I'm hoping to cover most of the forums favourite subjects on this thread. And what hoover is always popular.So forget your Henrys and your Dysons and join the space age with a Hooverette 2944.
And yes it still works 😊
When we moved into our place the shed was absolutely bare, just a load of old empty kitchen units along the wall for storage.
Hidden in the most inaccessible one, wrapped up discretely was a load of gentlemen's periodicals from the early 80s.
avdave2
A few of these post have items I remember clearer out of my Grandads sheds. The “jackal spray kit” and the Hooverette. Countless Haynes manuals.
Thanks for posting and keep up the good work.
This is great.
Here's hoping the garage was full of enough stuff to last for many postings.
Loving that Hoover. I swear they had one of those in the science museum when I went there before Christmas.
Not what I was expecting from the thread title. Lovely, heart warming stuff.
I had a Triumph 2000 (or 4!) mk 2s though. Would've loved a Mk1.
Here’s hoping the garage was full of enough stuff to last for many postings
If I run out I'll start on the stuff from the house, we'll not run out too soon, don't worry.
The hoover is fantastic, just great to look at and so reminiscent of it's time. I've been thinking it might lend itself to being converted into a floor lamp.
One for the woodworkers this morning
The brass one needed a lot of polishing to remove decades of tarnish. It'll probably look better when it dulls down a bit but it was quite therapeutic to spend the time cleaning it.
Oh nice.
The brass infill shoulder plane is probably worth a tidy sum.
What are you intentions with all these things.
Any more woodworking to come?
A great thread! Incidentally, I’ve move into a new place recently with a couple of barns and in one there was this fine vice, any ideas of heritage?
There are things I'll keep but I'll try and find a good home for everything else. A good friend of his wants any old rusty tools. She used to look after all the trees in his garden and later when he could no longer do it all his gardening. She was very fond of him so I've put aside all the tools for her to go through.
There are some nice old woodworking chisels, haven't photographed them yet, they are under my floor in one of a large number of boxes! There is other stuff that I think actually belongs in a museum, I'll post some of that soon.
I like that vice, looks like it's built to last several lifetimes.
Not something you expect to find stuffed away in plastic bag in a garage draw with a load of old rolls of wallpaper.
Wow - what regiment, and does anyone know the medals?
39-45 star, France and Germany star, Defence medal. Royal Marines Commando on shoulder patches.
46 Royal Marine Commando
We have the original medals as well, they are the 39-45 Star, the France and Germany Star and the Defence Medal
The sleeve crossed rifles
are the marksman badge, Steve was a sniper, in fact the best shot in 9th Commando which later became 46 Commando, we also have the engraved silver teaspoon he won for that achievement.
We have a sniper married into the family. They have a different outlook on life.
Man was an obvious legend. Must have been a pleasure and an honour to know him.
This thread needs the like button.
Like!
One born into our family. Normal day might be jumping out helicopters into the sea or cross country skiing across the arse end of nowhere in Norway. Not the average desk job.
Wow, do you have a picture of the garage in its entirety? Curious how it looks.
Have you done something to the Imgur links - I can't see the pics 🙁
I haven't done anything different with the photos so not sure why it's not working for you
I didn't actually take a photo at the beginning, it was only when I suddenly had all this time I thought I'd photograph some of the interesting stuff. The amazing thing was that if he needed you to get something out of there for him he could tell you exactly where it was although it had been a last 3 years since he'd last been able to get to it.
This thread whilst not really being my thing, is really interesting. However, it’s like watching a tv series that’s on weekly, when you want the box set 😀.
This is better than most telly.
I haven’t done anything different with the photos so not sure why it’s not working for you
Realised I was using my work laptop on the work VPN...
Only just had the chance to catch up on this thread but so glad I did.It's incredible and I bet that jacket could ell some stories.
My mum had one of those hoovers.
You may well find him in one of these:
http://gallery.commandoveterans.org/cdoGallery/v/units/Royal+Marine+Commando+Units/46/
You may well find him in one of these:
X-Troop, second row up far left, taken on the I.O.W shortly before D-Day. I'll post some pictures of him at the end.
I’m not into military stuff at all, but that jacket (tunic?) is an impressive find. Imagine the places that’s been, things it’s seen...
It probably didn't actually see any action at all DezB, his first would have been badly damaged when his patrol commander threw a phosphorous grenade too close to him when trying to create a smoke screen to get to him after he'd been shot in the foot and it's replacement would have fared no better when he'd recovered from that and was hit by shell fire in March 45 as his troop led the Rhine crossing. By the time he'd recovered from that the war was over so he didn't return to his unit until they were back home.
Oh that blowtorch.
Methylated spirits for ignition.
My Dad had one, and I vaugely remember, that as a young child the blood* thing ignited in his face, and my Mother screaming and wrapping him in wet tea towels.
I don't know if he went to hospital or what the injuries were, but (much later on), no scarring evident.
ps. Great thread by the way. My kids are going to ask what is all this stuff in Dads workshop - tap, dies, precision marking out tools, measuring instruments, surface table, spanners, power tools, stocks of collected timber, stocks of steel angle (re-cycled metal stillages containing Japanese motorcycles - The dealers just chucked it all out and more.
