The Lugzsonian - A Virtual Tour

[Private Lugnutz]

It filled up very easily and quickly! Maybe even too easily and quickly. But I can see myself rotating from time to time the tools and tool-sets and boxes that I decided to display here now with others that are still in storage in the tall white cabinet or behind the Army blanket and tool outline "curtains" on the workbenches.

 

[Private Lugnutz]

I've got all my antique, oddball, special, or otherwise interesting screwdrivers sticking out of a giant socket on this just-below-eye level shelf, not unlike a bouquet of flowers in a vase, surrounded, as my mind is wont to do, by related tools. Auger bits, threaders, thread files, E-Z-Outs, reamers, and such. See Pic 1.

In the middle is my very small Winchester collection. See Pic 2.

And on the right, my H.D. Smith "Perfect Handle" collection. See Pic 3.

 

[Private Lugnutz]

On the shelf below that are some of my midget socket sets, along with a very early Gray 1/2-inch drive set that I didn't have a better place for and just couldn't bring myself to relegate to the locker cabinet. See Pic 1.

The shelf below that is all Snap-on or Blue-Point. See Pic 2.

 

[Private Lugnutz]

Swinging around to the other section of the L-island, which is just behind me when I am standing or sitting on a stool at the workbench, I have some of my Plomb Empire stuff on two shelves on top of each other. See Pic 1.

In the opposite corners of the Plomb Empire tools are some of my favorite adjustable wrenches... See Pic 2.

...and some of my Duro-Inestro tools. See Pic 3.

Fairmount tools (see Pic 4) share the bottom shelf with a Packer Auto "RAY" socket set. See Pic 5.

 

[Private Lugnutz]

The advantage of having these shelving units in the middle, in an L-shaped configuration, rather than against the wall, is that I can use the other, white side of the pegboard for hanging things, and walk all the way around the entire shelving unit island, just as we've been doing so far in the tour.

I think I'll save the backside of the shelving unit (I have to admit, I sometimes think of it as the front, and the shelves as the back!) for tomorrow.

But I am using the ends, too.

You may have noticed the near end before (see Pic 1), where I am hanging my vintage J.P. Danielson BET'R GRIP adjustable wrench collection (4", 6", 8", 10" and 12") from a vintage Fleet Quality Tools rack (see Pic 2), my vintage Half-Moon wrench collection (go ahead and think/say it, a weird thing to decide to collect - eighteen and counting, no dupes)(see Pic 3), and a few of my vintage double-offset double box end (DBE) wrench sets, including a Hinsdale set, a mysterious Chromium Vanadium set, an even more mysterious but assuredly German-made beautiful Chrom-Vanadium set, a King **** set, and a Plomb 81xx set (see Pic 4).

 

[Private Lugnutz]

And on the other end of the L, facing the Wright Field chest and barristers, I am hanging my antique Walden-Worcester Tee and Offset fixed socket handles (see Pic 1), my Keystone "S" adjustable wrench collection (still looking, like 9 out of 10 collectors, for the 4-incher) (see Pic 2), and my Masterench collection, with room for completion on those empty 14" and 18" pegs (see Pic 3).

 

[outofbounds]

This is the only area of the Lugzsonian I am disappointed in at this point. Not the contents, but "the furniture" - which is the sagging leftover frame of a cheap old rickety wooden cabinet .......

Too bad that Hercules ratchet isn't a wee bit longer, would make for a perfect prop to hold that cabinet in a more proud posture.

Read your missives about Palmerton. I drive up and down the "NE Turnpike Connector" (I-476) reasonably often for work between Allentown/Bethlehem & Wilkes-Barre. A lot of people never realize just how beautiful that part of PA really is. When construction is down on that two lane freeway, it is about as pleasant a drive as there is.

Must have been a terrific place to grow up.

 

[Private Lugnutz]

Too bad that Hercules ratchet isn't a wee bit longer, would make for a perfect prop to hold that cabinet in a more proud posture.

Oh, I thought about it, with a cleat and cutout or something.

Must have been a terrific place to grow up.

