Thread: My 1930's Farm Shop

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Very cool shop. I love old tools and shops, can spend hours poking around stuff! My grandmas place had two shops full of old stuff and spiders!

That's great stuff, Mike! It's cool you put the time into restoring these; there's probably very few of some of those tools left in existance. Makes me want to start hitting some estate sales.

I don't know how I missed this one in August, but that's some pretty cool hardware. That anvil would be right handy.

Thanks guys, I’m really having fun doing this stuff. I’m trying to get some of it cleaned up for the Sunday after Thanksgiving when my niece and great niece and nephew will be down. They would be my Dad and Granddads, Grandchildren and great grandchildren respectively so it’s part of their history too. I’ll probably let my grandson lead the tour as he likes to try to impress his second cousin when she is around LOL. I got a few pieces done yesterday and a bunch more soaking in “derusting” solution.

Bob you’re right about the anvil, actually this whole area of the shop turned out to be pretty useful when I was building the floor for the Dodge.

It started out by bringing some of the floor pieces in to tweak on the anvil, and of course the vice being right there was handy too. Then when I needed to cut some holes in the floor (3/4” drill bit and hole saw) the slower speed of the post drill run by the electric motor worked far better than my drill press. So it turns out this part of the shop is actually functional too.

You're going to have a "hands-on museum" there Mike! Great thread. I love the old tools. The place where I get my hair cut cast some really old "spanners" in their concrete counter top and polished everything - looks awesome. Maybe a workbench idea for the farm shop??

Regards,
Glenn

With the customers car coming in today or tomorrow I pretty much spent most of the weekend cleaning and painting the tools I brought back a couple of weeks ago. I really wanted to be able to show this stuff to my great nieces and nephews when they come down Thanksgiving. I got everything hung up this morning and feel pretty good about the way everything looks. There sure were a lot of memories associated with this stuff, hopefully to be passed on to a couple more generations now.


















And yes the next project is already on the bench, I've been working on getting the Auto Sparker freed up so I can restore it.

I finished up the last item I brought home, the Auto Sparker (after market generator). I kept soaking it with penetrating oil and crossed my fingers that everything would come apart.......



I got the governor freed up and before I took it apart put power to the output terminals. As a generator if it “motors” then it will generate. It spun right up and the governor even worked.

This is what it now looks like after a bit of cleaning and painting.







Now to work on getting a hit and miss engine to go along with it.

Wow!!! The old tools really cleaned up nice Mike, and the generator is really going to generate some comments and discussions!!! What a great bunch of history and memories to pass along! Thanks for taking the time to do it!

I cleaned up another one of the items I brought back from the farm a couple of weeks ago. At first glance when I picked it up I thought it was an old Model T Buzz Coil (the tag was too dirty to read at the time). For those who don’t know what a Buzz Coil is, basically it’s a high tension coil with a set of points and built in condenser that provides multiple sparks when the circuit is completed........pretty much a primitive MSD. The Model T had four, one for each cylinder Here is a short video of how it works.

Model T Buzz Coil - Induction Coil - YouTube

Well it turns out that it wasn’t a Buzz coil after all, but something called a “Master Vibrator”.



My understanding isthat this was an add on control unit for the early (09-12) Model Ts that was used to eliminate problems adjusting 4 separate sets of points.



Of course I really wasn’t sure what it was after I got it cleaned up, so when I went into the house I did a google search to find out.

Anybody have an idea what comes up when you type “Master Vibrator” into a search egnine?????? Oh yeah, and of course the wife happened to be walking by just when I hit the search button. It was an interesting conversation.

I could imagine that was indeed a moving experience when your wife walked by as you hit search, most definitely a "Kodak" moment.

almost spit my coffee out......!

The parents of a spinster daughter caught her indulging the vibrator on several occasions. Last Sunday the wife walked past the husband sitting on the couch in front of the TV with the vibrator at his side. She said "What in the heck are you doing with our daughter's vibrator?" His response, "I just thought it would be fun to watch the game with my son-in-law."

You can thank Ken Thurm for that one too....................

Oh Bob that's a good one! Early electronics are fascinating stuff, thanks for sharing Mike, never heard of 4 pts. or a master vibrator!

Mike,

Great thread. I love finding old tools and also have some of my grandpa's old tools. Unfortunately, when Grandpa and Grandma moved from the old home in 69 a lot of tools went to the dump. Fortunately, Grandpa did bring some of the old tools to their new place and I have them now. You are doing a fine job of restoring his tools and a fine service for your future generations to view (and use?). Keep up the good work.

Jack.

