Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing Chamber Drills or Something

1940’s and 50’s gunsmith left his son who is now in his 60’s all his old equipment and parts. I hauled a load of old ammo and stuff home today to help him sell. It is in the basement of the old homestead and he wants to tear the old house down this Fall. He hauled 3 loads to the dump before a mutual friend told him to hold up. There is a tool chest full of chamber bits, or whatever you call them. Many different calibers. Are they still worth anything or are the newer technology tools the way to go. He is going to haul it all to the dump if I don’t rescue it.

I’ll take it!!!

I would be interested in some of the smaller pieces and fixtures. Possibly some cutters, threading tools, and a few other things if he wouldn't mind a guy looking through the stuff. And I'm kind of in the area, at least the same state.
Shame about the stuff at the dump already, but concentrate on what is there I guess....

Bob

I am trying to get a time set for me to get back and load up some more stuff. I really don't know what I am looking at and will take the pick-up this time instead of the car and get everything that appears to have any value. I'll post at that time but if someone might have an idea of what to look for it might help. :-)

Any tooling is probably worth something. Quick change tool posts, jigs, boring bars, boring cutters, ... hard to specify without seeing what is there. A picture would help.

Quick change tool posts IN the 40's-50's, I don't think so. My experience with buying and selling Machinist/gunsmith tools for the last 30 yrs. has been that tools that have sat idle for that long a period of time turn out to be a bunch of rusty, wore out old junk. I don't mean to rain on anyone's parade but I wouldn't get my hopes up. Chamber reamers may have some value if they are commercially made and in good condition, many of the old timers made their own and they may be questionable as to their dimensions and performance. Caveat emptore applies here fellas, stuff this old may take more effort to haul, sort, clean-up and market than any revenue realized. Here's an example I'll share, I recently sold my former supervisor's complete set of Tool & Die Maker tools. Most were Starrett and were is as NEW condition in the box, I priced them at 50% of current retail, this from my years of selling is the price point at which this kind of tools will sell. There were more than 13 cartons of tools and most sold readily. The last 2-3 cartons I sold as a package deal at a 10% discount. I realized a $1K fee for my efforts, lots of e-mails, list updates and trips to the P.O. and some FTF meetings with purchasers.

Here are some pictures of the stuff. I was told all of these are "hardened" and still in working order. OKKKKK, what are they?

Don't see any gunsmith specific tools in the pictures. Mostly reamers, straight, tapered and adjustable. The center picture is all adjustable reamers of various sizes. To get a smooth, precisely sized hole, machinists will drill undersized and ream to fit. A well equipped machine shop will have a complete set of reamers corresponding to drill sizes. The adjustable ones can be set to provide any size needed. I use them to rechoke (open) shotguns if tubes are not wanted.

+1 regarding the above comments, just a bunch of old reamers none gunsmith specific. Not especially well cared for, they should be stored in some sort of protective tubes cardboard/plastic. Thrown in together like that they're likely to be dinged and dulled. Don't see anything of real value there, in my experience in 25+ years of selling machinist tools there is little interest/resale value in used tooling. If you got $50.00 +/- for all of it I'd be surprised. Having learned that from experience I don't go out of my way to purchase used cutting tools.

"Having learned that from experience I don't go out of my way to purchase used cutting tools."

+1

They whole basement full of stuff should have been cleaned up years ago. Lots of value lost. Thanks for all the information. $50 will pay for the fuel I burned picking up a pickup load of stuff, much of went in the dumpster.