It was. Industrial, for sure. Anyone who knows the area would have to admit that upfront. Palmerton is on the south end of Carbon County, which is dotted, as the name suggests, with abandoned anthracite mines. The Zinc Company plants I referred to several times infamously denuded the Blue Mountain on the south slopes and often left an unmistakable fine coat of silt on everything, especially windshields. (In a neat twist of fate, the chemical analysis lab in town, near the headquarters building, where they worked on pigments, with a large mechanical test rack on its property that looked like a giant paint color guide at a hardware store, working in collaboration with the EPA on one of the country's first Superfund sites, invented a fertilizer to promote fast undergrowth that is now used worldwide.)

But the area was also an outdoorsman's paradise, because of all the lakes, streams, dairy farms, state gamelands, and plain old "woods," which provided buffers between the small, industrial towns. Trout streams galore, pheasant, grouse, and of course more deer than squirrels. Put it this way, there was a shooting range in the basement of the borough hall, and school was officially closed on the first day of the season.

One more anecdote: one of my regular chores, inherited from my older brothers, and passed on to my younger brother was spring water duty. The pipes were everywhere. They were just pounded into the openings between layers of shale in a rocky crag near a road here and there by who knows who a long time ago. But you just pulled up, parked, stuck your empty bottles or milk cartons or what have you under the spout until they were full. Cold, tasty - and FREE!

Difference between then and now, between PA and NJ, I guess. Here you have to pay for someone to do that for you in a more sophisticated setup in a building owned by a company, or have it delivered.

I'm totally confused by the present tense of the word "drive" in your post, though, and by the location in your avatar, and by the fact that I know your CL and estate sale tool pickin' grounds is in Michigan.

But if you are currently often driving "the Northeast extension" for work, when you're entering or exiting the Blue Mountain tunnel on the north end, look to your right (when northbound) or left (when southbound) and you will be looking westward right down the Lehigh river toward Palmerton. And if you ever want to see some hawks, get off in Lehighton, make your way to Ashfield and a dirt road that will take you to a little cutout parking area and a short hike up to Bake Oven Knob, a natural grouping of boulders and rocks like the more famous sunbathing spots in the Tatras. It is under a major migratory flightway.

Thanks for the memories!

EDIT: But whaddaya think of that L-shaped shelving display?!

 

[Shiftless]

Lugz:
Your pegboard display spaces look great!
You’re really making good use of your available space. Using pegboard display space as the backing of your erector set shelving units is a great idea. Providing a back on those shelves makes the contents much more noticeable compared to ordinary open shelving as well as adding rigidity and keeping stuff from falling off the back edge.

 

[Private Lugnutz]

Hey, Shiftless - thanks, and thanks for getting us off the nostalgic road trip home and back to NJ and the "present" (although I often feel like I'm ensconced in a time capsule down there!).

And thanks for ticking off all the sound structural, secondary visual, and third order effects of the methodology to my madness!

Having a space to do something like this was my primary motivation! :

 

[Private Lugnutz]

Currently, that's my Champion DeArment collection (see Pic 1), my Gruber Wagon Works collection (if you're not familiar, GWW, now a National Historic Landmark, made ornate working and works-of-art wagons in the late 1800's, and tried to lift-and-shift their business to paneled truck cabs and fixed socket wrenches in the 'Brass' era of the early automobile; more info in my thread here)(see Pic 2), my Wm. Schollhorn "BERNARD" pliers collection (see Pic 3), and my live, actualized recreation of an article on "Wrenches" in an 1899 issue of The Metal Worker journal, which you can read more about here (see Pic 4).

All the tools are on placards bearing drawings or figures of the tool from catalogs, or in the case of the Metal Worker journal, figures from the article.

 

[Private Lugnutz]

Here's a couple close-ups for a better look at what I'm referring to...

 

[Shiftless]

I really like the pages bearing the story of each tool under the tool itself. Museum quality.
I wish I had the space to do that here. Too many shelves full of vises.

What’s the back story on this particular wrench? I have one in my much more modest antique wrench collection. I posted of mine a pic on a thread in the vintage tool area.

https://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=469804

 

[Private Lugnutz]

I really like the pages bearing the story of each tool under the tool itself. Museum quality.