When I was home in Aug, I finally was able to get my Dads old Waterloo Boy. The engine had last run about 25 years ago and the last time Dad had tried to start it the igniter wouldn’t spark. Dad didn’t get back to getting it running again before he passed away and although my brother had claimed it as his, it just sat down in the old shed and was deteriorated a bit more each year I looked in on it. After some verbal of arm twisting on this trip it came home with me.

Time and neglect had not been kind to the old Waterloo, just to get it out of the shed I needed to free up one of the cart wheels that had rusted solid to the axle.






Dad had originally picked this up from a neighbor in the early 60s as a rusty locked up mass of cast iron and he spent a summer restoring it and then found enough pieces to put together a cart for it. The engine always fascinated me and was probably one of the best learning tools for understanding how an engine works that I had. Besides watching him take it apart, and put it back together I watched my Dad spend a lot of time cross referencing part numbers at the local parts store to figure out what valves and rings he could interchange to actually make it work. I thought he was the smartest guy in the world when he finally found pair of stainless valves that he could cut down and make fit and while he couldn’t get the correct rings he WAS able to find some that were the right size but half the width and just ran 2 rings in each ring land. Looking back I realize now how much I did learn from my old man even though I didn’t see that at the time.


After I got it home, it was $10 in quarters at the car wash (your really don’t want to know what had crawled into the water hopper and died over 25 years) and I unloaded it in the shop and got started on it. The engine would still roll over but had no compression and the igniter was rusted solid. I did a bit of soul searching as to whether to leave what was left of the paint dad had done all those years ago or to re-restore it back to the shape it was in when done got finished with it. Re-restoring it won out as that’s the shape Dad would want it in.


I pulled the head and got the piston and rod out and found stuck rings and rusted valve seats like I expected. The first thing on the agenda was getting the Mag and igniter working...... fortunately that turned out to be mostly freeing it up, cleaning and adjusting.



The piston just required freeing up the rings Dad had installed, a quick hone on the bore, adjusting the piston pin clearance, and the head got a quick valve grind.





Assembly was straight forward, like Dad I had to make a new head gasket for it from high temp composite gasket material (it’s a simple ring so it wasn’t too complicated). I chuckled a bit when I realized that the complete rebuild gasket set for this engine consisted of these four items.


(head gasket, igniter gasket, O rings for the top and bottom of the brass oiler)

I did have someone that was really anxious to see the engine run, but he’s a little young to realize you have to have things like the piston rod and head in it to make it go (you might want to turn the sound down, there’s a lot of back ground noise in this one).

aust eng - YouTube


After the engine was done it was on to the cart. That was a pretty straight forward clean up, replacing all the wood which had started to rot and paint.

In case you’re wondering about the color, it is actually correct for the engine. John Deere bought the Waterloo Gasoline Engine Co in 1918 but continued manufacturing tractors and engines under the Waterloo Boy name for about 5 years, although they did change the colors to green and yellow and cast a stylized JD on the major castings.

Dad never really liked the original handle that he had for the cart as it tended to be a real pain to spread wide enough to pass the mag and fold up over the engine when not in use, when it was down it was too easy to trip over and to take it off required removing the front wheels. I went ahead and made a new handle for it that is a snap to install and remove. I also ended up making a lid for the water hopped to keep critters and grandkids out of it when not in use.





The fuel tank that Dad had put on the engine had rusted out at the bottom, and I suspect it might have been leaking when Dad was still alive as there just happened to be another tank with the engine. It was shorter, but bigger around than the original tank, so it had to be mounted behind the engine rather than under the water hopper. That of course also meant running new fuel lines and a bunch of new brass fittings and valves ( to fully drain the system I had to add drain valves to each end of the line as there’s an inline check valve). I had forgotten how proud the sellers are of their brass fitting and valves LOL.




When Dad originally restored the engine in the 60s it would have required custom painting the logo on the hopper, an expense he just could not justify. With the technology now I decided to go ahead and have the decals for the tank custom made, and also added some lettering to the cart and added a special decal on the front of the engine. The green background on the hopper decal actually matches the engine color it just photographs kind of blue, here’s a scan of it.











That just left making it run. It’s a bit finicky, the timing, choke and fuel have to be just right, but when it is right it just chugs away.

23 Type H - YouTube


The engine now lives with the rest of the old tools I brought back from the family farm …….a LOT of memories there.




(the handle is normally off and sits in the corner unless I need to move the engine around)

One day 50 years ago when Dad was restoring this engine I asked him why he wanted it in the first place. I still remember his comment….. “I just want to hear one run once in a while”. Somewhere I think he’s smiling. I know I do every time I sit in that part of the shop.

.