The 'sicle' that got away!!

[Richard Flanders]

The safety valves were, I think, steam. If I could remember for sure exactly where I found them I could make a better guess. A lot of old mines had wood fired boilers that either directly drove or drove a compressor to drive pumps, saw mills and drills. I'll get you the settings next trip out there, which will be soon. I've found hundreds of those over the years; these were just all in the same spot and begged to be collected. I'll take a pic of my coolest brass apparatus off a steam system that I couldn't resist; it's hanging in the basement rafters. I also have a lot of the glass level tubes and the valves assemblies that hold them + a very cool tool designed to cut the tubing to length - very cool. It works too. Close on the tools in #9 - they do make a core. It's a set of punches, I think for belting, such as on conveyors. Every punch will push out the plug on the next biggest size, which keeps them from getting plugged when you're punching multiple holes on thick belting, and they store nicely when nested. I still use them occasionally; they work well on leather if I clean and sharpen the punching end. You likely know that the nickeled pump behind these punches is for the old lanterns, which are all scattered all over at the old mines. Not sure on the vacuum tube; there's a bunch of them out there; I'll look. Two of what you see in the Dundee crocks(my grandmothers)are light bulbs. No one knows what the 'pressure cooker' in #5 is ???

[Richard Flanders]

Most of the numbers on the old RCA vacuum tubes are worn off or never existed. There's 807 with a white ceramic base, a few with 31, a 231-31x. The one you were referring to has no numbers left. Two of the safety valves are set at 196#, one at 241, one can't read These numbers indicates steam to me vs air. A few more pics, one of the 'tool holder' - certainly someone knows what that is?? I guess I'll have to post a pic of the tools that are used in conjunction with it (first pic here). One pic also of the smaller variety that is at least mounted in the proper orientation - my high school slide ruler is behind it. The Cone "Glocoils" are quite the item. I can tell you those buggers get VERY hot when you power one up. I found a huge stack of these somewhere and brought two unused ones home.

[Bindlestiff]

A saw tooth set and saw vise

[Richard Flanders]

Correct Robin. I thought that one would be easier than it was. For anyone who uses hand saws and does not sharpen their own I'd highly suggest getting a saw setting tool and trying it. It doesn't take long and it's impressive how much you can improve a factory sharpening job yourself.

No one knows what #5 is, eh? Ok. It's a mercury retort. At a gold mine you have a copper plate that is wiped with amalgam of mercury and silver. The very very fine gold gets grabbed by the amalgam as it washes over it in a thin sheet of water and when you clean up you scrape this all of and put it into this iron retort, crank the lid on tight and put it into the blacksmith forge. A pipe connects to the lid and goes into a bucket of water. When the mercury vaporizes off it goes down into the water and condenses to a harmless liquid(or solid depending upon who you ask) again, preventing the breathing of mercury vapors by the operators, leaving the gold in the retort. The gold if melted is then either poured into a dore bar or if not melted and is in "sponge" form, is put into a crucible in an oven for final 'cleaning' and poured from there. This is a very small retort and the lid goes to even a smaller one. I have a much bigger one in my blacksmithing pile and at the mine we have one that has an 8ft long two-man handle set blacksmithed from drill steel on it and must weigh at least 100#. Small retorts like this are also used by folks who pan gold and put a bit of mercury into the pan of gravel to pick up every tiny speck of gold.

[edgarspencer]

The funky brass thing in 5, above, is a hydrostatic lubricator, used on steam engines. as condensate enters through the top connection, it displaces cylinder oil, which flows out the side connection. Engines running at higher pressures need cylinder and valve lubrication, but at lower pressure, the steam is 'wetter'.
The resistor coils are most commonly used for space heaters. but they are also used in generator field controls.

[Richard Flanders]

Edgar: I think that where I found the Glocoils they were as you suggest used as in a load bank mode. If I remember correctly there was at least 20 of these mounted openly on some kind of asbestos like board in the genshack. They sure wouldn't have needed heat in there.

I figured you might know what the brass thingy was. I only knew that it came off a boiler system.