Thanks! The placards are mostly excerpts from catalogs printed, cut out, and glued on foam board, but the wrenches on the right are resting on hooks over excerpts of paragraphs from the article on "Wrenches" in an 1899 issue of the Metal Worker.

The "museum" look is what I was going for! I'm really not trying to pretentiously kid myself or anyone else, it's a basement, and it's the back of a shelving unit, but that's what I like about it. It's just as functional as hanging them up over a workbench, just a little more museum like.

I wish I had the space to do that here. Too many shelves full of vises.

Yeah, I've seen glimpses of your Victorian "parlor" of clamping wonders!

What’s the back story on this particular wrench? I have one in my much more modest antique wrench collection. I posted of mine a pic on a thread in the vintage tool area.

It's a combination wrench, first patented by A.B. Davis in Philly in 1869. The intent was pretty simple: pipe wrench on one side, nut and bolt wrench on the other. Yours looks like it might be a Bemis & Call, which is what I have, patented (145,89) just a few years later in 1873 as an improvement on the Davis. It really set the standard for years to come. Those pipe jaw inserts can be used to date them. If it has a screw it's pre-1890-ish. If it has a pin, it's after that. Mine - which has a lot of, um, er, character, has a pin. How 'bout yours?

 

[Shiftless]

Lugz:
You asked...
“ How 'bout yours?”

Mine, with a close up shown below, has a pin. So mine is clearly not 19th century but 20th century. Do you have a rough idea when these wrenches went out of production?

Your wrench looks shorter. 12 inches right?
I seem to have the larger size at 16 inches. Do the stamped in numbers on the shank mean anything? I see a 3 and a 2 on yours and a 7 on mine.

 

[Private Lugnutz]

I don't know when they went out of production, and I don't know what the numbers signify, but B&C monkey and combination wrenches all seem to have them.

 

[Private Lugnutz]

I also get down the parkway occasionally to Lakewood NJ and connect that to points in and around Philadelphia.

Well, if it was last year I would've directed you to a flea market on Rt 70 in Lakewood. Used to be my Wednesday stop and my second Friday stop on my way to work at Lakehurst. It got flattened and is being landscaped for condominium construction. You do pass a good one on the GSP South just off Exit 100 on Fridays. Let me know next time you're going to be here.

 

[Garagefffreak]

This is fantastic! I bet you can smell the metal and the metal grease as you walk in and feel like you teleported in the past!

I think that you should get a 360 camera or something like that. I don't know how it works but if you made a virtual tour and hosted it somewhere like a website or something that would be amazing!

 

[JoCoSawdust]

I really like the tiered shelving/pegboard approach Lugz. You're really getting a lot of storage/display space out of a small space. The tool image/description addition is a great touch.

 

[Private Lugnutz]

I really like the tiered shelving/pegboard approach Lugz. You're really getting a lot of storage/display space out of a small space.

Thanks. I didn't buy the shelving for this purpose. Actually, I didn't buy them at all. I am re-purposing them from other parts of the basement and garage, they were here when I moved in back in 1989, and I did at one point lament that they weren't about 6 inches wider.

You may have noticed that no one shelf has two toolboxes or attache style socket set boxes on it side by side. That's because they wouldn't fit. I had to go with toolboxes on one side, loose tools on the other. And in hindsight, that's probably better for mixing things up. The very top shelves are actually at eye level, but that's actually too high for proper display, because you have no look-down angle, and if it was a toolbox, for example, you couldn't actually see into it if the lid was up.

I've got my little collection of flaring tools, along with some tube cutters and benders, on one top shelf. See Pic 1. It may seem to most people like an odd thing to collect as a collectible, but as soon as I became aware of more than one design approach, I was fascinated by the different approaches that various OEM's took to achieving the same result. For example, that's a Walden-Worcester, an Edlemann, a Reed, a Parker, and an Imperial Brass, no two alike.

On the other top shelf, I have my Precision-Bilt Master Wrench Set and some Hinsdale sets, including my recreation of Todd's WWI Bacon Can set. See Pic 2. Even if you were 6'2", you'd have to duck because of the joists overhead, and you really can't see them well. But I can see enough of them to know they're there and they're visible enough and easy enough to get down to please the inquiring mind of a curious guest.

