bruce johnson

Please let me know when they will be for sale. There are several I am interested in.

Tor, The Newark stamp will make yours an oldie for sure. I have had some of the round handles that had a rosewood looking handle and some with a hardwood handle. Most of the older ones were pretty tight. The varnish is still pretty shiny on this one, so it may just have been never handled much. I got one a while back with a similar handle finish and it had the receipts for some of the tools all from the 1950s. A little spit and rub on the maker marking will help date it. One of my friends likes the blades that flex. Whenever I get a few together I send them over to him.

Pictures aren't showing up, but consider it sold

The steel ferrule and handle material look more recent to me. Hard to pinpoint a timeframe for me on that one. Sloppy fit? That tells me recent. My impression on some of these is that the blade material tended to be thinner and maybe a little softer. Some blades will actually flex a bit.

Osborne made round handle knives. They have historically been priced less than the oval handle knives.

WyomingSlick, The history on these pictured is that they were owned by the late saddlemaker, Wade Warren. A few years ago his family had contacted the Cowboy Museum about donating his tools. I went up and saw the tools and what they had. He lost most of his tools in the fire when Visalia Stock Saddle Co was in Sacramento and these are what they had with no background other than "This was Uncle Wade's stuff". They had some catalogs and receipts, only these stamps and striking stick, stitching horse, and a saddle - a Visalia "Warren Roper". One receipt was from MacPhersons and had stamps listed on it. That is the first I had seen these frosted stamps. One guy I asked at the time said it looked like a Parkerized finish. I am not sure on that. Just recently they donated everything to the museum, but I have not had the chance to go in and look at them again yet. If the paper is there, I will especially be interested in that. Since then I have bought two sets of tools that had some of these stamps. One set had about a dozen frosted along with other stamps (McMillen looking and several Ray Hackbarth). The other set I got a couple months ago. It was a little wood box with two drawers and hinged top lid. The top had some modelers and misc stuff. One drawer had maybe 20 stamps - a couple McMillen looking, preletter CTs, and 4 of the frosted ones that had taken on a green color to the coating. The other drawer had 14 no mark nice stamps with a hand written note "Stamps from Frank". One guy who worked the AZ shops told me they sure looked like Eberle stamps. That is as close to provenance for Eberle stamps I have come - having a note that said "Frank" on it. Now the interesting rub. When Visalia burned and closed, Wade Warren moved up to Grass Valley. Other western tradesmen were there. There was and still is some silver and leatherwork done through that area. The first set of the frosted stamps I bought came from an antique dealer in Nevada City, the other side of the mountain and a 3 minute drive from Grass Valley. The last set I bought came from a guy in Grass Valley who got them at a yard sale. It is interesting that all I have seen came from one close geographical area. I don't think it means much other than they all were probably buying from the same source. If you remove the coating, the metal is a bit different than other stamps. It is a softer finish and sort of matte like polished aluminum. Stamps are definitely steel but just have that look.

I checked some here and all were right at 8-1/2" long and diameter varied slightly between 1/2" to a scant 9/16".

Frosted like these? I have had several. No markings on any of them. These I know the history of and they are from a maker who bought them in the early to mid 60s.

WyomingSlick, Those did clean up nice! I had guessed there were 10 Hackbarth stamps at the time in that set, so I was close. Thanks for the follow up on them. Now to add a little more. I guess I made you pay on that earlier set from the Midwest too. The far left side front row stamp is a Hackbarth. The two just inside it are suspicious, I am 50/50 the cam is. The seeder or small center on the far left back row is a bit suspicious too. If you don't mind saying, what was the breakdown of makers there? I had a bigger scheduled bid there too and that was when the big set of mixed tools got offered to me. Two days later the other stamps and knives were closing on the Tucson set and I get an estate deal. We both had a hell of a couple days!

Good work yet again Bret, Sure like what I have from you.

I will take them all for that. Please let me know how you'd like paid.

Chrstn53 is right. They used to bring bigger money, but even then $500 for the one with missing pages would have been exceptional. Bundled together - original Leather Secrets and Design Artistry could bring $500 together at times. In the last couple of years they dropped. When Tandy started selling the combination of both books, that took some pressure off the price on originals.

60 year old snap button fastener. ` In 1954 this cost $2 and came with "complete instructions".

