Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

[3fingers]

I may have written this before, but I'm not going to comb 300+ pages to find out. I don't remember when I last saw a train towing a caboose. They were still common in the '60s, but I don't know when they disappeared.

By the mid/late '90s they were pretty well gone. The end of train device you see on the back of the last car spelled their end, along with the jobs that went with them.

 

[scottyrocks]

I may have written this before, but I'm not going to comb 300+ pages to find out. I don't remember when I last saw a train towing a caboose. They were still common in the '60s, but I don't know when they disappeared.

Post #4111, Oct 10, 2015.

 

[Just Jim]

Files. Decent quality files, in a variety of sizes, shapes, and cuts. I can remember going to the hardware store (don't get me started there. . . ) when I was a kid and just being amazed at the variety of wood and metal files: what could you do with them all? Nowadays, I have probably 50 different files in multiples, and my biggest concern is not "where did I put that one?" but "where can I get a replacement when this one is worn out?"

No more can you run down to the hardware store to get what you need, and you can't really trust mail order. I bought a set of Swiss needle files just to get one particular size and cut, so I could sharpen my littlest dovetail saw. I'm playing around with making a hat block, and need my cabinetmaker's rasps, including one that I can't replace for love or money. I've had to go to Vixen files for some of my shaping because--for now at least--I can still get them.

Last summer I hit >50 garage and yard sales, spending a total of about $10. I bought files. And if the sellers had known what they had and how hard they are to replace, they could have multiplied the price by 50 and I'd have paid it.

 

[tonyb]

Files. Decent quality files, in a variety of sizes, shapes, and cuts. I can remember going to the hardware store (don't get me started there. . . ) when I was a kid and just being amazed at the variety of wood and metal files: what could you do with them all? Nowadays, I have probably 50 different files in multiples, and my biggest concern is not "where did I put that one?" but "where can I get a replacement when this one is worn out?"

No more can you run down to the hardware store to get what you need, and you can't really trust mail order. I bought a set of Swiss needle files just to get one particular size and cut, so I could sharpen my littlest dovetail saw. I'm playing around with making a hat block, and need my cabinetmaker's rasps, including one that I can't replace for love or money. I've had to go to Vixen files for some of my shaping because--for now at least--I can still get them.

Last summer I hit >50 garage and yard sales, spending a total of about $10. I bought files. And if the sellers had known what they had and how hard they are to replace, they could have multiplied the price by 50 and I'd have paid it.

I'd wager that if the average household had any files at all, they're of the type used to spiff up fingernails.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Sharpening a tool is not much done anymore. Your crappy Chinese saw from Home Depot goes dull, you throw it out and go buy another one. Gotta keep that Growth Engine a-chuffing.

 

[3fingers]

We still have a couple of sharpening guys around here. One Amish and one not. The non-Amish fellow has taken to contracting for manufacturers tool and die work because there is so little household and small business work to be done. Better quality tools can still be bought, but the market is for the crappy disposable Chinese saw.

 

[Just Jim]

Better quality tools can still be bought, but the market is for the crappy disposable Chinese saw.

Yeah, but I don't have to like it. It is hard to do work with junky tools.

That tiny dovetail saw gets drug out for maybe two jobs a year (this time it was making a tiny little ring box in ebony, with zebrawood stringing, so a friend could repeat making the biggest mistake of his life). There is nothing on the market that will let me do what it does. . . . . OK, maybe, maybe one of those disposable "razor saws" made by Zona etc, but it would still take a couple of them to do the job.

I catch a lot of grief for bringing my own tools when I show up to help out friends with odd jobs, but life is too short to use dull tools. And maybe that is what I'm mourning: the demise of knowledge or skill or experience to even recognize a sharp tool.

 

[3fingers]

Yeah, but I don't have to like it. It is hard to do work with junky tools.

That tiny dovetail saw gets drug out for maybe two jobs a year (this time it was making a tiny little ring box in ebony, with zebrawood stringing, so a friend could repeat making the biggest mistake of his life). There is nothing on the market that will let me do what it does. . . . . OK, maybe, maybe one of those disposable "razor saws" made by Zona etc, but it would still take a couple of them to do the job.

I catch a lot of grief for bringing my own tools when I show up to help out friends with odd jobs, but life is too short to use dull tools. And maybe that is what I'm mourning: the demise of knowledge or skill or experience to even recognize a sharp tool.

Oh, you are preaching to the choir here. I always try to buy the best tools available for the job. I am only distressed when I pay for them. I'm happy every time I use them.

 

[tonyb]

Oh, you are preaching to the choir here. I always try to buy the best tools available for the job. I am only distressed when I pay for them. I'm happy every time I use them.

What's the saying? Something like "pay for quality and cry only once."

A salty older fellow who installed floors in a house of ours a few years back said he would install bamboo or engineered hardwood or pre-finished solid wood, but he didn't have to lobby too hard to convince us that site-finished oak was the way to go. His opinion of the other options was "install it in a day and regret it for a lifetime."

 

[2jakes]

"We'll be right back after this break!"

 

[3fingers]

^^^ There will never be another. All of them since have been poor substitutes at best.
I have gotten a lot more sleep in the last 25 years though, so there is that.

 

[2jakes]

YouTube!

 

[scottyrocks]

 

[LizzieMaine]

Groucho, Joan Crawford, Rudy Vallee, Tony Bennett, and Mel Brooks, and that's just the first show. I imagine he'll stick around a while.

It's not just the first show that's gone -- nearly all of Carson's 1960s programs were wiped to reuse the videotape. The only exceptions are a few kinescopes made for Armed Forces Television that got smuggled home by GIs, and a few snippets of color videotape saved by request of guests. Other than that there's next to nothing in the Carson archives before 1972 -- and the only reason the shows exist from then on is that Carson himself insisted on their preservation when he renegotiated his contract.

Surviving Carson shows are being rerun on the "Antenna TV" cable channel, and it's interesting to see how slow-paced they are compared to the shows you get today.

 

[scottyrocks]

For many years the show was 90 minutes. In 1980 it went to 60, and it has stayed that way to this day.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Sharpening a tool is not much done anymore. Your crappy Chinese saw from Home Depot goes dull, you throw it out and go buy another one. Gotta keep that Growth Engine a-chuffing.

Of course Home Depot isn't a hardware store, it's a "home improvement centre."

 

[LizzieMaine]

My home has seldom been improved after going there, so I don't know where they get that stuff.

 

[Zombie_61]

Of course Home Depot isn't a hardware store, it's a "home improvement centre."

The Home Depot locations around here are geared much more towards contractors who simply need materials and supplies, or people who want or need some form of home improvement but don't want to do the work themselves and are willing to pay the Home Depot crew's inflated prices and accept their shoddy workmanship. If you're clueless and need direction from someone who knows at least a little more than you do, you go to Lowe's. Or, preferably, you go to one of the few family-owned hardware stores still in existence where there's at least one jack-of-all-trades on staff who has done it all at one time or another and will show you his/her scars to prove it.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Always look for the guy who's missing part of his thumb.

 

[Zombie_61]

Always look for the guy who's missing part of his thumb.

I'm not so sure that's the guy I want teaching me how to cut lumber with power tools.