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I love good old tools, ones that were made from fine materials such as brass, steel, and hard woods. As I mentioned in my last posting, these tools can endure much abuse, several owners, and can still be brought back to their original glamour and functionality. Stay tuned to my blog where I will post some tips on how you can do this. In the meantime, let me whet your appetite by showing some before and afters of a tool that I recently found on eBay and restored.
This is the Stanley # 62 as it arrived with the $5.00 tool lot that I won on eBay. Can you see the diamond in the rough?
It was in perfectly functional condition, but I wanted to clean it up, polish its brass joints and highlight its inch marking. Measurement marks engraved on wood can be very sensitive. Therefore, it is very important to be careful when cleaning the wood. If the folding ruler wooden arms did not have inch engraving I would have used fine steel wool and mineral spirit. But, because of the engravings, I decided on a soft cotton rag moistened with mineral spirit.
For the brass parts I administered steel wool plus mineral spirit. In really tarnished areas I replaced the steel wool with 400 and 600 grit wet/dry sand paper.
Here is the outcome:
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