Today's road finds, a #2 Phillips screwdriver with tip in excellent condition and a partial roll of electrical tape. Electrical tape is a very common find, I think they must fall of off linemen's and phone company worker's trucks.  

BTW: You should really throw out your worn Phillips drivers, they will only cause you aggravation and damage screw heads - better yet, grind them into a nice set of awls!

I found this at the town dump last week, I'm speculating that it's a roofer's tool for bending flanges on to sheets of copper.  It's about 4 feet long, the hinges are brass and there is a steel blade edge on both side of the central slot.  It is clearly for bender rather than cutting.

Let me know if you recognize what this tool is for!

When I bike to work I always keep a weather-eye on the road surface. Here in New England you must always be prepared to bunny-hop the odd pot-hole (yes, you can hop a recumbent, just not very high) but I also find some very nice tools on my rides.  Sparkplug wrenches are the most common, they get lost in engine compartments and fall out on the road.  Box wrenches and screwdrivers are next, but I've also found vise-grips, channel locks, and specialty wire crimpers too, not to mention inumerable carpet knives, and a machete.

This one is particularly timely as I am beginning work on a foundry furnace and will shortly be mixing refractory cement.

I spotted this trowel at the roadside in an upscale neighborhood, I almost didn't take it because it had been so obviously mistreated.  This is not the tool of a professional mason, this is the tool of a hack.  I imagined that it would take a great deal of effort to remove the hardened cement and mortar.  As it turned out, a bit of a soak in Muriatic acid cleaned it up with very little effort on my part!

It's really quit a nice trowel and I will be putting it to work very soon now!

This weekend's dump finds include yet another brass porch lamp, green felt for the bottom of my lamps, a small kerosene lamp (never lit!) and a pair of nautical models, both in sealed boxes, they are ALL WOOD models!

More from the same house I found the radios a couple of weeks ago!  Here we have a classic Heathkit Shortwave Receiver, A Heathkit SWR meter (used for measuring antenna efficiency on transmitters) an RCA RadioPhone transmitter and a Timex Sinclair 1500.  My first computer was a TS-1000, the 1500 is basically the same machine with a chiklet style keyboard.

I wonder what the story is here?  Likely its a little sad, someone is finally getting around to clearing out 'Dad's' old hobby junk.

Found this pair of brass lanterns on my way to work yesterday - I used the old "shoelace tie" trick to carry them with me on my bike.

It absolutely kills me how many of these I have in my collection - close to 20 now, I think.  Invariably they are complete, functional, and merely tarnished.  Has no one ever heard of Brasso?!

On my way to work yesterday morning I spotted these in a box at the roadside waiting for collection.  There were a half dozen similar radios but since I was on the bike I could only carry a couple so I grabbed the best of the bunch.

On the right is an Admiral Model 4B22 and on the left is an Akkord Offenbach 51 short/medium wave radio.  Both are battery or mains powered and seem to be intact. 

This weeks visit to the town's transfer station netted some nice brass bits that I think will find their way onto the car project and another old typewriter.

As of late last year we were banned from pulling items for our town dump's metal and wood recycling bins.  The stated reason was 'public safety' but it was fairly clear from the expressions on the faces of a few of our town's selectmen during the discussion that the whole idea of 'taking things from the garbage' was abhorrent to them.

One of them related the story of seeing some folks remove a 'soiled mattress' from one of the dumpsters.  He feared that the town could be held liable for 'disease' if this form of reuse were allowed to continue.

While we generally love and respect the Victorians and their technology here at the Steampunk Workshop, we do think that our public officials need to have a more modern understanding of epidemiology.