At the bottom of the L-shaped shelving unit island, you may have noticed I left the pegboard short.

Those shelves, just inches off the ground, are way too low for proper display purposes, but I can put many boxes and kits and cases and things lengthwise, side by side, than I could if the pegboard went all the way to the bottom. So, sort of pseudo storage / pseudo display. See Pics 3 & 4.

If I want to move that Williams 3/8-inch drive socket box and set up and open the lid, I can swap it out with something else, such as the Fairmount tools, for example. When I sell off my Plomb collection, I can move that black leather Knickerbocker repairman's tool box (for vintage Made in England Gestetner Cyclographs or "copy machines") up to one of those shelves!

I am using the other bottom shelf for tap and die stuff right now.

Believe me when I say that loading the shelves, deciding what would stay, and what would go back in their cubbards, and where things would be located on which shelves, was very much a day of trial and error, involving dimensions, fit, aesthetics and my own sense of priorities. Even though I know I can move them, change them out, and rotate them - from a low shelf to a better shelf, from behind cabinet doors and out from under workbenches to shelves, and vice versa, it really tested my personal "1 to n" list.

 

[Private Lugnutz]

The tool image/description addition is a great touch.

Thanks. In a way I think it was just a natural outcome of a trait and behavior we all know, share, and love as vintage collectors. What do we do with a new find? We look through vintage catalogs and try to match it up! In a way, I am just actualizing what we do, what I have done with the very same tools, virtually, in so many posts right here on GJ. So it's sort of a physical manifestation of my virtual participation. (Frankly, I'm not 100% enamored with the foamboard backing on the placards. Even though I used a very sharp utility knife and a straight edge, due to some indiscriminately placed hard pellets inside the foam, I would hit snags from time to time that created some rough edges. But it was inexpensive without being crass and I think the overall effect hides the flaws.)

It also adds some color, and, of course I knew it would play up the "Personal Museum" theme.

Lastly, I do have an obvious predilection for tool outlines, and the images on the catalog and trade journal article pegboard placards fit right in to the overall look and feel of the place.

 

[Private Lugnutz]

This is fantastic! I bet you can smell the metal and the metal grease as you walk in and feel like you teleported in the past!

The smell of so many tools in one small space is definitely a strong part of the 'time machine' effects, Garagefffreak. I will hasten to add, that if you don't savor eau de WD40 or the fragrance of Fluid Film, you won't like being down here! That and the occasional spider cricket help keep Mrs. Lugz away.

I think that you should get a 360 camera or something like that.

That would be cool. On the other hand, it's a lot to take in all at once.

This thread goes back to conversations a few of us have been having about showing our man-caves or garages or shops or whereever it is we keep all our vintage tools. The delay is often not so much a factor of desire as it is of cleaning the dang place up and making it look presentable!

Honestly, when I first thought about starting a thread, I thought it would be a general topic thread, with 1 post containing an introduction, several photos of the Lugzsonian from different angles, and an invitation for others to post their own photos. But I'm gad I did it this way instead. It was too much for one post, and now others (talking about you, Beemer, and you JoCo, and you, Rileysan, and you Username already in use, and you, OTG, and you etc etc ) can have their own threads. I am looking forward to all of them!

But, now that we've walked all the way around the middle, and seen the middle, too, here are a few photos I originally snapped from inside the Lugzsonian looking in different directions before I decided to do a full-blown tour.

 

[Private Lugnutz]

The Curator would like to note that despite the Tour Guide's crescendo of posts and panoramic views and his finale tone of wrapping things up, there are still a few more features to see. The most important feature, in fact.

 

[harley jim]

What a place you have put together. I really enjoy this tour and the tools are fantastic.

Sent from my SM-A102U using The Garage Journal mobile app

 

[30 Buford]

Lugz You sure have some Cool unusual tools and stuff . Everything is displayed in such a clean and neat place . That makes the difference everything looks so nice and neat. Thanks again for sharing all of your great finds . ,B


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[Private Lugnutz]

What a place you have put together. I really enjoy this tour and the tools are fantastic.

