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I've been buying tools since I was ten years old. I grew up in a house with a basement, where my dad had his work shop, and my brother and I were eventually given shop space, our own work bench, and a basic set of wood working tools. My hands were smaller than my brothers, and were able to fit between the underside of Dad's work bench and the drawer that was always locked, but also had a hook accessible which had the key that opened the steamer trunk that was the motherlode of tools. We just had to be bloody sure he wasn't home, and that whatever we fetched, it got put back where it was in the same condition.
I've always taken shop classes thru school, well into the late 90's where that gave access to a wonderful cabinet building wood shop at El Camino College in Torrance, CA. Los Angeles has been one of those places where Swap Meets have specialty forms, such as Old Tools Swap Meets four times a year, which covered wood working and machining tools of all sorts and vintages. The TRW Radio Amateur Technical Swap Meet that happened the last Saturday of the month in Redondo Beach, along with the General Dynamic Swap Meet out in Pomona on the 2nd Saturday of the month were wonderful places to find specialty tools for Electronics, along with fabulous assortments of Test Gear....the good stuff....HP, Tektronix, Fluke, Marconi, General Radio, etc; Test Leads & adapters, parts, you name it. Saturdays were, for years, an adventure in searching out stuff to add to your shop, when you had money to spend. Eventually Ebay appeared, and not long afterwards, the swap meets no longer had the premium sellers, as they had all moved their activities to ebay and the internet. The Old Tools swap meets still happen, though I haven't been to one in years now.
Not much else is needed these days, though every so often, I come upon another great tool and somehow come up with the funds for it if it's something I really want/can't live without.
Here's some of the unique tools I've come across over the decades of acquiring tools:
The Plierench I inherited from my great uncle...came in a canvas pouch with additional jaws that I have someplace. The Clauss Flipper is a unique scissors tool, great for use with lacing tape and other such tasks. The Erem 71AE 45 Degree Flush cutting pliers get used for many non-lead-cutting operations. They work great for prying open the covers of pots for cleaning, breaking the solder bond between freshly-unsoldered & folded leads onto solder pads of a PCB, then allowing the lead to be pried up without damaging the pad, or gripping a component lead while unsoldering it, when you have to cut off an IC, leaving their leads still soldered in to the IC solder pads. The Optima 504 IC Puller was a 16-pin IC puller, which I cut down to 8-pin Dip size, and works great for folding the tabs back into place on pots whose covers I had removed to clean them. The Utica 1300-8 are gas pliers, which besides the serrated jaws for side entry, have similar serrated jaws on the tip of the tool. They get used for lots of tasks. The Erem 508 is an IC lead straightener tool that always comes in handy. And, that tiny machinist vise....one of the best tools I ever bought at the Old Tools swap meets. It does need a good cleaning again.
I've always taken shop classes thru school, well into the late 90's where that gave access to a wonderful cabinet building wood shop at El Camino College in Torrance, CA. Los Angeles has been one of those places where Swap Meets have specialty forms, such as Old Tools Swap Meets four times a year, which covered wood working and machining tools of all sorts and vintages. The TRW Radio Amateur Technical Swap Meet that happened the last Saturday of the month in Redondo Beach, along with the General Dynamic Swap Meet out in Pomona on the 2nd Saturday of the month were wonderful places to find specialty tools for Electronics, along with fabulous assortments of Test Gear....the good stuff....HP, Tektronix, Fluke, Marconi, General Radio, etc; Test Leads & adapters, parts, you name it. Saturdays were, for years, an adventure in searching out stuff to add to your shop, when you had money to spend. Eventually Ebay appeared, and not long afterwards, the swap meets no longer had the premium sellers, as they had all moved their activities to ebay and the internet. The Old Tools swap meets still happen, though I haven't been to one in years now.
Not much else is needed these days, though every so often, I come upon another great tool and somehow come up with the funds for it if it's something I really want/can't live without.
Here's some of the unique tools I've come across over the decades of acquiring tools:
The Plierench I inherited from my great uncle...came in a canvas pouch with additional jaws that I have someplace. The Clauss Flipper is a unique scissors tool, great for use with lacing tape and other such tasks. The Erem 71AE 45 Degree Flush cutting pliers get used for many non-lead-cutting operations. They work great for prying open the covers of pots for cleaning, breaking the solder bond between freshly-unsoldered & folded leads onto solder pads of a PCB, then allowing the lead to be pried up without damaging the pad, or gripping a component lead while unsoldering it, when you have to cut off an IC, leaving their leads still soldered in to the IC solder pads. The Optima 504 IC Puller was a 16-pin IC puller, which I cut down to 8-pin Dip size, and works great for folding the tabs back into place on pots whose covers I had removed to clean them. The Utica 1300-8 are gas pliers, which besides the serrated jaws for side entry, have similar serrated jaws on the tip of the tool. They get used for lots of tasks. The Erem 508 is an IC lead straightener tool that always comes in handy. And, that tiny machinist vise....one of the best tools I ever bought at the Old Tools swap meets. It does need a good cleaning again.
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