Garrett & Sag,
I very much appreciated both the contributions you have started and subscribed to in this posting,And I wonder if I can add some further substance to the posting, When one handles some artifacts belonging to a long gone and deceased craftsman, it gives one a feelgood factor , that we have appreciated , and wondered as to how much of an impact, In fact what was the overall footprint on the history/culture/and advances to mankind he left posterity with.
It is good that you folks have kept and appreciated these artifacts and one hopes that you may be instrumental in saving them from the vandal hand of the Steampunk morons.
I sincerely trust the box of moulders tools which I have treasured for many years also means something to someone someday, Even if only as a few artifacts to puzzle over, The same goes for my engineering tools, Dealing first vwith Garratts "pieces of wood " Well it is a few relics from someone who worked in the Seattle area, The first thoughts going through my mind is What type of foundry was the said eastablishment and what was its product range, Marine, Logging machinery, or the Aircraft Industry, and why did the Seattle moulder wish to hang on to them, A link of fond memories to his past life when he retired , or moved away?
People nowadays frequently miss the point when studying past industries, This came home to me forcefully some time back when I went to a historical mining conference, and the organiser formed us all into "Individual Workshops" heaven help us, Talking shops with the ubiquitous sheets of paper which had to contain our thoughts at the end of the session, As can be imagined 90% of those attending were possibly born the year the last deep coalmine was demolished in the group into which I was placed had two folk with a mining background, Myself early on in my workin life, and another visitor who had spent some time in the environment of deep and highly mechanised collieries, During the subsequent discussion, I raised the point of including in our analysis & inclusion for further historical work the story of the small privately owned drift mines having say only approx. twenty employees, And the stories of the railway men who transported the coal and the numbers of coal merchants frequently a one man and horse outfit who carriied bags of coal on their backs to the mirids of homes in the inner cities of Scotland.
My other colleague in the group forcibly did not think this section of the coal story was worthy of inclusion, Well the small mine owners employed in this area a vast number of folk, and in some cases in past years with a degree of luck morphed into big concerns As to the humble coal merchants, many were the tales of great social interest was incorporated in that sphere, I could include a really nice old merchant near where i worked Mr Devanney brutally murdered for his hard earned money by a real rotter, These are the "small snippets" of history we may simply gloss over
I mention the mining input as a lesson on our past interpretation of past foundrymen and their few artifacts, Jobbing foundries may have not been as big a deal as say cotton spinning or car manufacturing , But The old Seattle moulders few sticks are important links in history, As well as being tactile articles.
Now to what we have in Garretts collection, Why the old fellow kept them heaven only knows, Maybe they had been in his toolkit from his apprenticeship days , Early offers of his first moulding tasks in the foundry and he had not the heart to discard them and they followed him through life
Looking at the illustration, from the left hand side, The round portion of rod with the split at the top is I am certain a runner bar for forming the downward channel to convey the molten metal from the runner box at the top of the mould to the mould cavity, this is rammed up in the sand and removed from the top part of the mould before lifting the said half mould off before the removal off the pattern The other vertical wood item look like a hexagon pattern , (As does the item lying flat two down from the first vertical wood item) This makes me think the moulder was a brass moulder and the hex items were for the manufacture of small runs of bar to make special bronze nuts or bolts , Maybe a marine repair item?
The two flat rectangular wood items may very well be "runner bars" our man could have been using these as a gating system in his mould from which small mould cavities fed off , Like my past life Mass production using the simplest of equipmen.
The others I think are a mixture of little runner or riser bars or round pieces of wood to form round stock for the machine shop quickly and economically,
Now to old Wolfie, I guess I would like to have met both these guys for a pint, and with the tall tales we might have had the lights in the bar swinging themselve's!
By the look of his few remaining tools I am certain he was like me a Brass Moulder, In his native land he would be referred to as a Mould Maker, Taking Sags phot from left to right we have what looks to me like seven brass tubes? If so that is a dead givaway that Wolfie was employed in the manufacture of greensand moulds in a brass foundry, Brass moulders when engaged on small casting work,do not use wooden formers to form the mould downgate, But force a brass tube through the sand on the top half of the mould,
I still have my brass tubes after many years, When one forces the tube down throgh the sand,one is left with a plug of sand inside the tube, The removal of which consists a light tap against ones left heel followed by a deft flick of the tube, and Hey presto The slug of sand ends up back in yor "Sand Tub upon which youb work every time
Every one asks How do you know where to punch your tube through without coming down on one of your little patterns, Answer Instinct, One has a mental picture of the interior of the mould where every little pattern is !
Again from the right side of the tubes we have his Boss tool , In Scotland called a trickie, The top end of this tool is for smoothing the bottom off deep circular mould sections, The round curved section is for dressin the side of flange edges in the mould The next tool is a curved and leaf shaped gate knife, If it is as I think it is somewhat longer than its British equivelant where it is called a Heart & Square, Above it is an Egg sleeker, for polishing up belly shapes in the mould
Next to the the Leaf Shaped tool is long pattern Boss tool This is the same as the British equivelent This is followed in line bythree assorted little spoon tools , Then we have a little rappiing spike for removing small pattern from the mould, Followed next by a little flange bead tool, Missing is his trowel, I wouls surmise Wolfie took it with him to the Garden's in which he worked or else passed it on to another moulder.
