Over the last couple of weekends we have been sorting out FILs shed.

FIL passed away about 12 years ago and one of his interests was restoring furniture so I thought he only had woodies tools but knowing how old some of them were and that the house faced the beach ie rust city, I (with permission from the family) got in there and rescued some of the more vintage stuff. I did up some of the handsaws and other bibs and bobs - at least removed the rust and protected the exposed metallic surfaces.

The most useful things I found at the time was a set of large square BSP dies and a large die holder, these would been at least 90 years old because they date back to SWMBO's great grandfather. These items were packed in oilcloth and were in very good condition. I have since used them a fair bit, especially when I plumbed the 1/2" galv pipe for my shed compressed air.

I knew nothing would happen to the rest of the shed contents until MIL passed away and the relatives would want to clean up to sell the house. The 8 x 4m shed was full of mostly junk and I took away several van loads of poisons, scrap metal, glass, paint, cardboard and e-waste. There is still a skip's worth of stuff to dispose of.

I collected up FILs remaining very rust tools and nothing appeared to be of any interest. However, almost over looked and tossed out was bundle of bits of rusty metal wrapped in a somewhat soggy (1980) newspaper - the year they moved into that house on retirement. The newspaper was stuffed into a small wooden box, marked with the last address of SWMBO's great grandfather and held a rusty set of 1.5" P&N BSW dies and die holder.
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Sorry about the crappy photo - can't go back and take this one again - anyway you get the picture of how rusty they were.

And after 3 hours in citric acid an a light buff on a Scotchbrite wheel.
The die handle size is one I have been after for a while and the jaws look to be in good nick.
It's a GTD NO5 Tap holder (Greenfield Mass. USA) - there are quite a few of these on ebay.
It moves smoothly and closes up very tightly on taps.
Dies are 3/16 to 1/3 BSW.
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Attached Images




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