Wednesday, September 23, 2020

Manhattan Beach Pier -- September 21, 2020 (Monday) -- nearly empty...


Fewer people than usual at lunch time...



The air quality is finally reasonable (below 100 AQI - Moderate)...



The picture below was taken by accident, while riding.  The phone is mounted on the handlebar and the camera is pointing down.  The shadow shows my position on the bike (not in the drops).

Old & Rough Tool Case - part 2

There are six drawers.

Interesting that the upper drawer guides in the center of the chest are on the vertical floating piece...

Most of the drawers have what looks like galvanized steel bottoms.

On the bottom drawer, there's a "shadow" of where the Gerstener label used to be.

The only drawer without a steel bottom is the very bottom drawer.  It has a thin plywood bottom.  (looks to be three layers)

Inside view of the lock.

The drawer pulls have an "escutcheon"  behind them.

The felt in the bottom of the drawers are still there but are a little rough.


I'm tempted to just clean the drawer front and leave all the scratches in the wood.  After cleaning, I'll probably apply a "wood restorer" or a Danish stain to just protect/preserve the wood.

The lock plate on the bottom surface of the top of the case.  The screw just below the plate is a "stop" so that the lid is positioned correctly to match the lock and lock plate.


Top corners of the case have protectors.  Will remove these, since they're held in place with screws, and just clean them up with a wire wheel or steel wool.

These are the feet and bottom corner protectors.  This is a picture looking at the bottom of the case.  There's a large split-rivet (or pin) on the bottom side that acts as part of the feet of the case. 


View of the bottom of the case.  Not too bad.  The leatherette isn't torn.

This is the RH side of the case.  The leatherette is not too bad.  Just a little bit of tearing on the front edge.

Handle leather is largely dried out and quite a bit of it is missing/falling off.

The ends of the handle are attached to the top of the case with split-rivets.  If you remove them, the rivets will need to be replaced.  I'll probably leave them as is and clean them up with some steel wool.
As for the leather handle, I'll use a long strip of leather and wrap the handle as is so that it's covered (kind of like how a tennis racket handle is covered).  It won't look original but it will keep the rest of the original handle from falling apart even more while making the handle usable.