Thank you, sir!

Everything is displayed in such a clean and neat place. That makes the difference everything looks so nice and neat.

Thanks. And at the risk of conceit, I am going to heartily agree with you!

But you have to understand that it didn't always look like this. In fact, it has looked like this for only about one week earlier than I started the thread! Seriously.

Guys here who have known me well from many different threads know that I have been talking about doing something about the mess that I was previously operating in for quite some time. When Duddly said earlier in the thread, probably back on page 1, that I had been "busy", that's what he was referring to.

I have been lamenting the state of the Lugzsonian for years and I made it my New Year's Resolution last year to do something about it this year. I set out to buy anything suitable (time period wise, and functionally) that I ran into in the wild on my flea market trips that I could use for display space - and that's where the Globe-Wernicke barristers came from. The Wright Field chest came from a true friend and fellow GJ'er who spotted it in a CL ad in the Cincinnati area. That antique barbershop case with the cut glass front was free, spotted on the curb for bulk pickup when walking my dog! Nobody answered my challenge - but that wooden rack that the tappet wrenches are in? That is originally for LP album sleeves! Probably from the 50's. All those things and the shelving/pegboard unit in the middle changed everything.

All the tools you see out in that "furniture" was hidden before in cabinets or under the workbenches behind those GMTK Tool Outline inspection layouts. (I still have some things under there which the layouts help keep the dust off.) Or, and more accurately, laying about in piles or in bins.

So in many ways, I am showing this, celebrating my achievement, and just beginning to enjoy it all at the same time!

 

[Private Lugnutz]

Before I get to the feature 'the Curator' considers the most essential, let's talk about this steel-framed canvas bin on wooden skids you may have already caught glimpses of in some of the other photos.

I tend to park it in the intersection of the "L", because it gets in the way everywhere else. I picked it up at a flea market on this side of the river, but closer to Philly, and I use it as a catch-all bin for anything I don't yet know for sure what I am going to do with. Store, keep, sell, junk, display, put somewhere else, etc? No problem. Just chuck it in the "WARP ROOM bin.

I love the antique lettering.

 

[Private Lugnutz]

The English language can be a funny, magical thing, especially across time. The "WARP ROOM" bin is a good example. My son found the name pretty funny, and when I asked him why, I discovered that it's a common term in several video games for the place where you go to decide what level you're going to try next. Google "Warp Room" right now and I bet it takes you to a game called Crash Bandicoot.

In the context of this bin and the Lugzsonian, it certainly refers to a room in a classic textile mill where cotton (or wool, or silk, or other material...) would go after the Spinning Room, and before the Weaving Room. And I am certain it came out of one of the textile mills in Philadelphia.

When we think of textiles and history, we think of New Orleans, and New England, for good reason. But it all actually started in Philadelphia, and Philadelphia is still an academic center of gravity for textiles (research, development, merchandising, etc). The Philadelphia Textile Institute, once known as the Philadelphia College of Textile and Science, and still called simply "Philadelphia Textile" in the area has a great information page on its website, but this one, linked here, is also very good, and shorter.

There weren't seventy-seven Warp Rooms in a mill. There was one. Maybe two in the largest mills. The #77 on my bin is a reference to a machine and also to the machine tender that this bin would've been located next to. The fact that were seventy-seven machines, at least, in a Warp Room, blows my mind.

 

[Private Lugnutz]

Other than the Second (Second Man in charge after the Overseer, also a man), this bin almost certainly had many more women's hands on it in its lifetime than men's hands, because Warp Rooms were "manned" almost exclusively by women. See Pics 1 & 2.

Warp Rooms were also significant, because it was one of the first places the bookkeepers could begin to have a quantifiable measure of 'the stock' (which until then was just bales), in what quantities and at what rate it was being turned into weaveable product, and which employees were making what quantities at what rate, which was recorded on tickets. So Warp Rooms are often mentioned in the long sordid history of labor strife in our country. See Pic 3.

