Thumb Screws are best described in this quote from RabComponents.com:
A screw drive that comes with either a tall headed or ridged (knurled) sides, or a key-like flat sided vertical head can be defined as a thumb screw. These screws can easily be tightened or loosened by hand without using any external drive. However, they are not ideally used for any structural applications.
The over-sized head with the diamond-patterned grip finish allows the screw to be tightened or loosened without any external effort. This easy feature makes the screw an imperative part of those devices that require frequent removal and re-installation; for example, safety covers of electronic devices..
What are the Basic Applications and Advantages?
A thumb screw actually acts like a bolt in most applications. When typically used, this blunt-nosed screw or bolt is fastened into a threaded hole and its ease of removal doesn’t require any external tool to assemble or disassemble any equipment.
Old Cut Nails
The history of the humble nail can reveal a great deal. CLICK HERE to read a wonderful, brief article about the history of the nail.
Looking at antique furniture, we often seek clues for authenticity and age. There are many factors that show true historic construction, but one clue that is often overlooked is the type of nail used to hold the piece together. Nails in antique furniture are often barely noticeable, but they are another key to unlock the history of wooden pieces. The quest for the ideal nail has taken centuries of development. As Churchill noted, “To improve is to change, to be perfect is to change often.”
CLICK HERE for a variety of ways to use old nails in crafts. It includes art, puzzles, and yes, even coasters. Check it out.
Then stop by Bahoukas and grab a handful for your next crafty project! Yep, we’ll be watchin’ for ya. Don’t forget, we have 50% off on all glass and record albums! Hurry in!
You never ever know what you might discover in all the treasures at Bahoukas. While gathering photos for more blog posts, this most beautiful sculpture was discovered on a high shelf. You have to stop in and see it for yourself. It’s beautiful.
Of course, it’s been mentioned that George is having some big sales this month on glass and record albums. Well, I’m not sure what all is included… but check out this amazing blue glass that just arrived in the last couple weeks.
If you don’t know by now, George is always willing to make a deal. Stop in and see for yourself. In the meantime, here’s a bit more beautiful glass for every taste:
Now doesn’t this look festive for the Holidays! Or maybe you prefer one or two of these beautiful pieces. They would add wonderful beauty reflecting candles and lights at your holiday table.
Hopefully, we’re on your to-do list to visit for that special decorating idea you have or the perfect gift for someone on your gift list. Yes, we are here and waiting to say, “Welcome!”
At Bahoukas, we have a nice selection of old tools including a few saws.
A saw is a tool consisting of a tough blade, wire, or chain with a hard toothed edge. It is used to cut through material, very often wood though sometimes metal or stone. The cut is made by placing the toothed edge against the material and moving it forcefully forth and less forcefully back or continuously forward. This force may be applied by hand, or powered by steam, water, electricity or other power source. An abrasive saw has a powered circular blade designed to cut through metal or ceramic. from Wikipedia
The above photo includes 2-man (person) saws and an ice saw. Below we have an electric meat saw (used by a butcher).
At this time of year, I think of all the folks gathering and chopping wood to be prepared for the colder days and the long winter nights. What’s the poem about your wood chopping efforts? Oh yea, it warms you when you cut it and again when you heat with it. But the following is from Almanac.comand we think that’s probably much more accurate:
I figure that this wood will warm me seven times.
1. Cut
2. Split
3. Put into truck
4. Take out of truck
5. Bring into basement
6. Stack
7. Burn
But just like those who knit and crochet, or color intricate designs, cutting wood can also be very satisfying as noted in the following quote:
I spend a lot of time doing carpentry. Sometimes there is nothing that gives me the contentment that sawing a piece of wood does. Abbas Kiarostami
We look forward to showing you all the wonderful, old tools available at Bahoukas. So stop in soon. Someone may love one of these under their Christmas Tree. Oh wait, maybe they need one to ‘cut the tree!’ In any case, yep, we’ll be watchin’ for ya!
