Art & Inspiration Whats your sentimental shop item?

I suspect that most of us have an item or two in our shop that has significant sentimental value. While I have a few things that could be considered somewhat valuable , they can all be replaced , but there are a couple of things that really mean a lot to just me. I was a participant in the 2003 Rod And Custom "Ego-rama" http://www.hotrod.com/events/coverage/135-0404-asphalt-ego-rama-iii/ (most fun I've ever had in a car) and this flag was used in our display at the Good Guys show in Scottsdale Arizona at the end of the competition . When the show was over everybody just packed up and left so I rescued this flag. I like it. What have you got?

 

Mine is the vice that was my Grandpa's.

 

Theres an onion slicer that makes me cry.

 

I also have a vice that belonged to my grandfather, although I barely knew him, he passed away when I was very young.
I have a set of combination wrenches I bought back in my bicycle days, I was 13.

 

I still use my Dads old red Montgomery Wards buzz box stick welder. He bought it out of the catalog, and we drove our 1953 chevy down to Laffayette Indiana to pick it up at the big store. We also ate at McDonalds sure was a neat treat for a little kid! Thanks Dad

 

I guess the oldest thing in my shop that means a lot to me would be a anvil that is at least a 150 years and belonged to my great grandfather.

I was hammering on it yesterday. HRP

 

I am blessed to have a collection of Grandfathers tools. I filled my tool boxes with Grandpa Floyd's tools when he passed. I also have my Grandpa Les's South Bend lathe that came from his gun shop. And an anvil from a great grandfather, that is made from Nickel Plate Road rail. The tools have more experience the the mechanic!

 

My submission would also be tools once owned by my father. I never get rid of any tools but the ones I got from him would be the last thing I would part with in a pinch.

 

The only tools sentimental to me are those that belonged to my Dad. All the rest can be replaced.

 

tools and repair books from the grandfathers . and a Wally from a divisional race years back . thats packed in a box . and a time slip from US 30 In gary the last year it was open ( 1984 and my first run down a drag strip )

 

A sign I acquired in 1970. Both of the friends with me that night,the house I lived in and the one parent at home all gone now. Hanging in the garage I look at it and think of times and people gone.......sorry, a bit down today.

 

A claw hammer that Dad re handled for me. A contractor borrowed it and left with it. I tracked him down and made him return it. He couldn't understand, said it was "just a hammer"

 

A 56 belair I gave my dad in 85. the family gave it back to me when he past away afew years ago. It needs some work but just cant change it yet.

 

My grandfather's Starrett 1-inch micrometer (he was a machinist with a shop in Denver when my mother was born), and a stamped metal stool that my dad sat on while tinkering in a shed adjacent to our old farmhouse back in the 1950s. Anytime I pull that stool across the floor, it makes a hollow, scraping noise that brings back memories more than 60 years old.

 

I have tools that belonged to my father, father-in-law and grandfather, they all carry memories

 

My Grandmothers, dressmakers square she used at the Glasgow School of Design when she got her degree in clothing design in 1928. Used all the time for layouts and templates.

 

I have a Pennsoil sponsored "BREMERTON RACEWAY" sign hanging on the wall; I've been offered $$$ for it, but it's not going anywhere. I spent 4 years with the club that operates the track, 88-92. Then there's one of the original finish line win lights from the track that I use just as lighting. I also have a "Southern" flag, that hangs from the rafters, that was given to me by classmates of my X-Ray school class in Tyler, Texas, and it's just a flag, not a racist symbol to me in any way. My old Craftsman torque wrench finally died, and I replaced it with two identical ones I bought off of E-Bay. Bought the original in the early 70's, and I can't remember how many engines I put together using it. I am Butch/56sedandelivery.

 

A 1/4" drive SK socket set that was my fathers.

He taught auto mechanics to the troops going overseas during the second war. The set was a present to him from one of his classes before they left for Europe.

Irreplacable.

Canuck

 

I've got all of Dad's carpentry tools, and the SEARS compressor he bought around 1960-61. I bought a new hose for it last month, need to go through it , maybe get a new water separator. Still have the NEW one he bought maybe around 1975-80, we could never use it because the house needed 220 or whatever to run. Built our house in '78, maybe I'll try to plug in in someday. Bob

 

Sign that my daughter made for my shop many years ago. Yeah, it's supposed to be a wrench.

 

I have the first tool my dad made when he started at GM in 1966. It's a wooden-handled brass hammer. I still use it.....also have my grandfather's old Wheel Horse garden tractor. That'll go to one of my daughters one day.

 

My Grandpa's old 1963 Motor Manual and his old extendable magnetic pickup tool, which I have used more than I care to admit. Out in the barn, I have his old floor bumper jack that we kids used to pump up and them ride down and repeat, back in the 60's. It seemed a lot taller then.

Mom did send one of Dad's Stroh's signs and a Coke cooler home with me the other day. Garage is getting a repaint presently, so they are in the house right now.

 

WOW! I have a Weller soldering gun in a green case that my brother gave me in 1967 for Christmas and was killed in a car accident the next October. I sit there sometimes and just look at it.

 

Well I really like all the tools I got from my dad when he passed , he was a aircraft worker and engineer . But my most prized possession is the photo of my mom and her girlfriends riveting a B 24 wing . She is the one in the leopard vest . 1944

 

A small picture of my Dad, the only one I have of him, looking over a chassis I just built taken many years ago. He's my shop mentor and muse. Everything else can be replaced. If I was only half the builder he was. A local legend back in the day......

 

My Dad's machinist tool box with one drawer just the way he left it when he passed on twenty years ago.

 

I have some of my Dad's tools, as well as his roll-away tool box. But the two things that mean the most to me are the things that I remember from being a kid in the garage with him. One is an ashtray made out of a piston. Always sat in the same spot on the workbench, even after he gave up smoking. The other is an old orange fender cover. It says "Phoenix Linen Supply" on it. One of those deals where they brought you clean uniforms and towels every week. Anyway, he managed to sneak one out the back door of the shop he worked at when he was a teenager. I don't think we ever used it on a fender, it was mostly used as a cover over the tool box. Can't look at either one of those things without thinking about him.

 

My uncle built this tool chest while he was working in an aircraft factory during WW2. I inherited it when he died at 84. He was racing Hispano Suizas on wood tracks before most, if not all of us were born.

 

The hand forged mold makers spoons & other tools that belonged to my grandfather who worked in a foundry in Cleveland, Ohio during WWII. He was a Czech immigrant who barely spoke English. The tools & a couple changes of cloths were all he brought with him when he immigrated.

A poster from the first race at the Riverside Raceway.

And one that's special to me. My shop ashtray. The top half of a banger piston from the first banger I grenaded back in high school.

 

I've got a Vise Grip that my late son John modified to put the step in sheet metal to over lap the joints that is like one that showed up in a Rod magazine in the late 80's it was one of his first projects in the machine technology course at Perry Trade across the street from where I work when he started there in 1988. I've still got his tool chest in the shed with other tools he made inside it.
The tools that is sentimental that I use? The sawzall my dad bought for me for My birthday in 1990 still gets used on about every project I work on and he gets remembered every time I handle it.