What can I say, it keeps me out of the taverns.

Todays episode has us cleaning up a Barnes #2 Pipe Cutter that was in the huge pile of crap I got from Old Grumpy across the street a while back.

This thing was freakin’ NASTY.

That’s after a preliminary cleaning just so I could evaluate it.

Notice you can kind of see daylight in between those cutter wheels?

Yeah, the whole head was jammed COMPLETELY SOLID with at least eighty years worth of dirt, rust and dried out grease.

I literally had to dig it out with picks and little screwdrivers.

An overnight soak in EvapORust helped soften it all up and made it easier to get out.

It was really, really bad.

If I had to guess the thing hadn’t been used in at least fifty years judging by the condition and it’s location at the bottom of a box full of other rusty junk tools I have yet to do anything with.

After I finally got it cleaned up I started looking it over and found this mess.

So I got on Teh Google and did a quick search. That led me to the Vintage Machinery website where Keith Rucker has a searchable data base for old tools and machinery.

That thing is a huge repository of almost impossible to find information about this old stuff.

Near as I can tell, these things were first Patented clear back in 1883.

Looking closely at the stamping on this thing, I see an 1884 date.

Either way, this Pipe Cutter is more than likely way, way over 100 years old.

I’m betting it was Old Grumpy’s Father’s.

Hard to say, Chuck is 86 years old himself now but this is 2022.

That means he was born clear the hell back in 1936 according to my handy Calculus Translator.

Depending on when it was actually sold, it could be fifty years older than he is.

But it actually cleaned up pretty good and I’m sure it would cut pipe just fine.

I put some Never Seize on the threads and sprayed it down with WD-40 after I got it back together. Now it is going in the bottom of one of my tool boxes against the long odds that I will ever need to use it but at least I know it didn’t wind up in the scrap barrel where he was going to dump it.