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Prof Eumides Blakehurst
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« Reply #525 on: February 22, 2010, 01:12:19 pm » |
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maduncle, Rowan: how come there seems to be so much more 'old' stuff kicking about in the New World colonies than there seems to be back here in the motherland? I don't understand!  There is a lot of space in this wide brown land for people to hoard - so there is still a vast untapped treasure trove of stuff ' out back'. Actually, between about 1860 and 1890, Australia was the physically richest country in the world. Gold rush, iron ore rush, fine wool and so on. I discovered yesterday that we have the greatest number of Rucker harpsichords (to DIE for) in the world, surpassing Europe. We bought a lot of stuff back then and once it got all the way out here it wasn't going anywhere else. One of our early music people is trying to start a museum of early pianos. He has people willing to donate over 900 pianos built **BEFORE** 1820 already. We have some odd junk out this way.... |
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There is no god and Dawkins is his prophet.
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Prof Eumides Blakehurst
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« Reply #526 on: February 22, 2010, 01:52:43 pm » |
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Yarra Glen Swap-meet: The Stuff Maduncle Missed;  Err... Laddie, you do realise that you have two dalek dome lights there. Really. I am now officially holding your fossils hostage.  |
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Choreocrat
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« Reply #527 on: February 23, 2010, 12:33:53 am » |
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maduncle, Rowan: how come there seems to be so much more 'old' stuff kicking about in the New World colonies than there seems to be back here in the motherland? I don't understand! There is a lot of space in this wide brown land for people to hoard - so there is still a vast untapped treasure trove of stuff ' out back'. Actually, between about 1860 and 1890, Australia was the physically richest country in the world. Gold rush, iron ore rush, fine wool and so on. I discovered yesterday that we have the greatest number of Rucker harpsichords (to DIE for) in the world, surpassing Europe. We bought a lot of stuff back then and once it got all the way out here it wasn't going anywhere else. One of our early music people is trying to start a museum of early pianos. He has people willing to donate over 900 pianos built **BEFORE** 1820 already. We have some odd junk out this way.... Oh, you know Geoffrey Lancaster? I went to some of his lectures a year or two ago - one of my friends was a student of his. It's not that we have a shortage of junk, so much as that the junk we have is sold for exorbitant prices as soon as someone recognises it as 'old' ('old' here meaning that it is more than 30 years old. I'm almost an antique...). |
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Choreocracy - A form of government in which power is given to the best dancer.
Member of the Earthly Delights Historic Dance Academy
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maduncle
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« Reply #528 on: February 27, 2010, 10:28:00 pm » |
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Ballarat annual swap meet. ACRES! of stalls (if you walk every aisle then you have walked 27 kilometers). So I got there for the opening on Friday and it took me seven hours to walk every aisle.  Brass parts galore, old leather case, timber tripod, pocket gauges, very large gauges, and other stuff. (Not in photo - old cast iron bed frames for childrens bed). Not purchased (although I wish) - a working brass clockwork mechanism with speed governer that ran a small turntable for shop window displays - $150 was too much for me. |
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'...Lockstock stonedead shock of a Dog Fenn frown'.
Iron Council - China Mieville
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Rowan of Rin
Board Moderator
Zeppelin Admiral
 Australia
~The Black Blood Alchemist~
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« Reply #529 on: February 28, 2010, 12:35:03 am » |
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Oh how I wish I could have gone, that looks incredible! Is that object below the small gauges a multi-bulb light fitting?! And do I see a knife switch on the right?
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Walker00
Deck Hand
 United States
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« Reply #530 on: February 28, 2010, 04:49:06 am » |
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Wow that makes me jealous.Wish I had somewhere like that to buy stuff. I miss where I use to live as a kid. Every Saturday we would go to this very large swap meet../
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maduncle
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« Reply #531 on: February 28, 2010, 12:57:49 pm » |
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Oh how I wish I could have gone, that looks incredible! Is that object below the small gauges a multi-bulb light fitting?! And do I see a knife switch on the right?
You would have loved it! And the metal thing is just a 'thing' not a light bulb holder. But it looks alien-ish so it will become something alien-ish. And yes that is a knife switch, although it is now a polished knife switch. One of the small gauges is a blood pressure gauge - just needs the rubber hose, squeeze bulb and arm band. |
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darkshines
Rogue Ætherlord
 Wales
Miss Katonic 1898 + Cowperthwaite's other half
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« Reply #532 on: March 01, 2010, 10:27:31 pm » |
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I'd give anything for that awesome bag and the blood pressure gauge!
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Dr. Roger
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« Reply #533 on: March 02, 2010, 12:04:32 am » |
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I Want To Go There!! *throws tantrum*
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Just because we are pirates does not mean we lack manners, we simply choose when and where to use them.
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WillRockwell
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« Reply #534 on: March 02, 2010, 12:16:30 am » |
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That alien thingy looks like the manifold on one of my USB drives. I believe you can create something remarkable with that.  |
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LukeHogbin
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« Reply #535 on: March 03, 2010, 02:24:14 am » |
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Hey, deadsweetheart person, PUNCTUATION. PLEASE.  Your post is giving me a headache. |
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I have defied Gods and Demons. I am your shield; I am your sword. I know you: your past, your future. This is the way the world ends.
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Titus Wells
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« Reply #536 on: March 10, 2010, 11:06:34 pm » |
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My haul from clearing out the cupboards at work, lovely things will happen! And my guitar collection, now increased by one Ibanez 7-string for a mere £60, which I will be steampunking very very soon. |
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"Who would have guessed that behind the formidable brow of his, which appeared to be made of some kind of rook, there lay so strange a mixture of memories and thoughts?"  |
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Ben Hudson, Esq.