Warning duly noted drnosh, I'll not be trying to light up either of them!
Steve obviously loved working on his motorbikes and had kept all these
Awesome thread!
As I went through everything over many many day days I kept moving this around without doing anything with it. It looked like something that had been used to test a stamp.Right at the end before I put it in the scrap metal pile for recycling I thought I wonder who AFRS who I assumed were a company formed in 1759.
Well thanks to Google it's not in the scrap pile and I'm off to buy a beer in a Swedish bar, it should get me at least a pint in Stockholm 😊
It's not a companies stamp it's actually Swedish plate money from 1759. This lump weighs 366g but the 10 Daler plate weighed 20kg! It goes back to when Sweden produced most of the world/s copper and wanted a way to control the price of it. It was no surprise to me when I read that Sweden was the first country in the world to produce paper money.
Today it's the perfect multitool for the Victorian gentleman
The Billings and Spencer pocket screwdriver patented March 18th 1892
That screwdriver needs a feature in the trail pack tools article in the current magazine!
Please keep this up - not only is it fascinating (my dad's garage/shed was always full of interesting stuff), but it's also educational - I'd never heard of Swedish plate money!
I’d never heard of Swedish plate money!
Neither had I fadda, it's utterly mad, imagine having to slip one of them in your back pocket to get a coffee at the cafe stop! When I googled it to find out what it was another 1/2 Daler plate had sold for $400 at Bonhams in 2010. Steve just had it lying on the workbench with other random bits an pieces.
If only you could add the educational and interest value together with the monetary value of some of these things...
Billings and Spencer of Connecticut , there is one of those screwdrivers on ebay in US in much worse condition , that one you have is likely wort a bit to somebody.
Well there are currently 2240 posts on Watches N+1 so hopefully this will interest a few people.
A Jaeger-LeCoultre G.T.S.P watch from 1939-45. I'm not entirely sure why Steve had this, he'd never mentioned it. They were apparently ordered by the British Military for specific needs, many being used by RAF navigators and bomb aimers. The seconds hand is missing and the face damaged there. I don't know if that's just from age or one of the two occasions he was wounded, either could have damaged much of his kit. It probably sat in his garage from when he moved in in 1982 until I found it and a quick wind up and off it went. I haven't actually checked the timekeeping yet.
Big Like!
Great thread 👍
This reminds me of visiting the Dingwall auction mart to mooch around the stuff for sale on a Friday.
Amongst all the China and furniture, there's always old toolboxes and ancient power tools.
I always find them quite poignant, as they are more than likely there through shed clearance following the owners passing.
I bet everyone has at least one of these old screwdrivers somewhere but maybe not the soldering irons.
I've checked the watch this morning and it's lost 10 minutes over 24 hours so I think I'll look at getting it serviced at some point. I've been trying to think of why he might have been issued it and have one theory. 46 Commando originally only had one mission set for the whole Normandy campaign, in fact it was likely that it would be the only operation they completed of the entire war. On June 7th they were to go and attack whichever of 2 German artillery emplacements were causing the most problems on the landing beaches. They would be landing outside of any of the official landing areas, the Royal Navy had said they could get them in but not out again. The plan was for A&B troops to land first and under fire scale the cliffs putting ropes and ladders in as they went. The other troops would follow behind and then once all ashore and with no heavy weapons, only small arms they were after scaling the cliffs to attack the the emplacements which were defended with barbed wire, minefields and pill boxes. Every troop had a separate roll in the attack, X troop of which Steve was a member had been trained for the unenviable role of actually getting into the emplacements and placing the demolition charges on the guns. I'm guessing that the reason he had been issued with a watch reserved for where very accurate timings were required was so that all of them setting the fuses needed to be sure they were working to the same timings.
Once they'd completed this they would be behind enemy lines and the again with no heavy weapons would have to fight their way back to Juno where they would have been taken back to the Isle of Wight. Fortunately for them the RAF had done a fantastic job in attacking the emplacements ahead of them and neither battery was able to cause significant problems for the main landings. 46 Commando were already in their landing craft when the call was made and they were diverted to Juno.
Some 50 years or more later a few of the remaining members went back to look at the cliffs and the batteries they were meant to attack and concluded that while they may well have succeeded there was almost no chance that any of them would have escaped being killed, wounded or captured trying to get back to the landing beaches. The cliffs turned out to be mostly mud and so crumbly that all their training on Cornish sea cliffs and their equipment would have been almost useless. They all realised on that day just what they owed to the RAF.
So I think it's most likely that the watch was issued for a job that never happened. And Steve being Steve was always going to hang onto it.
I always think watches are such a personal thing (I have my mums crappy, cheap old thing as my only memento).
That watch could be already is an amazing artefact, and if it was sympathetically "fixed up", it would be truly a link back to your buddy Steve...
My old man had a complete set of those screwdrivers and chisels and a full set of wooden planes. When he died and my mum moved we gave them away.
