"DUPLEX DRILL"
screamed the EBAY header. "Hey, I've heard of that" I says to myself. I remembered having received a flyer from one of the big tool dealers a few years ago. As many progressive tool dealers did he decorated the borders of his tools for sale list with old tool clipart. At the top of one of the pages was a drill that looked amazingly like a Millers Falls #1 (the old type with the Star chuck) The legend below it said "Duplex Drill" I clicked the auction and there it was... a drill made of brass that looked much like a Millers Falls #1 with a fancier main gear. So I put it on my watch list and patiently waited for the days to pass. The final day, in the final minutes I developed my bid strategy for I knew this rare treasure was on the drool list for all the EBAY drill guys (and gals) I steeled my sniping finger for that last 20 second shot and placed my bid for around $50.00 knowing it was probably inadequate. But miracles of miracles I won it for around the starting bid with only one lackluster bid against me. Well the dealer took a trip around the world (or something like that) the day after the auctions conclusion. So I did not see the drill for about 3 weeks. When it arrived I tore the package open and I must admit was a little disappointed. The wooden head looked to small to be proper and the frame appeared to be an oversized casting of the MF drill. Heck, the chuck was an actual early MF Star chuck. It looked just like this:
Click
the picture to see a larger version
Okay, not the most fantastic drill. Looked like a poor effort from a high school shop class. But, there were the markings on the main gear.
"DUPLEX PAT MAR 8, 81 JULY 14, 85"
Now the good news is that I have patent dates, the bad news is I may have to look through a couple of hundred patents before I find the right one. But after only maybe 20 or thirty tries I had a hit. Oh horror of horrors....the patent for my wonderful eggbeater drill is for an (good grief) eggbeater!!! UGH
I picked up the patent classification and searched through until I found the second patent of Thomas W Brown. Yes, another eggbeater. In fact after going through a lot of patents on eggbeaters it seemed that Tom held 6 patents for them. The two on the main gear were 238,565 and 322,250. Tom was the treasurer of the Standard Company and in 1890 he was living in Belmont which I think is outside Boston. What do you want to guess that Standard was a metal stamping company who made these eggbeaters. Don't know--but would not be surprised. I am not sure how the drill came to be. Maybe to use up excess main gears. I do know that it is real. The upper pinion gear is held in place with the method described in patent 238,565. Later that night I am at the computer bidding on cast iron eggbeaters. If you think that there is gold in them there old tools you might want to take a gaze at eggbeater prices. Sure the common and newer ones go for 5.00 to 20.00 or languish unsold. But the old ones ---the ones like I am trying to find---those sell for 75.00, 150.00, 500.00 and yes even into the thousands of dollars. (Not from my wallet mind you!!)
So I go to my small hand drill box and pull out this one.
click
picture to see large version.
So what do you think the chances are?
If you have a catalog that shows this drill I would appreciate an email letting me know that. CZ