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B&D-169 Price: $45.00 plus shipping This brace was made from wrought-iron bar stock by forging to produce the wrist handle and chuck shape and then bending to produce the double-crank configuration. The cast-iron head was then stamped with the number 16 and fitted to the reduced-diameter stem with a washer staked onto the end of the stem, followed by fitting a cast bronze cap threaded into the head. The cap also is stamped with the number 16, as there was an intermediate step, perhaps painting, which required that the bronze cap be removed and later replaced onto the brace to which it had originally been fitted. Caps and braces only went together without further fitting if they were returned to their matched pairs after this intermediate step. These batch numbers indicate manufacture with hand fitting of hand-matched parts rather than assembly of parts made to standardized gauges, a practice that was made obsolete by the greatly increased volume of machine work necessitated by America's civil war of the late 1860's. I have a Pratt & Whitney metal planer marked with the number 8 on most of its parts; when I took the machine all apart for cleaning & painting, I found that all the nuts and bolts only went together one way, as they would not fit any other way, so I got it all back together with no leftover parts and no ill-fitting parts. The manner in which the head was assembled and fastened to the brace may have been patented long ago, but I could find only Abel Streeter's U.S. Patent No. 12,289 which illustrates the method without making any claims relating to that method. The A.T.W. mark can be found in the Directory of American Toolmakers (DAT) edited by the late Bob Nelson and published by the Early American Industries Association; that firm made mallets in Massachusetts. The DAT also lists an American Tool Works, where Jeremiah Day made blacksmith tools in San Francisco, California between 1887 and 1909. The brace is completely functional and hardly worn at all, but needs a setscrew matching the present threads in the chuck. |
