Excellent buy!!! Good for you, AND it is made in AMERICA!!! Built solid, built well! I like the older American tools any way. I got my Girlfriend into wood carving finally, after four or five years of trying to get her to go to one of the shows with me. She finally went, and I walked out $80.00 dollars poorer! A lot more has walked out of my wallet since. Perhaps, I should have let well enough alone. She has gone hog wild with it now, and is actually doing very well, and has joined a club and is learning a lot from them. They are nice people. Well she is always on the look out for carving tools, and was at the man's store, Harbor F. and was looking at a band saw there, and I told her to forget it, and if she wanted to get a band saw, save up and spend the money for a good one. Well she asked a guy that was shopping there, what he thought of it, and he said he didn't know much about it, and she told him she was looking for wood working tools, she didn't say what she meant, which was wood carving tools, anyway, he told her that his neighbor that he and his wife had been caring for, for many years, had died, and the family told him to take anything he wanted out of the house, so he took the old tools. When she heard "old tools" She is thinking old Swiss, or German, or old American quality wood carving tools. Well she gets to his house, and finds two 3ft. long wood boxes, filled with old rusty tools. No wood carving tools. Well there were some fine old chisels, that she could have used, but I didn't say anything. Anyway, she says she has no interest in them, as she was looking for carving tools, but that I would be as I am into old wood working tools. So she haggles with him, and gets him down to $45.00, for the box that has all the brace and bits, and planes, of various types, and only has a fifty dollar bill, and he doesn't have change, so he says, well just pick out something else for five dollars, so she sees a bayonet. It is an m14 bayonet. Anyway, I was hoping for an M1 Garand, or 03, or 1917 bayonet. But I go up and look at the box, and I am in piggy heaven! Lots of planes, and even a two handed plane, with a huge blade, and something I was thinking of buying, a router plane, but no bits. Plus there were three big braces, and no bits, and two side handle drills, like the egg beaters, and one that is pretty slick, that I have in Montana, that you can put two right angles in it, or any angle you want, for whatever difficult spot you need to get to, for drilling. So now I have two of them. Also an old pocket knife, a Kutmaster, of NY, and an old hawks blade knife, from ontario knife company, which I ground down, and made a sheep's foot blade out of it.
Also an old tar paper knife, various chisels, without handles, and one old Stanley and one Buck Brothers one inch chisels. Both are now cleaned up, and shaving sharp. The planes are old Stanley's , and Miller's Falls. I have a long smoothing plane by Miller's Falls. Also an old automatic center punch, which I like better than the new ones, because it has a sleeve on the pin shaft. At first I thought it was a handle for a small screw driver set, but then I thought it looked like an automatic center punch, and pressed down on the bench, and whack! It was a center punch! So the next night we went back to the guy's house, and I got the other box, and got the bits for the braces, and the bits for the hand router, 3 of them, and some other various drill bits, and a machinists square file, and some squares, and other various shop tools, old files, etc. So she made out like a bandit, and I did OK, for what I got. I ended up paying $40.00 for the box of stuff I got, but it is neat old stuff, that I have been slowly restoring to usefulness. I have some old brace and bits, that have the chest plate on them for bearing down on the work. They are in Montana at the moment. I have been keeping my eye out for an old band saw like that. I just bought an old (late 60's or so) Craftsman radial arm saw, that was used VERY little, for $150.00. Might of gotten it for a little less, but the guy was nice enough to unbolt it, and bring it to my house, and go over the setting up and making sure the cut was even depth all the way across, and brought the stand legs, and end covers, and the original manual. He had a wood shop, and was down sizing, and joining another wood worker. so he was getting rid of stuff he either didn't use, or hardly ever used. He said that he had used the radial saw about ten times, or less. A radial saw is neat, as you can turn it and use it as a rip saw, like a table saw, or a compound miter saw. Which already have, in Montana. So now, when I go back up to Montana next year, I will have a trailer full of tools. I will probably in all likely hood get my Brother's table saw, unless he had told his wife to give it to someone else. But he already had given me his 6 inch jointer. So all I need now is a good band saw. I would love to get a Hammer brand saw out of Austria, but my God, those are expensive!! So I might get one out of Tennessee.
But you did well with that saw, for sure! Get a new blade, and maybe a new tire, and enjoy!
Wayne
