And when I say the King, I of course mean my King Dick. No, I haven't stumbled onto the wrong website by getting "retro" confused with "granny"...
This one's a bit humble compared to some amazing work in this section, but it mattered to us (me and the waff) and I reckon a few of you guys will understand why. Bear with me, and let yourself drift back in time, just relax and come with me back fifteen years or so. You are feeling sleepy, just listen to my voice...
So, my father-in-law was a time-served engineer. He'd worked up via apprentice to electrical engineer to designing entire plant systems for industrial applications. As you all know, anyone like this acquires plenty of tools in their career - some throwaway and disposable, the sort you don't mind using a socket extension to drift seized suspension bolts out with - and some Sunday best, your proper toolset. My father-in-law was definitely of the old skool like this. He got to the near-side of sixty and decided he'd had enough of work, having earned his bread the hard way since leaving school at sixteen. So he took early retirement at 59, to enjoy his twilight years pottering about in peace and ease. And he was dead within a year from a tumour that ate his brain and turned him into the most spiteful, vile travesty of who he'd once been before finally killing him.
Right, that's the fun part over with, but just remember, kids, carpe diem and enjoy every single sunset and cuddle with your kids because it is not an inexhaustible resource and it WILL end one day
So, the old man's wife clearly inherited everything and that's as it should be. He'd always said he wanted his only son (out of four kids) to get his tools, but sadly the son has about as much engineering and mechanical ability as Liberace, so the tools have just sat in the garage for a decade and a half, rusting away into history. The son's not around, barely ever even visits and has never mentioned the tools except to say he's no interest in them. So they've sat all this time...
Then the local odd-job man in the village comes to the mother-in-law's to work on her conservatory roof. His van, parked on the drive, catches fire for no apparent reason, sets fire to the house via the built-in garage. By lucky coincidence the odd-job bloke is also a volunteer firefighter at the local firestation, and though his van is too far gone for him to move it, he and his mates get the fire out before the house is destroyed! Like, what are the odds, eh?
The mother-in-law has to spend ages getting all the fire and smoke damage sorted, and that includes itemising everything in the garage for the insurance listing. During this period a whole shedload is thrown out as being too damaged to repair... some is apparently half-inched by the workmen (how low is that? from a seventy-something widow after a house fire. Hope you guys are proud of yourselves). Next time we're up, mother-in-law says to me "you always liked Mac's old socket set, didn't you? You might as well take it, the boy will never use it". Get in!
Abingdon Engineering was formed in 1856, and everything from heavy engineering to motorcycles to gearboxes before dedicating itself solely to quality tool manufacture from the turn of the century. The legend has it that the King Dick nickname came originally from the director's bulldog who was named after King Richard. Doesn't get much more British than that. Their tools are of the highest quality, and while that matters, it mattered more that I was rescuing something that once meant an awful lot to the old man. He may have wanted his son to have them, but I bet he'd have wanted them more to be used and cared for rather than be left to rot away
So, this is what we ended up with;
Pretty humble from outside, just a rusty and battered old blue box. But rather like that other scruffy blue box, the TARDIS, all the magic happens on the inside
Three sets of sockets, most importantly in metric from 11mm to 32mm and in Imperial up to 1 1/4 inch plus plenty of extensions, the best quality ratchet I've ever used and a miscellany of random sockets and drivers he'd added over the years. By way of illustration of how cool these tools are, check out this stud extractor, it's an absolute work of art
The universal joint as art (gives me a chance to play with the macro lens)
I wish this pic was scratch 'n' sniff, or at least touchy-feely so you could try the almost orgasmic action of the ratchet, lol
The random tools included things like this combination spanner, one of the trickest little things ever and now and indespensible part of my in-car kit. All the sizes from 8 to 24mm in one single non-slip adjusty spanner
Anyway, I've not bored you with all this in an attempt to show off
I was genuinely made up, like. The only problem is that the years had taken their toll, and the toolbox especially was showing the worse for wear. We discussed at length whether it was more honest to the tools to leave them as they were, but eventually decided it was the right thing to do to give it all a quick spruce up. Not to try to get everything immaculate, cos I want them to look used as they are and besides, I don't think you'd ever get all the dents and dings out of the box if you wanted. But just to make them look something like their former glory again and I like to think the old man would approve of them being shown some love.
