Estate Sale of Antiquities Science & Horology

[maynah]

That's what the CL ad says. Could spend a few days looking through there. Does anyone recognize the location?
What is the picture shown below?

Estate Sale of Antiquities Science & Horology

 

[Harold Mulder]

That is some setup. Would be like being a kid in a candy store. To bad it's too far for a quick trip over. Also to bad didn't hear about it earlier maybe could have arranged to go for previewing.

Harold

 

[tdmidget]

More here:

The Automata Cabinet

 

[maynah]

Thanks td. That jogged my mind. About a month or so ago, there was an exotic, to me, lathe and maybe a mill for sale. They might have been Schaublin. It was down near Hartford, and mentioned the name Dennis Harmon as the owner and fine craftsman. I googled him and it led me to the Automata Cabinet. I had forgotten about it until your post. He did have a fantastic collection. And seemed he had reached what many of us strive for. Living what you love to do. Or is that loving what you live to do?

 

[L Vanice]

I knew a man named Dennis Harmon who, with his brother, Patrick, had a high end horological repair business somewhere in CT. Their father, Jim, was a watch repairman and antique dealer in Ann Arbor, MI. and taught me a little about watch repair. Jim got me to join the NAWCC in 1962 and helped me get started buying watch repair tools. That is the only guess I can make about whose estate it is. I found an obituary for Dennis, who died over a year ago, after his brother and father had died. Obituary For: Dennis E. Harmon | Chase Parkway Memorial

Ed.: I see I made a good guess.

Larry

 

[Trboatworks]

Shame its being sold off.
That collection is worth more than the sum of its parts.

 

[tdmidget]

On the subject of horology, I have a few watches, wristwatches, that need some TLC. Is there any way to find a good watchmaker/repairman at a reasonable price?

 

[jkopel]

I went to a sale "like" this recently.
Guy had been a scientific glassblower for NOAA and had an amazing collection of glassware, radio and electronics equipment, watchmaking stuff, a decent machine shop, and who knows what all else.
I got a few nice things and some fun junk and spent quite a bit of time wondering about the old guy who would not get to putter around there anymore.
It was not a tenth of this sale though.

 

[Andy FitzGibbon]

On the subject of horology, I have a few watches, wristwatches, that need some TLC. Is there any way to find a good watchmaker/repairman at a reasonable price?

Mahlon Shetler in South Dayton, NY, does good work at a reasonable price. He is Amish, so no web site, phone, ect., but if you google his name there's lots of information on him. He is an old family friend- my dad sold him his first lathe. The problem is that he has more work than he can handle, so often wait times for repairs are quite lengthy.

Andy

 

[stephen thomas]

Thanks, Andy!

I think what TD means is: Someone whose work is reliable & durable given what they charge.

My wife inherited some watches, nothing worth over a few $hundred, but some going back to great grandparents, i believe. Anyway, of enough meaning to her that she has spent money keeping some going, and it just does not seem well spent with some of the people she's dealt with.

The guy you mention may be close enough to contact.

smt

 

[CBlair]

Shame its being sold off.
That collection is worth more than the sum of its parts.

Collections are a funny thing, a guy spends his lifetime collecting stuff and when he is gone it gets re-dispersed and slowly those things end up being re-collected by someone else. I wonder how many times some of the things he has have been in "collections"? Of course better than just sitting on his shelf would be to see some of these things actually setup and being used. And no one person could do that to such a large collection of stuff so perhaps it is better after all that it gets split up.

Charles

 

[Marty Feldman]

Does anyone recognize the location?

If you mean geographic location, the map puts it just NNE of Waterbury, Connecticut.

Incidently, how about some input on the ID of that machine in the OP thumbnail? If I were looking for a satisfying restoration job....

 

[timeseeker]

If you mean geographic location, the map puts it just NNE of Waterbury, Connecticut.

Incidently, how about some input on the ID of that machine in the OP thumbnail? If I were looking for a satisfying restoration job....

Marty, It's a specialized multi-head precision drilling machine from the Bulova Watch factory.

 

[Krutch]

Even not knowing what most of those are, I sure hope they don't wind up in the scrap.

 

[Sea Farmer]

I don't recognize the shop, but I used to visit Wolcott when my aunt and uncle were still alive. He was the "old German machinist" whose has become a stereotype in these forums, but he was real. He worked in a GE plant making jet turbine blades in the 1950s and 1960s. There were at least two such GE plants in Connecticut at the time, and probably more support-type plants also run by GE. Wolcott is convenient to Waterbury, as Marty noted. Waterbury is nicknamed the "Brass City" and so likely a decent population of watchmakers, machinists, toolmakers lived there in the day.

 

[SIP6A]

I visited that shop back in April. It's 5000 square feet on two floors. The amount of stuff packed in there was just unbelievable. There were 10 machine tool and lots of everthing else. I know of Dennis Harmon his specialty was singing bird boxes. I did not see anything that looked like a part of a bird box. In talking to several people I found out that this was one of several shops that he used. The odd thing about the shop is that it had the look of a shop that there hadn't been any work done in. All the chip pans had only a few chips in them and every bench was piled high with stuff. The other thing was there were lots and lots of boxed watchmakers tools and every one had som key piece missing. Interesting place.

 

[elysianfield]

That's what the CL ad says. Could spend a few days looking through there. Does anyone recognize the location?
What is the picture shown below?

Estate Sale of Antiquities Science & Horology

I don't know what it is, but I want it....

 

[Mcgyver]

just wow. I want to live there

 

[SIP6A]

I don't know what it is, but I want it....

The first picture that comes up with your link is a leveling telescope. Think making cement forms level when putting in a floor

 

[adammil1]

Thanks for posting this, who ever is running the sale in my opinion did not do the best job advertising it as they put it on the Boston Craigslist but not the CT one.

At any rate it is quite the place. I made it in around 3-4pm today and the plates I saw in the parking lot were from PA, NJ, CT, MA. Tons of watch making stuff but to be honest that isn't really my specialty so I can't quite say too much about that stuff. The neatest thing I saw and apparently I was told he originally had 2 of what was the cutest little VTL I ever saw. The thing had about a 12" dia chuck on it and maybe 12" or so under the bridge. With such a small work envelope other than for novelty purposes it would appear that a engine lathe would do just as well.

As for the shop itself I must say it looked more to me like a collection as opposed to a working shop or at least from the stuff I saw. For example there was a whole shelf full of large thead gauges all of them metric but big threads 50mm(2" or so range) on the other hand unless it sold a day or two earlier the largest lathe in there must have been a jewler's lathe. I saw a huge cabinet full of end mills however at the same time I never saw a mill that could have run them. Perhaps it too had sold earlier. I wonder if he was ever selling tools out of there as in some cases there were 20 or 30 of the same measurement tools when I would think one would only need say 1 or 2. Else where things were more tossed in than organized like a working shop. Not really being a watch guy the coolest thing I thought was the building. I couldn't think of a nicer space to have a hobby shop. His building was about the size of a good 4-10 man machine shop.

All this being said I guess it is important to say that I was only there at the end of the 3rd day of the sale so who knows what it looked like earlier on. The place was still packed when I was there. The prices seem way high to me, but they are discounting them about 10% per day so tomorrow I think is 40% off the listed price.

Had I known about the sale before I went to work (I saw it during lunch) I would have taken my camera. Did anyone go there and get pictures on earlier days?