We have a set of 20 volumes of the World’s Greatest Literature in excellent condition. This beautiful set by Spencer Press is from the 1930s. Someone on your Christmas list will cherish this gift.
In doing a little research, we learned a bit about Spencer Press and the marketing of the World’s Greatest Literature series.
The World’s Greatest Literature series seems to have been sold in the late 1930s and early 1940s, as shown in the newspaper advertisement near the beginning of this entry.
As said before, these seem to be the same books. (as the Spencer Library of Immortal Masterpieces … or Literature) from SeriesOfSeries website
The history of marketing affordable books of World Literature in the early 1900s has a colorful history. We’re probably much more familiar with these tactics today. Here’s a quote from this colorful history from the SeriesOfSeries website.
Finally, the series is affiliated with the “American Home Library Foundation” which is portrayed as a charitable literary foundation, subsidizing the series to promote the reading of the classics. Together, the binding, the series name, and charitable literary foundation worked to convince potential book buyers that the Spencer Library was an opportunity they could not miss. That’s the spin: to sell copyright-free literary classics with dubious and fraudulent methods to gullible working and middle-class consumers who wanted to be at least perceived as a bit literary and intellectual.
No matter the tactics, we have this beautiful 20 volume set that is perfect for the right person! Do you know someone who would love this gift? If so, drop by Bahoukas Antique Mall today and grab it before the set gets broken up! And yes, we will be watchin’ for ya!
At Bahoukas, we have some wonderful decorating collectibles!
This beautiful set of Poinsettia decorated table pieces will make your holiday table festive and bright. Stop by to see just how beautiful these pieces really are.
Maybe you need a tabletop Christmas Tree. We have several beautiful trees with electric lights and a manger at the base. It’s perfect for a senior in a small apartment, for someone who prefers a minimalist approach to the holidays, or an added piece for a shelf or table top.
We also have a beautiful variety of tree ornaments. In fact, 3 boxes of wonderful, vintage Christmas balls were sold just this week. Don’t hesitate. Stop by and see the choice ornaments we have waiting to add a bit of sparkle to your decorating.
If you have a love and appreciation of an old-fashioned Christmas, stop in and see what we can add to your holiday decor.
Consider these delightful and colorful candles and small buildings to use under the tree, on a shelf, or to add to your train layout. Seriously, we have some really fun and beautiful Christmas Decorations. Including a variety of SANTAs for every purpose in your decorating. And you know it … we’ll be watchin’ for ya!
Are you in need of a particular kitchen utensil and need it NOW! Pop into Bahoukas Antique Mall and see if we have it for you. You’ll truly be surprised at our Surprise Boxes full of very practical and useable items!
Maybe you just need a small ladle for gravy or a handy serving spoon. Yep, we have a Surprise Box of those items, too.
Seriously, if you’ve not checked out the hidden boxes of ‘surprises’ that can be found throughout our shop, you really need to stop in and check us out. Of course, we’ll be watchin’ for ya!
PLEASE NOTE: We will be closed on Thanksgiving! But we’ll be ready for you today and throughout the Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Sunday and Cyber Monday… and we’re right here in your neighborhood!
Wishing everyone a Happy and Safe Thanksgiving Holiday!
This beautiful holiday celebration of Thanksgiving, we show our gratitude for all that we have. Most importantly, we are nudged to actually ‘notice’ what we have.
At the same time, we know that Thanksgiving hustles us into Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday for shopping.
If you’ve not started yet, it also leads us into Holiday Decorating. We thought we’d start our holiday ideas with some very special and collectible Santas that are waiting for you to add delight to your holiday decor.
