Tools

Crowds descended on Bolton at the weekend to see the sell-out auction of the property of steeplejack and TV personality Fred Dibnah.

Among the artworks, furniture and collectables on offer at the upcoming Antiques for Everyone Fair is an object which could be considered the needle found in the proverbial haystack.

This ice pick belonged to the explorer James W. Dell who accompanied Scott on his first effort to reach the South Pole in 1901-04, serving as an able seaman aboard the ‘Discovery’.

A year after offering the first spectacular array of woodworking tools from the collection of David R. Russell, David Stanley Auctions of Osgathorpe included the third instalment from this prolific source at their most recent sale.

David Stanley Auctions offered the second part of the collection of woodworking tools formed by David R. Russell, renowned for the rarest and finest Norris planes.

THE amputation tools used by a surgeon on the battlefields of the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783) will appear at auction in October.

THIS week sees a three-day celebration of the art of the lathe organised by the Worshipful Company of Turners.

In June 1941 an 18-year-old apprentice cabinetmaker, L.F. Gillet of Stratford-on-Avon, won first prize in the prestigious Amalgamated Society of Woodworkers annual competition. The prize was a dovetailed steel and rosewood rebating mitre the ASW had specially commissioned from the Norris factory.

THE chronicles of Captain Cook and his perils on the high seas of the South Pacific, possess a mixture of action, adventure, discovery, science and romance that is enough to capture the most hardened imagination.

PICTURED right is a 2ft 1in (64cm) Jacobean amputation saw made by Robert Hobbs that is appearing at a sale at the Cedars Hotel in Stowmarket, Suffolk on July 30.

THIS Saturday (May 1) Thomson Roddick & Medcalf will be selling the entire stock-in-trade of Edinburgh restorer and cabinetmaker William Trist at its Esbank saleroom.

Americans being a major force in the arcane world of tool collecting,Tony Murland and Mike Hancock feared the US recession would hit their July 27 specialist Tool Shop Auctions, 10% buyer’s premium) at Needham Market.