As to be expected for the times, they were not always safe places, and I ran into a lot of court cases in my research about lung disease (poor ventilation) and mechanical accidents in Warp Rooms. See Pic 4.

It's also interesting how people were identified, even in social settings, by the rooms they worked in at the mill. See Pic 5.

My grandmother was a seamstress at a local factory in Palmerton when I was young, and some of my earliest, fondest memories are taking our blue jeans to her house for her to patch up at the knees for us on her old treadle Singer. Often we would be sent down the basement to shovel some coal into the furnace while we waited. Funny (and a little sickening...) how today, people pay good money to buy jeans with holes. In those days, we only had three pairs of pants. Church, school, and play. And you didn't throw them away when they just needed a little mending. Maybe some of you can relate.

 

[Private Lugnutz]

Anyway, to close the loop, so to speak, on the Warp Room bin. Besides it being a handy place to drop a stray tool with an undetermined future, I do have some textile mill wrenches in the Lugzsonian, so there's that sense of context and thematic connectedness I like to maintain. Not as major as some of the other themes running through the place, but it's there.

Here are a few of them...

 

[ray h]

What a fantastic job in displaying your treasures and giving us an insight into your world. I'm ashame I just read this yesterday. I'm also surprised that's there not a 5 star rating. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Private Lugnutz]

Thanks, ray. I appreciate the appreciation.

 

[Shiftless]

What a fantastic job in displaying your treasures and giving us an insight into your world. I'm ashame I just read this yesterday. I'm also surprised that's there not a 5 star rating. Thanks for sharing.

I agree. Your space is fantastic! And your description and photography brings us all into your basement, if not in body, at least in spirit.

.

 

[Private Lugnutz]

Part office, part workshop, and part museum, but all historical, all the time, the "reference library" is the feature that the Curator considers the most essential to the operations of the Lugzsonian.

With good reason.

We like to say "it's all about the hunt," and it's true, but the hunt often doesn't stop with the find. Like archeology, most of the work is identifying, dating, and classifying. And that takes reference material. In today's day and age, a lot of that is done on-line. Between the Internet Archive, Google Books, DATAMP, the USPTO, and the tireless search and generosity of GJ catalog and advertising collectors, most research can be done sitting in front of your computer screen. But it's nice to have physical books and other material. Because they are collectible items in their own right, even the library in the Lugzsonian serves a dual-purpose: functional and aesthetic.

The book case itself is a small wartime footlocker sitting on its frontside. That is the lid lifted up, and if I am creating a lot of dust, I can close it like a cabinet.

 

[Farmer J.]

You're 'right on' about the 'Warp Room' Lugz.
When my old Land Rover gets up to cruising speed the kids always said we were at 'Warp Factor' something!
And about the Jeans with holes.. I was so pleased to get new patches on my worn Jeans, I still keep some old Levis which were patched for me years ago by a very kind and skilful farmers wife in Manitoba. A Mennonite, she wasn't going to let good clothes go to waste.

 

[Private Lugnutz]

Then again, not everything is on-line, and some of the materials in my library aren't available anywhere else, not even in actual libraries, and these references have been crucial in my research.

These 1939 Federal Specifications, containing anything and everything that federal agencies - including the military branches, were acquiring just before the war, from Acetone to Zinc oxide, are a good example.

 

[Private Lugnutz]

Here are some examples selected randomly just to give you a feel for the contents.

 

[Private Lugnutz]

This 1944 publication has also been quite helpful.

 

[Private Lugnutz]

There are actual period shop manuals that come in handy (see Pic 1), while some of the books are antiques themselves (see Pics 2, 3, & 4).

 

[Private Lugnutz]

Some of the shop books are pretty basic, and I just have them for the vintage graphics or their collectibility. This one from 1943 is interesting, historically. Most people don't realize that our entry into WWII and the massive swell of enlistments that Pearl Harbor prompted created a huge dearth of men with mechanical aptitude to work in mills and factories for the war. The War Production Board had an education program in cooperation with states, especially those with major depots and manufacturing centers. That's what this book is from.

And check out the bottom of this form (see Pics 4, 5, & especially 6) that I found inside trying to keep track of missing tool room tools. Some things never change.