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| You can just about read this. Click for bigger. |
It's not. As the close-up image shows, there's something going on between the upper and lower bevel gears, something that includes a little gearshift similar to the one found on "Yankee" push-driven screwdrivers. But where those only have three positions -- forward, locked and reverse -- this has five.
In PLAIN, it works like any other drill.
L.H. RATCHET makes it run only counterclockwise. Turn the crank the other way and the chuck stays put.
R.H. does the opposite: The drill only turns counterclockwise.
LOCKED conveniently locks up the whole works, making loosening and tightening the chuck an easy operation.
But I skipped one. Here's the magic: select R. H. DOUBLE and it doesn't make any difference which way to turn the crank: the chuck always turns clockwise, with nary a hitch as you change the direction of the driving gear!
There doesn't seem to have been a lot of use for this functionality, but if you needed it, there were no substitutes and North Brothers Manufacturing (and later Stanley) built this one and a larger size for many years.
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| A slightly wider view of the 1530 |
6 comments:
You've given me something to watch out for in my "antique" shopping.
Somewhere in my attic is a stainless steel brace and bit that looks rather unremarkable, until you hear the story that it was used to drill a hole in my patient's skull to evacuate a subdural hematoma.
I had always imagined something more high tech until I saw it done that day. Turns out, it's also cheaper to buy a new brace and bit than it is to Autoclave a used one.
Which explains why it's now in my attic. 😉
I would imagine that R.H. Double would be handy for using the drill left handed.
What a coincidence: I was musing a week or so ago that one of these would come in handy when I was removing about a billion screws to come at a broken fan in our lab oven.
It's truly a shame that things like this aren't made anymore. I understand - and appreciate - the value and convenience offered by modern tools, but the utility and beauty of past generations of unique and ingenious tools is not insignificant.
I used Dad's already very old brace with drill, screwdriver and socket bits for quite a few years before ratchet handles, and decades before DeWalt, Milwaukee et al blessed us with cordless marvels.
Alien, Schroeder still makes both hand-cranked drills in various sizes and Yankee-type screwdrivers. While they don't make quite this combination of the two technologies, they come close.
http://www.highlandwoodworking.com/schroederhanddrill.aspx
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