So, with the course set, I started in on the refurb. I sanded the box back, rust treated the whole lot, sanded it back again. It wasn't mirror-smooth but that's fine, it wasn't supposed to be. The tools were all given a good clean with paraffin and rubbed down with oil (two-stroke, as it happens, I knew I'd find a use for that bottle I've had since my last RD350LC if I kept it long enough.)
Then a couple of blow-overs with metal primer
and a lot of coats of Ford Matisse Blue, which was a near-perfect colour match to the original colour but with an added bit of life to it from the light metallic aspect
A right PITA getting around all the riveted-in tool clips without drips and runs, but I didn't want to remove them. They use a clever rivet that's flat-sided both sides, so they keep the base of the box flat, and I have no idea where to find replacements. Came out OK though, and I don't mind the couple of dodgy bits, it adds to the character. Several more coats, this time of lacquer to protect all that hard work and give it a fighting chance in the garage environment. The next step was to steal one of the kid's wax crayons and by the method of basically bark-rubbing across the edges, I made up paper templates of all the compartments...
...which gradually got turned into rubber tool-drawer lining mat cutouts whilst watching an evening of repeats of Fast'n'Loud on Discovery Turbo once the kids were in bed. Ahhhh, domestic bliss
And finally, it was all done. Again, it was a bit of a faff marking the location of the clips and cutting holes for them to pop through, but mostly it was accurate enough via my patented wax crayon technique, lol
The finishing touch was to re-apply the proud and slightly patinated King Dick emblem to the lid, with a heavy duty clear plastic cover to protect it from further wear
And of course, since you can disassemble ninety-eight percent of a Japanese car using only an 8mm and a 10mm socket, and those were the two sizes not in the set, I eBayed up a couple to complete the run. Big and small (god, I love playing with macro lenses
);
and there we go, one refurbished but still pleasantly used toolkit
Hopefully if the old man's up there looking down he'd approve of the love we've shown them, and I like to think he'd definitely approve of his stuff being used again. Now all I need to do is convince the waff's mum to ship out the rest of the garage contents out to us....
Thanks for reading, hope you approve of my humble story and you're not out there screaming at the computer screen "why didn't you leave it all as it was, you idiot!"
This one's a bit humble compared to some amazing work in this section, but it mattered to us (me and the waff) and I reckon a few of you guys will understand why. Bear with me, and let yourself drift back in time, just relax and come with me back fifteen years or so. You are feeling sleepy, just listen to my voice...
So, my father-in-law was a time-served engineer. He'd worked up via apprentice to electrical engineer to designing entire plant systems for industrial applications. As you all know, anyone like this acquires plenty of tools in their career - some throwaway and disposable, the sort you don't mind using a socket extension to drift seized suspension bolts out with - and some Sunday best, your proper toolset. My father-in-law was definitely of the old skool like this. He got to the near-side of sixty and decided he'd had enough of work, having earned his bread the hard way since leaving school at sixteen. So he took early retirement at 59, to enjoy his twilight years pottering about in peace and ease. And he was dead within a year from a tumour that ate his brain and turned him into the most spiteful, vile travesty of who he'd once been before finally killing him.
Right, that's the fun part over with, but just remember, kids, carpe diem and enjoy every single sunset and cuddle with your kids because it is not an inexhaustible resource and it WILL end one day
So, the old man's wife clearly inherited everything and that's as it should be. He'd always said he wanted his only son (out of four kids) to get his tools, but sadly the son has about as much engineering and mechanical ability as Liberace, so the tools have just sat in the garage for a decade and a half, rusting away into history. The son's not around, barely ever even visits and has never mentioned the tools except to say he's no interest in them. So they've sat all this time...Then the local odd-job man in the village comes to the mother-in-law's to work on her conservatory roof. His van, parked on the drive, catches fire for no apparent reason, sets fire to the house via the built-in garage. By lucky coincidence the odd-job bloke is also a volunteer firefighter at the local firestation, and though his van is too far gone for him to move it, he and his mates get the fire out before the house is destroyed! Like, what are the odds, eh?
