QUESTIONS

Collecting old tools often raises questions not easily answered.  We’ve all got them.  Here are some examples of questions from my personal collecting experiences.

I have been collecting all sorts of marking gauges for sixteen plus years.  When I began my collecting journey I knew very little about the various types of gauges or their makers.  These little tools just appealed to me.  Buying Milton Bacheller’s book, ‘American Marking Gages Patented And Manufactured,’ got me started and going in the right direction.  But, when gauges began to accumulate on my shelves the gauges themselves began to raise a few questions in my mind.  The following are three pairs of gauges that illustrate a similar question.

There are always certain specific tools in every collecting category that are well known and desirable.  For example, the Stanley No. 1 smooth plane is one that every collector of Stanley planes wants in his or her collection.  Well, there are three patented marking gauges most gauge collectors hope to find. The first is the Christian Sholl, Joiners’ Gage,  Patented March 8, 1864. The second is John A. Marden’s, Improvement In Gauges, Patented April 16^th, 1872. The last one is the George H. Thompson, Gage For Carpenters, Patented October 2, 1900.  These three gauges obviously were on my wish list, too. 

During the first few years of collecting I was able to purchase examples of all three of these gauges.  Then one day I was walking through a huge south Florida flea market in search of, what else, tools.  It took hours of trudging up and down the rows of vendors looking for that tucked away treasure.  Near the end of the day I came across a seller in the very last row.  On his table, among all his other stuff, was a beautiful unmarked marking gauge.  We discussed the tool but neither he nor I could identify the maker of the gauge.  After some consideration on my part and goodnatured haggling I purchased the gauge and took it home.  Although unmarked, I soon realized this gauge had many of the same features as the Thompson gauge mentioned earlier but it was of better quality and definitely more attractive.  When I compared it to the patent drawing for the Thompson gauge I realized that this new purchase was made exactly like the patent drawing.  The common examples we all have on our shelves, however, had departed from the drawing.  The main difference between the two examples is that the patent drawing shows a square,  hollow, brass bar with an internal mechanism to adjust the scratch point while the traditional example has a wooden bar and flat slide to do the job. 

See Photos 1 through 3.