much for this impetuous foreign kid. One thing however that was immediately obvious to me was that I got respect by just merely being associated with them. Your story brings up many memories and emotions. 
 

 Those are good braces. Stanley’s are always top of the line with bearings and thicker heavy duty arms. They are both the non ratcheting type. The no name one seems to be a 10” sweep which will provide higher torque drilling large holes. 

 

 The Stanley 78 is the workhorse of rabbet planes . They were and are common but you however have a Type 1. The first model of that plane produced. Only one blade came with it just being transferred to the front when needed. Unlike later ones those did not have a blade adjusting feature. As a journeyman I had one in my tool box which I used constantly. There is also a fence and a depth stop that came with it.

 That plane and its design so efficient that they are still made today . The made in England model is a particularly exceptional tool. A timeless quality tool. 

  This is a complete one. I have several but this is the one which I used for years as a journeyman which I am pretty attached to. 

 

 

 

[stevasaurus 22,738]

This should be moved to the tool section.  

[SylvanLakeWH 25,557]

Great story!!! 

[oliver2-44 9,746]

I too was very fortunate to be around a lot of  older/experienced farmers, ranchers, construction trades and engineers, in my teenage and early adult years.  

I found some basic instructions for the Rabbet Plane. I had wondered what the little screw on the face was for.  The fact that they designed it with a screw to move a little "spur into position " for only when you are crossing cutting the grain and that it had a fence and depth stop  speaks volumes of the precision this tool could do in knowledgeable hands. 

 I have a lot to learn to even be a beginner at using this one.  

Stanley 78 Duplex Rabbet Plane Instructions.pdf

[Pullstart 62,851]

Awesome read!  Thanks for sharing!

[formariz 11,987]

4 hours ago, stevasaurus said:

This should be moved to the tool section.  

 Short handed perhaps?

[formariz 11,987]

3 hours ago, oliver2-44 said:

I too was very fortunate to be around a lot of  older/experienced farmers, ranchers, construction trades and engineers, in my teenage and early adult years.  

I found some basic instructions for the Rabbet Plane. I had wondered what the little screw on the face was for.  The fact that they designed it with a screw to move a little "spur into position " for only when you are crossing cutting the grain and that it had a fence and depth stop  speaks volumes of the precision this tool could do in knowledgeable hands. 

 I have a lot to learn to even be a beginner at using this one.  

Stanley 78 Duplex Rabbet Plane Instructions.pdf 96.21 kB · 1 download

 In its day, this was an essential tool found pretty much in every carpenter’s tool box  and not having one or a similar one would be kind of odd. Kind of today a carpenter not having a hammer ( which soon may be reality). Today however , sad to say ,but most carpenters will not even know it ,nor it’s functions even though such functions are still very much needed. They have however been trained to look to a power tool to perform such tasks which ironically none are as efficient at it as that tool is. Many times such task will be a simple pass or two with that plane, but the lack of it or knowledge of it will lead many times to the conclusion that piece will not fit or can’t work for a particular situation . 

[8ntruck 6,999]

  The carpenters going directly to a power tool instead of having knowledge of hand tools is similar to somwthing i am seeing in mentoring the kids on the high school robotics team.  I constantly have paper and pencil available, as I talk and sketch as we discuss design solutions.  Most of the kids don't do that.  Rather they go right to the CAD system and get sidetracked trying to run the CAD and worry an out precision rather than formulating a design solution.  I am a firm believer that when teaching drafting, the students need to start on a drawing board before going to a CAD system.

 

It shows up when they are fabricating components, too.  I've educated many of them on the use and usefulness of a hand file - often saving parts that had a CNC oops that they were ready to discard and start over.

 

Last year, they needed a curved piece of sheet aluminum.   The slip roll the school had was too light to form the part, so they came to me.  I ended up forming the part using the radius on the corner on one of the 10" square columns holding the shop roof up to make multiple small bends along the part by holding the ends of the sheet and bouncing with my body weight until it matched the wooden buck they had made.  That about blew their minds.  However, that lesson sunk in - over the course of the season, they made 3 or 4 more curved parts with that method. 

[formariz 11,987]

8 minutes ago, 8ntruck said:

 

  The carpenters going directly to a power tool instead of having knowledge of hand tools is similar to somwthing i am seeing in mentoring the kids on the high school robotics team.  I constantly have paper and pencil available, as I talk and sketch as we discuss design solutions.  Most of the kids don't do that.  Rather they go right to the CAD system and get sidetracked trying to run the CAD and worry an out precision rather than formulating a design solution.  I am a firm believer that when teaching drafting, the students need to start on a drawing board before going to a CAD system.

 

In High School I had for three years a class called Mechanical Drawing. Aside from English probably the most important class ever. Even though at the time I did not know it, it became one of the most important things to know through out my life. Not only could I read and understand drawings right out of High School I could draw , understand and engineer solutions related to building something. 
  Fast forward quite a few years and then working in Architectural Woodworking. Dealt and worked along with drafts people every day. Then CAD came in. Within three years all kinds of problems surfaced. Drafts people no longer were engineering solutions or understanding many times the lack of feasibility of what they were drawing. The complaints from the shop and the field were always “ how I am I supposed to build this or how am I supposed to install this?” . The older drafts-people eventually retired and then all that was left were young people brought up on the CAD system. The industry never recuperated from it. 
  The old way of hand drafting , calculating and visualizing each piece from its beginning to the final destination without the speed , templates or automatic calculations gave one a relationship with the whole project from beginning to end . It made one think constantly sharpening one’s skills and mind . Speed and automation do precisely the opposite. 

[8ntruck 6,999]

We had a college intern one summer working in the engineering department.  One of his jobs was to transcribe paper drawings into 3d CAD models. One of the drawings I had given him was of a slide block that went into a cam die.  As the die closed, the block would move 90 degrees to the press motion to do an off axis operation on the part being formed.  The old drawing had an auxiliary view dimensioning some features on the angled face of the block.  The intern was completely baffled by that auxiliary view.  It took about 20 minutes of explaining before the intern understood. 

[oliver2-44 9,746]

I too learned Mechanical Drawing, and a 1/2 year of Geometry. Not Math Geometry, but drawing Geometry.  That was one hard class.  As I work I’m always sketching something on a pad, scrap of wood or metal. Just today,  I went up to the church and measured/sketched up floor plans of an existing building and did a preliminary layout for offices to hand over to a CAD draftsperson. Another class that today’s youth miss out on is slide rule. Just like CAD they can whip out a complex problem on a calculator but have no idea if they are even in the correct ballpark. With a slide rule you had to figure out if your answer was going to be in the tenths or ten thousands.  Learning slide rule taught me to “estimate”

Edited August 20, 2022 by oliver2-44