Better late than never, but time hasn't allowed me to post much lately. Last weekend was a whirlwind trip down to SE Missouri for the annual Missouri Whitewater Championships and lots of rain gave us"too much of a good thing". The river was swollen and for experts only, leaving the novices and intermediate level paddlers spectating for the most part. The event has been going on for like 45 years on the St. Francis river near a small town called Fredericktown, about an hour north of Poplar Bluff.
After the races were over on Sunday night, it was time to find pawn shops and hopefully hit some flea markets on the way home. I had been documenting billboards and towns on the way down in hopes of stopping there on the way home, but got no further than Potosi before the stores closed and I ran out of money. I was amazed at the fact that there was a storage facility in the micro town of Doe Run that was actually a flea market. Never seen that before. Didn't find anything there, due to maybe only 3 or 4 vendors having doors up, but the first "find of the day" wasn't far down the road. Another flea market/ permanent garage sale/stand alone storage facility was just opening it's doors about 9AM and I went sniffing around but found very little. The owner and his good ol' boys got to looking for tool stashes and every 10 minutes or so they'd remember another spot where there might be some. The final stop on this property was an old construction trailer with a beat up old cheap-ass rolling tool chest in it and a bunch of old greasy tools in it. Went from top to bottom and thinking most of the stuff was made by the J.A. Pan and T.A. Iwan Co., but there were a few goodies lurking and motivating me to go to the next drawer. Finally got to the bottom drawer and found a bunch of big 3/4 drive sockets and assumed they were of Asian descent too. WRONG!!! One by one as I wiped them off, each said "MAC" and after 11 such wipings, I was already wondering how I was going to have enough gas to get home on after this purchase. There were a few 1/2" drive Snap ons too. The owner gave me a box to fill and after 30 minutes, I was done. He asked what I was willing to cough up and I started at $30 he said $50 and we met in the middle. With canary feathers streaming from my mouth, I left before the Tool Talk cops arrived. Stopped by another pawn shop on the same highway, but they were cleaning up a wet floor from the flooding that filled up the river over the weekend. Nothing there to get anyways.
Then to Farmington we go and I find a gold mine right in downtown. Forget the name of the place, but they were in the yellow pages. Old biker dude ran the place and they had maybe 4k sq. ft. of floor space almost half of it was tools. This guy was unique in that he didn't allow cherry picking out of the 40-50 tool boxes he had on the floor and shelves. The prices ranged from $19.95 to $200, and he also had a lot of loose stuff on the shelf. Typical over pricing, but I spent an hour going through what was there. I found a lot of single items that were worth keeping, but not many"box" buys worth it. Finally I had narrowed it down to the big $200 semi rusty 6 drawer Craftsman tool chest top and 2 plastic tool boxes of much smaller dimensions. I asked him how flexible he was on the cherry picking rule, and he said that if I just took one or 2 items from each box, he was good with that. Well, one or two items from 40 boxes looked like another tool box full of stuff!! The big C-man chest easily had $200 worth of stuff in it and with what I cherry picked, the $300 spent was a real bargain. Then on north to Park Hills and found a nice vintage Craftsman plastic/rubber tipped hammer in an antique store for $5. They had some really nice Winchester screwdrivers, but at $30-$60 each, I had to say no. Last two stops were in Potosi, a bit west of Hwy. 67 and that small town had 2 pawn shops 2 blocks apart. Flipped a quarter with the first guy as to whether I paid $20 or $30 for the pile I dug up and I won. He had the Stahlwille stud extractors posted elsewhere on TT. The other guy I spent $25 on leaving me with $5 for a McWendyKing meal somewhere north of STL. I didn't photograph everything, just the highlights. That Bonney A702 flexover is virtually new and although the Proto 1/2" drive flex rat has plating missing from the serrated thumbwheel on top, it's going in my tool box...what a sweetie!! Also snagged a Ridgid 243 internal pipe wrench that looked mostly unused and 2 Lenox big'un drill bits with one being a 2 9/16" hoss.
The wood tqable photo from 12 O'Clock4 Walworth Stillson 10" pipe wrenches, Bicycle Research spanner,SK 73001 Philips, micro channelock pliers,Knipex Cobra German Pliers, Blackhawk 1163 5/8" Combo, Bilings 1166 3/4" combo, Dunlap 90 degree needle nose,2 Williams "pierce arrow(car tools); a #27 and a 927b "special", Thorsen 528 socket,SJ-8 pliers,2012/2218/3019 wrenches, Crestalloy 12" "45 EAC", Bluegrass BG 37 1/2" nut driver,Challenger 5712 and 5716, Proto 1232 1" combo, Indestro 3222 1/2" flexover, Proto 3050 DOE 1 1/4"x 1 1/8", Armstrong DBE 26-667 1/2"x9/16", The Lowell rat posted in WhatsIt, Proto 5457A flexhead rat, Proto 5249 3./8"rat, Proto rat wrench 1191 1/4"x5/16", EASCO 72-1104 3/8" rat(looks identical to the NB rat I can't de rust), Bonney 9/16" combo line wrench, Bonney A 720 1/2" Flexover(very cherry), Crestaloy 6", MAC Pliers, 2 C-man 1/4" drive rats of differing generations, C-man circled H Hinsdale era flexover 1/2" drive and a BE series 5" extension, Plomb 9786 wood handled screwdriver phillips, Armstrong SA-51 rat 1/2" drive, 2 Blackhawk 1/2" rats 34945A, an SK micro 1/4" drive ratand a Wright 4540 1/2" drive 1 1/4" .My fingers need a break, so I'll post the tool chest photo and description later
DM&FS