Look at this assortment of 1970s AFX Aurora Slot Cars
The Aurora Plastics Corporation introduced the A/FX (Aurora Factory Experimentals, later simply “AFX”) line of slot cars, slot car track sets, and related accessories in 1971. The AFX brand continued production until the company was forced into receivership in 1983.[1]Aurora designed the AFX cars with interchangeable car body shells usually compatible with each chassis they released during these years. The original 1971 A/FX chassis utilized an updated version of the existing pancake motor design of Aurora’s “Thunderjet 500” line, popular in the 1960s.[2] Aurora then released a longer version of the A/FX chassis in 1973, known as the “Specialty” chassis, which incorporated a longer wheelbase and gearplate (and often a more powerful armature) with bodies unique to that chassis. The car bodies designed to fit the shorter original chassis featured a clever snap-on design while the bodies for the Specialty chassis were affixed with a small screw. In late 1974, Aurora redesigned both the original and Specialty chassis and exposed the bottom of the motor magnets. The exposed magnets were attracted to the metal rails in the track during racing, creating downforce to help hold the car on the track while cornering. AFX “Magna-Traction” cars remained popular from their release in 1974 throughout 1983, even after faster chassis designs were introduced in house and by Tyco. from Wikipedia
Then in 1960, the British company Playcraft Model Motoring had a slot car display at a London toy show. Representatives from Aurora, an American company that specialized in scale model kits, snatched up the American marketing rights for Playcraft’s slots. Within five years, Aurora had sold 25 million slot cars to eager kids, becoming the most successful line of slot cars in history.
Stop by the store and take a peek at these very collectible slot cars. Yep, we’re here (decorating for the holidays) and we’ll be watchin’ for ya!
Besides having the perfect numbers for your house, these metal numbers might be a perfect addition to a craft. Have you considered that? No? Well, at Bahoukas Antique Mall and Beer MuZeum, we have ‘Surprise Boxes’ scattered throughout the store.
CLICK HEREfor some ideas that will get your creative juices flowing. Our numbers are a few inches tall. But if you’re ‘crafty,’ these examples just may be the spark you need! One idea, paint them with different colors and use them for the kids’ bedroom or playroom!!! FUN!
Put your creativity hat on and consider how you might upcycle these treasures. Yep, We’ll be watchin’ for ya.
This beautiful set comes in a very nice wood box. It would make your home bartender very happy during the coming holiday parties. Tongs, strainer, double jigger, and more complete this beautiful and very collectible set. We’ve got you covered for unique ideas for the coming holiday season from entertaining to decorating, gifts to games. Yep, We’ll be watching for ya!
This unique drum was brought to our shop recently.
It’s a marching snare drum from the 1940s that was used by Maurice Pippin in the Drum & Bugle Corp of Bristol, VA before WWII! It’s in good condition with 2 sets of sticks and a cloth cover. Stop in and have a look. It’s quite beautiful. Imagine the history this drum could share if it could talk. Maybe a drummer can bring out its story. Oh, and by the way, we’ll be watchin’ for ya!
Pachinko (パチンコ) is a type of mechanical game originating in Japan and is used as both a form of recreational arcade game and much more frequently as a gambling device, filling a Japanese gambling niche comparable to that of the slot machine in Western gaming. from Wikipedia
Pachinko machines were first built during the 1920s as a children’s toy called the “Corinth game” (コリントゲーム korinto gēmu), based on and named after the American “Corinthian bagatelle”.[4] Another likely inspiration was the Billard japonais, ‘Japanese billiards’, invented in Western Europe during the 18th century. It emerged as an adult pastime in Nagoya around 1930 and spread from there. All of Japan’s pachinko parlors were closed down during World War II but re-emerged in the late 1940s. Pachinko has remained popular since; the first commercial parlor was opened in Nagoya in 1948. from Wikipedia
Here’s a video explaining how Pachinko is played.
Believe it or not, we have a Pachinko machine at Bahoukas. Of course, you believe it. After all, we have the “Collection of Collections!” Stop by and see it for yourself. Be sure to leave plenty of time to browse our 9,000+ sq ft of “Collections.” Yes, we’ll be watchin’ for ya!
While sorting some items in the shop, we realized that our reproduction canning labels are truly beautiful. Most are $5 each and we can order more and get them back in a day. (We also have some ‘original, collectible, canning labels if you desire those. Priced a bit higher.)
