The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area The Tool Chest Grandpa's tools

It *is* cool to not only have a family legacy of tool use, but also to have tools passed down through the generations.

One of my great grandfathers was a machinist and an accomplished mechanic (I'm pretty sure I've talked about my Mom's grandpa Wes ...) and I have a few of his tools. Most of the tools of Wes' are the early post WW1 stuff that's cool ... but not really useable anymore.

But today ... I had a wonderful experience in the shop with a tool passed down to me from my grandfather (Dad's dad). I wasn't working on the truck, I was woodworking. And the tool wasn't actually a wood working tool. It's actually referred to as a "pica pole." Anyone familiar with the print world will know what a pica pole is. To the rest of you, it looks like a metal ruler with weird scales.

In my professional background, I am a newspaper editor. I grew up in the print world and have edited three different newspapers (all military), the last being the Naval Air Station Patuxent River "Tester" (distro approx. 20,000). In the old days of doing hot wax lay ups with off-set print, Linotype, etc ... an important tool we all used was the pica pole as it measured the standard unit of print layout -- the Pica. The back side of an old school pica pole usually showed "agate" which is another unit of print lay out measurement and type face size.

At any rate ... When I came into the field in the late '80's, newspapers had gotten smaller. Most printed newspapers were what we called a "Tabloid" or "Mini Tabloid" size. The grand old days of the "Broadsheet" like the "Grey Lady" (the New York Times) were pretty much over and news papers were smaller.

Thus, all one needed to accurately set (or grade) newspaper layouts in the '80's and '90's was a 12 -inch or 72p "pica pole."

But Pop (my dad's dad) worked in a different world. Following his service in World War 1, he graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a degree in commercial art. He was one of the pioneers of the air brush (you may be familiar with Alberto Vargas, a contemporary of my Pop's) and had a very successful career in commercial art, eventually retiring as the Director of the Art Department for the Traveler's Insurance Corporation. Pop needed a HUGE pica pole for correctly sizing artwork for publications ranging from broadsheets like the Hartford Courant and the New York Times to big magazine formats like the Saturday Evening Post and the and New Yorker.

Which is a long about explanation of how cool it was to use Pop's 144p (24-inch) pica pole in the shop today. Alas, not for a print layout. Not even for any automobile use (which would have made *his* father-in-law pleased) but just for his grandson's own artistic passion -- woodworking. And I didn't use it just "to use it." It really was the right tool for the job -- I needed a really accurate, really long straight edge.

Thanks Pop!

And just to round out the day, I used a beautiful vintage Disston crosscut hand saw to make a cut. That saw was given to me by Peggy's dad.

John, you mentioned a vintage Disston hand saw. There are a couple of those beauties that belonged to my Grandpa, Dad's dad, who helped build the house I grew up in nearly 75 years ago, still hanging in the garage. One of my first memories as a 4 year old was hammering nails in the subfloor of the living room with Grandpa, wearing my little tool belt that my mom made. I was looking at those Disston saws a few years back and was intrigued by what I found out was the "nail tooth" on the back side of the blade. I'm still not so sure how what they were used for - I assuming cutting the stray nail when using a saw for demolition work.

John, I have a 24 inch pica pole that I use for woodworking. It makes for very accurate measurements.

I would love to see a picture of the nail tooth. I’ve never seen anything like that before.

I looked on the web when I posted that but couldn't find a picture. The saws are down in SoCal, so I can't get one right away. I'll see if my sister who's local to them can snap a pic.

Interesting -- My Disston's don't have anything like that.

Wayne -- Cool!! There's two of us!

Finally found some discussion on the web about what I called a "nail tooth". HERE's an article from the Tool Shed site. The first picture in the article shows what I was referring to. Apparently your Disstons, John, aren't as old as the ones I've seen in Dad's garage that I know are at least 70 years old.

[on edit] I really doubt the contention that Disston claim that it's merely ornamentation.