I have a little more time today to address Slick's question about buying on Ebay in general. Like most auctions, you need to have a pretty good idea what you are buying and be in a position to expect a few disappointments along with the really sweet deals. Not everything is going to be as described and that works both ways as seen by the example above. I look at feedback casually. If a seller has a few dings, I'll see why. If it is they take 2 weeks to ship, leave out items, or seriously misrepresented something, I proceed carefully. If someone red buttoned them for receiving a broken finger on a glass figurine and I am looking at a hammer then I probably won't care. I look at shipping costs, and a lot of times contact them. The calculator can be off, or I can suggest a faster and less expensive method. Package Service at the post office takes some pretty odd routes (Illinois to the sort center in Warrendale, PA, then back across country on a camel caravan) and the savings aren't usually worth it. Just as important, when they say they can ship a crank splitter for $25, I really think hard. That is way too cheap to pack and pad 50# of cast iron correctly. They'll lose money (likely) and then short the packing material (more likely) so you receive a box of rattling parts iwith clean shiny breaks (most likely). On the items themselves I look pretty carefully at the pictures and not so much at the descriptions. (Again, Slick's example above). I look for what is there, and just as important what is NOT there. Awhile back a crank skiver sold on a buy it now as-is no returns for $300. Front picture looked really clean and good. From the back it was missing the whole back assembly that held the blade, that was major. Buyer was pretty disappointed when he called to see if I had a spare back half. The sellers don't always know what they have. Kind of like gambling, never bid more than you can stand to lose, although buyer protection gives a little insurance. I have a figure in mind of what I can pay for a particular type of tool pretty much privately or at auction. Something has to be pretty special for me to exceed that. I multiply out my factors on the tools and that's my bid. I usually do scheduled bids in case I am not around or want the leeway to change a bid or cancel it if something else comes along. A lot of stuff seems to come on Sundays and then close a week later all within a short time period. There may be 3 or 4 similar things I am looking at, and if I get the first one I can cancel the other bids.

I don't have any right now and will be looking to get some made up. I lucked into a box of 20 or so last fall in a set and used the last one 2 weeks ago.

My thoughts at the time was that these were not described very well. At least some of the stamps are Hackbarths, and probably Ray Hackbarths. Pretty sure that swivel knife to the right is, although the blade might be suspect. Some of the rusty crusty stamps are likely McMillens based on catalog impressions, Can't rule Eberle or another handmaker out on some either. The faces looked pretty good and should derust just fine. To be honest I had a scheduled bid in for more than they sold for, but most of these would have been duplicates for me. I have quite a few Ray Hackbarths already and looks like I have most all of these that may have been. The two multiple "birds eye" stamps I have, and they were probably the cream of those types. I was offered a private deal a few hours before these ended on a boatload of really good hand tools .I scaled back my scheduled bid on these to free myself for that. I left these at a "if I get them, I stole them" price and the next bid got them. My initial scheduled bid was based on value to me. I figured a price on the knives. I came with a factor for each type of stamp based on common/no so common and multiplied that out by the numbers by each maker I thought there probably were. Added it all up and that was my initial bid.

All good advice so far, and especially when you found that holding a little "looser" worked better. Don't hold the tool "down", just float it over the cut line and let it hit and rebound up with the strike. Pretty soon you'll get a rhythm going and strike, slide, strike will be second nature. I usually slide about 1/3 of the stamp width. The other thing to consider is the stamp. The sides need to slightly ramp up at the edges to slide the way I run them. If they are square then they'll stick or leave chatter marks at those edges and not walk. The more the slippering or ramping, the lower into the cut you can hang and roll.

I have a couple shop made round and English points that are 2-1/2" and 3" I use(d) on stirrup leathers. The round ends I traded for and are unmarked. The guy who made me the English points is back to welding cattle trailers and wrenching semis. I see them once in a great while, but rarely marked. In these larger sizes a die maker or pretty good smith can make them up.

Apparently good vintage pricking irons are not all that easy to find in Europe either. I get emails every week about them. Just to add another dog to the hunt here, most of the vintage Blanchard, Mayer-Flammery, and Dixon tools I get are then sold either back to Europe or to Australia (European influence). Less than a third stays in the US and the majority there are plough gauges. I can't recall selling a Blanchard knife within the US. I have sold a few to Canada, but most go to Belgium, France, Romania, Switzerland, Germany, and one went to Moldova.

Seller has posted the tools are sold.

Where are you in central CA?

WS, Thanks again for your insight. I talked to Ron about this yesterday as well. He said he has a Craftool catalog with an insert that has the deal about the chrome plating and the war restrictions. How many were affected?? I have had the occasional unplated stamp and so far they have all been no-letter so I never thought twice about it. Now to find 17 of them in a whack with prefixes piqued my curiosity a bit more. I was rolling the dice and expecting they'd may be preletters, McMillens, or other handmades. No worries, these are nice stamps and I'll stack the basket and waffle stamp against anybody's made today.

I ended up with a pretty large set of older Craftools. In the set are 17 stamps that are not plated. Very nice impressions, but definitely not plated nor evidence of having plating removed. I had been told that the stamps were not plated during the Korean war due to chrome being used in the war effort. The odd thing with these stamps is: 1) seven of the unplateds are marked only Craftool Co, but have the letter prefix before the stamp number. In my understanding the letter prefix was after Tandy bought Craftool in 1963 or so. 2) The rest of the unplated stamps are marked Craftool Co USA. and should be plated?? How often has anyone seen these variants? Thanks for any insight! - Bruce

Good luck and hoping for a fast and complete recovery!

When I was making saddles, I really liked Bill Bean's seat tins a lot. Saved time and heavier gauge than most of the others.