Anyway, check out the artwork. WOW! The photos don’t do justice to how great these actually look. (We took photos through a vinyl covering.)
Could you imagine decoupaging some of these beautiful canning labels for unique kitchen decor!
Beautiful. Oh, not sure what decoupage is:
Decoupage or Découpage is the art of decorating an object by gluing colored paper cutouts onto it in combination with special paint effects, gold leaf and other decorative elements. Commonly, an object like a small box or an item of furniture is covered by cutouts from magazines or from purpose-manufactured papers. from Wikipedia
Look around. You can create beautiful coasters, cover a cutting board or that wood knife holder on your counter, a tray (metal or wood), cupboard doors, jars, and more. Beautiful, unique, and truly your own! Stop by Bahoukas Antique Mall today and plan your holiday gift or creative decor items. We’ll be watchin’ for ya!
You just never know what might be discovered when you’re searching our shelves. High up on one of those shelves, we discovered a Home Pasteurizer by The Schlueter Co. of Wisconsin. Used for pasteurizing raw milk, we’ve discovered that they still make these.
… If you traveled through even fairly large cities around the year 1900, you would often come across something now illegal in most urban areas: milk cows. Dairy animals were not uncommon in cities, and it was often the task of young children to lead the animals to whatever grassy areas were available on the edge of town so they could graze.
In the last hundred years of urban migration, the number of home or small farm dairies has been greatly reduced. Who needed to keep a cow when it was so much simpler just to buy milk from the grocery store? As the population of rural areas emptied into urban centers, Americans became more and more disconnected from the source of all their dairy products… as well as more concerned about the quality of those products as dairies became enormous commercialized enterprises.
The above quote is from an article that gives the many sides of the raw vs pasteurized vs homogenized milk. If you’re one of those folks who take self-reliance and personal responsibility very seriously, we have a tool you might need.
…It’s actually very easy to pasteurize your own milk on the stovetop. An added bonus is that your milk won’t need to stand up to long distance shipping and prolonged storage, so you can pasteurize it safely using lower heat and less time than many industrial milk producers use. All you need is a stainless steel pot and a simple kitchen thermometer.
So there you have it: the tool or the recipe!
Of course, we keep telling you about all the surprises waiting for you to discover at Bahoukas Antique Mall and Beer MuZeum. You can be sure, we’ll be watchin’ for ya. Stop in soon!
Brides, wedding planners, and wedding shower hosts are always looking for unique decorations. At Bahoukas Antique Mall we have some beautiful, and a few humorous, collectible wedding toppers. They make great toppers for wedding cakes, of course. But they can also be used in wedding shower decor!
Wondering what other ways you might use collectible wedding toppers. VISIT THIS PAGE on HGTV.com for some really fun ideas. ENJOY … then stop by and see if we have something that might work for your creative project. Yes, we WILL be watchin’ for ya!
Developed in the early 1790s, the semaphore consisted of a series of hilltop stations that each had large movable arms to signal letters and numbers and two telescopes with which to see the other stations. Like ancient smoke signals, the semaphore was susceptible to weather and other factors that hindered visibility. A different method of transmitting information was needed to make regular and reliable long-distance communication workable. from History.com
Here is a U.S. Navy training video for using flags to signal:
Can you imagine communicating hilltop to hilltop?
It’s hard for us to picture such a life today, especially when having our phones unavailable for 15 minutes has us acting like we’re lost! Enter the telegraph machine – the beginning of the more reliable and more easily accessible communications.
In 1843, Morse and Vail received funding from the U.S. Congress to set up and test their telegraph system between Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, Maryland. On May 24, 1844, Morse sent Vail the historic first message: “What hath God wrought!” The telegraph system subsequently spread across America and the world, aided by further innovations.
…
The electric telegraph transformed how wars were fought and won and how journalists and newspapers conducted business. Rather than taking weeks to be delivered by horse-and-carriage mail carts, pieces of news could be exchanged between telegraph stations almost instantly. The telegraph also had a profound economic effect, allowing money to be “wired” across great distances.