The mother-in-law has to spend ages getting all the fire and smoke damage sorted, and that includes itemising everything in the garage for the insurance listing. During this period a whole shedload is thrown out as being too damaged to repair... some is apparently half-inched by the workmen (how low is that? from a seventy-something widow after a house fire. Hope you guys are proud of yourselves). Next time we're up, mother-in-law says to me "you always liked Mac's old socket set, didn't you? You might as well take it, the boy will never use it". Get in!
Abingdon Engineering was formed in 1856, and everything from heavy engineering to motorcycles to gearboxes before dedicating itself solely to quality tool manufacture from the turn of the century. The legend has it that the King Dick nickname came originally from the director's bulldog who was named after King Richard. Doesn't get much more British than that. Their tools are of the highest quality, and while that matters, it mattered more that I was rescuing something that once meant an awful lot to the old man. He may have wanted his son to have them, but I bet he'd have wanted them more to be used and cared for rather than be left to rot away
So, this is what we ended up with;
Pretty humble from outside, just a rusty and battered old blue box. But rather like that other scruffy blue box, the TARDIS, all the magic happens on the inside
Three sets of sockets, most importantly in metric from 11mm to 32mm and in Imperial up to 1 1/4 inch plus plenty of extensions, the best quality ratchet I've ever used and a miscellany of random sockets and drivers he'd added over the years. By way of illustration of how cool these tools are, check out this stud extractor, it's an absolute work of art
The universal joint as art (gives me a chance to play with the macro lens)
I wish this pic was scratch 'n' sniff, or at least touchy-feely so you could try the almost orgasmic action of the ratchet, lol
The random tools included things like this combination spanner, one of the trickest little things ever and now and indespensible part of my in-car kit. All the sizes from 8 to 24mm in one single non-slip adjusty spanner
Anyway, I've not bored you with all this in an attempt to show off
I was genuinely made up, like. The only problem is that the years had taken their toll, and the toolbox especially was showing the worse for wear. We discussed at length whether it was more honest to the tools to leave them as they were, but eventually decided it was the right thing to do to give it all a quick spruce up. Not to try to get everything immaculate, cos I want them to look used as they are and besides, I don't think you'd ever get all the dents and dings out of the box if you wanted. But just to make them look something like their former glory again and I like to think the old man would approve of them being shown some love.So, with the course set, I started in on the refurb. I sanded the box back, rust treated the whole lot, sanded it back again. It wasn't mirror-smooth but that's fine, it wasn't supposed to be. The tools were all given a good clean with paraffin and rubbed down with oil (two-stroke, as it happens, I knew I'd find a use for that bottle I've had since my last RD350LC if I kept it long enough.)
Then a couple of blow-overs with metal primer
and a lot of coats of Ford Matisse Blue, which was a near-perfect colour match to the original colour but with an added bit of life to it from the light metallic aspect
A right PITA getting around all the riveted-in tool clips without drips and runs, but I didn't want to remove them. They use a clever rivet that's flat-sided both sides, so they keep the base of the box flat, and I have no idea where to find replacements. Came out OK though, and I don't mind the couple of dodgy bits, it adds to the character. Several more coats, this time of lacquer to protect all that hard work and give it a fighting chance in the garage environment. The next step was to steal one of the kid's wax crayons and by the method of basically bark-rubbing across the edges, I made up paper templates of all the compartments...
...which gradually got turned into rubber tool-drawer lining mat cutouts whilst watching an evening of repeats of Fast'n'Loud on Discovery Turbo once the kids were in bed. Ahhhh, domestic bliss
And finally, it was all done. Again, it was a bit of a faff marking the location of the clips and cutting holes for them to pop through, but mostly it was accurate enough via my patented wax crayon technique, lol
The finishing touch was to re-apply the proud and slightly patinated King Dick emblem to the lid, with a heavy duty clear plastic cover to protect it from further wear
And of course, since you can disassemble ninety-eight percent of a Japanese car using only an 8mm and a 10mm socket, and those were the two sizes not in the set, I eBayed up a couple to complete the run. Big and small (god, I love playing with macro lenses
);
and there we go, one refurbished but still pleasantly used toolkit
Hopefully if the old man's up there looking down he'd approve of the love we've shown them, and I like to think he'd definitely approve of his stuff being used again. Now all I need to do is convince the waff's mum to ship out the rest of the garage contents out to us....
Thanks for reading, hope you approve of my humble story and you're not out there screaming at the computer screen "why didn't you leave it all as it was, you idiot!"