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« Reply #537 on: March 11, 2010, 06:59:23 pm » |
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Went to Wimborne Market last weekend. Saw a couple of old voltmeters that I nearly bought, but then thought... what would I do with them (curse sensible thoughts). So all I came away with was a Jews Harp and a really nice old monkey wrench. Perfect working condition, old looking and with only the slightest trace of red paint on it. I can only presume the rest was rubbed off by hitting headcrabs with it. Anyway, it's now in my bag at all times to deal with a wide variety of cycling misadventure, not excluding motorists.
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Quod me non necat me confirmat Cappuccino?! I'll give you a cappuccino! Fellow of the Retrofuturist Society
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Titus Wells
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« Reply #538 on: March 11, 2010, 07:11:22 pm » |
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Good ol' Wimborne market! Make sure you thoroughly cleanse that Jews harp though!
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Ben Hudson, Esq.
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« Reply #539 on: March 11, 2010, 08:55:00 pm » |
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Forgot Oh well. |
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Choreocrat
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« Reply #540 on: March 14, 2010, 11:04:15 am » |
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I found this at the local weekly market this morning. I don't really know what it is, but for $5, I figured it was interesting and potentially very useful for some project or other. If someone knows, I'd love to know what it is. I don't plan to do anything to it until I know what it originally was. It looks like an old incense wafter from a Catholic church (old memories...), but it doesn't have any holes. The middle and ends are stable, but the bits in between can rotate independently. They don't open. It's heavyish (about a pound in total), and it seems to have small rocks or something in it that roll around. The whole thing is hollow, it seems. I suspect a surveyor's plumb or something, but it's too ornate and too big (about 15cm long). It could be decorative (like the bottom of a chandelier), but it's the wrong metal, and it shouldn't be so heavy. Anyway, here's a pic:  |
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maduncle
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« Reply #541 on: March 14, 2010, 01:14:30 pm » |
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I found this at the local weekly market this morning. I don't really know what it is, but for $5, I figured it was interesting and potentially very useful for some project or other. If someone knows, I'd love to know what it is. I don't plan to do anything to it until I know what it originally was. It looks like an old incense wafter from a Catholic church (old memories...), but it doesn't have any holes. The middle and ends are stable, but the bits in between can rotate independently. They don't open. It's heavyish (about a pound in total), and it seems to have small rocks or something in it that roll around. The whole thing is hollow, it seems. I suspect a surveyor's plumb or something, but it's too ornate and too big (about 15cm long). It could be decorative (like the bottom of a chandelier), but it's the wrong metal, and it shouldn't be so heavy. Anyway, here's a pic: I believe what you have there is a counter weight from an adjustable lamp. Some old lamps (and some new ones) run the power cord through a pulley and counterweight system that allows you to adjust the lamp height. Useful find there! |
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Choreocrat
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« Reply #542 on: March 15, 2010, 01:35:49 am » |
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Hunh. That would be quite the heavy lamp! But it's a reasonable thing for it to be. Now I have to construct something with it.
*is pensive*
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cptn. C
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« Reply #543 on: March 21, 2010, 02:29:17 am » |
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looks like the weight for an old gravity driven grandfather clock or a cuckoo clock
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if you don't live for something, you die for nothing
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Soapwort Blisterbelch
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« Reply #545 on: March 21, 2010, 03:08:15 pm » |
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I haven't posted links or images before, so hopefully I won't mess this up. Anyway, here're some promising things I picked up here a while back: I grabbed the magnifier for a couple of bucks. Currently it resides on top of one of my bookshelves, unmolested. I will, however, molest the heck out of it if I'm ever inspired to use it on some project. The other parts inside the old cigar box are, for the most part, bits from an old dome clock.  These are most of the guts from some sort of differential pressure switch. It looked like at one time there was a mercury switch bulb that was made when pressure exceeded the high-end and broken when it dipped below the low point. The original casing for the switch was in pretty bad shape, but the glass in the face was whole and the gaskets were in good enough shape that when I got it apart I found all of the innards were pretty clean. I'm still on the fence about whether I want to use these as part of a prop rifle -- seems like they'd be great to insure a beam doesn't overheat the rifle and melt the whole thing into a puddle of molten slag.  |
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« Last Edit: March 21, 2010, 03:23:01 pm by Soapwort Blisterbelch »
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"Duck! 'Cause repentance won't be working this day!" -- Adequate Flattbucsh; Chief of Accquisition for the ship Gentry Blisterbelch
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LukeHogbin
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« Reply #546 on: March 21, 2010, 05:34:14 pm » |
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I would've killed for a magnifier like that a couple of weeks ago. My cousin borrowed my wax seals and used them with some strange type of hot glue which got stuck in the small crevices and I was holding the seal and a printer loupe in one hand and a scalpel in the other while cleaning it. Something like that (or, perhaps, a head-mounted magnifier) would've worked much better... Great finds  |
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Kevin C Cooper Esq
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« Reply #547 on: March 21, 2010, 05:46:04 pm » |
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Got this in a charity shop recently, simply couldn't leave without it. Now i just have to do some travelling so that I can use it. |
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maduncle
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« Reply #548 on: March 22, 2010, 01:54:40 am » |
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My wife found this at a yard sale the other day. The guy worked his whole life for Camel cigarette Co. and had all kinds of novelty tobacco things apparently (I wish I had been there). It was a buck. It's about 4.5 inches across and 1.25 inches tall.   As they say in the classics... 'I'll buy that for a dollar!' Great find. |
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deadsweetheart
Guest
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« Reply #549 on: March 22, 2010, 04:44:43 am » |
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just found for 15 dollars an air raid wardens candle powered lamp from ww2 with blackout shudder , pictures to come soon.
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