…
Did you know? SOS, the internationally recognized distress signal, does not stand for any particular words. Instead, the letters were chosen because they are easy to transmit in Morse code: “S” is three dots, and “O” is three dashes.
A simple machine is a mechanical device that changes the direction or magnitude of a force. In general, they are the simplest mechanisms that use mechanical advantage (also called leverage) to multiply force. The six classical simple machines which were defined by Renaissance scientists are:
Lever
Wheel and axle
Pulley
Inclined plane
Wedge
Screw
The simple machine was the beginning. We could take a simple machine and multiply our efforts. Then …
Substitution as makeshift is when human ingenuity comes into play and a tool is used for its unintended purpose such as a mechanic using a long screw driver to separate a cars control arm from a ball joint instead of using a tuning fork. In many cases, the designed secondary functions of tools are not widely known. As an example of the former, many wood-cutting hand saws integrate a carpenter’s square by incorporating a specially shaped handle that allows 90° and 45° angles to be marked by aligning the appropriate part of the handle with an edge and scribing along the back edge of the saw. The latter is illustrated by the saying “All tools can be used as hammers.” Nearly all tools can be used to function as a hammer, even though very few tools are intentionally designed for it and even fewer work as well as the original.
Here, at Bahoukas Antique Mall, we have a variety of tools for nearly every need. We have a wonderful assortment of vintage tools used for woodworking. But check these out for a different peek at what you might find on a shelf :
On the left is a beautiful microscope that just might delight a young person learning a bit of science! In the center, well, this is quite the calculator. What we can do on our smartphones is so much more than the efforts made with the Comptometer! Here’s a great video explain the mechanics behind the Comptometer. You can see how the ‘simple machines’ noted above make up the way these machines worked.
Do you wonder how you use them? Here’s another video. You can advance to around 3 minutes to see how to use it.
And finally, we have an old version of a tool/instrument to read your blood pressure. It’s intriguing to see wrist cuffs now that do the same.
Keep in mind, that tools started with the simplest machines noted above. Later, when you added steam, electricity, transistors, all leading to the computer age and the use of chips. Tools and instruments are fascinating. If you’re an older person, you’ll remember many of these transitions. If you’re a younger person, it might be fun to understand the development required to have the amazing tools you use today!
Hey, stop in and visit us at Bahoukas Antique Mall and Beer MuZeum. We love chatting. And yes, we’ll be watchin’ for ya!
Howdy Doody was an American children’s television program (with circus and Western frontier themes) that was created and produced by E. Roger Muir and telecast on the NBC network in the United States from December 27, 1947, until September 24, 1960. It was a pioneer in children’s television programming and set the pattern for many similar shows. One of the first television series produced at NBC in Rockefeller Center, in Studio 3A, it was also a pioneer in early color production as NBC (at the time owned by TV maker RCA) used the show in part to sell color television sets in the 1950s.
Remember this – here’s a show from 1947 from YouTube!
Click on the Wikipedia link for the history of the Howdy Doody Show. It’s most interesting. Also, we share a few photos from the show (also from Wikipedia ). Do you remember these characters? Did you have a favorite?
The other items in the top photo, available at Bahoukas Antique Mall in Havre de Grace include, a 1950s Howdy Doody puppet, on the left is a 1960s cloth hand puppet with a plastic clown face, goat and fox “push puppets”, a 1970s lady hand puppet and int the front right is a plastic frog hand puppet from the 1970s.
BRIEF HISTORY OF PUSH PUPPETS…
….where did they come from ? When were they first made? All Puppets in photos are from my own collection. Push puppets were first made in Switzerland by a wooden toy maker, Walter Kourt Walss in 1932. These articulated,wobbling toys were known as WAKOUWAS; taken from the first few letters of each of Walter’s names! The dancing, wiggling toys are now known by many different names around the world from Pomsie’s Push Puppets
Take a peek at the Pomsie site … you’ll even see a Howdy Doody push puppet!
