This ball-peen hammer was originally used by Vulcan (a.k.a. Hephaestus) to forge thunderbolts for Zeus.

Okay. Not really.

This is an old ball-peen hammer, sometimes called a ball-pein hammer which makes no sense because it is used for peening in metalwork, and peening is not also spelled peining. Go figure.

Even though it was designed for peening use, which is the process of working a metal to improve its properties, such as building resistance to cracking and a whole bunch of other stuff I don’t feel the need to go into right now, it will still do a good job of hammering a nail.

Sacrilege, I know. But, at least it has a job, which can be hard to find these days.

And, thus ends Retro Week with a bang, bang, bang…

You’ve seen portions of this clock before here and here, but here it is in its full awesomeness:

It’s huge too. Imagine a normal sized clock. Then add a starburst. Takes up a lot of wall space. But it is awesome, so that’s okay.

I’m guessing this clock is from the 1960’s. Presumably made by Elgin Clock & Home Products of Chicago, Illinois, not to be confused with the Elgin National Watch Company, a.k.a. the Elgin Watch Company, formerly of Elgin, Illinois which moved to a suburb of Columbia, South Carolina, which was then renamed Elgin, South Carolina. Also not to be confused with the Elgin Clock Repair company of Elgin, Illinois.

You see, this is why unique branding is so very, very important. Much less confusing when people are looking up things fifty years later.

Now, maybe the walls ought to be painted sunshine yellow…

My mother had this in her kitchen in the seventies and early eighties. I think. You know, now I’m not sure. There was another clock in the kitchen in the eighties, a Spartus, that I remember. And, that was taken out in the eighties or early nineties because that stopped working. Okay, so I’m not really sure when, or if, this one was in the kitchen.

At any rate, this is a General Electric clock from the 1970’s featuring a design by Peter Max. It’s pretty neat.

Thanks to Deborah for inspiring today’s retro post. Otherwise, I’m not sure what today’s post would have been. Oh, I would have come up with something, but what?

And below is a high school art project:

It was a 3d sort of thing, using cut-up egg cartons and styrofoam and stuff to make the different layers. We had to photocopy images from magazines. Just black and white copies. Color copies were expensive in those days. Around $2.00 a copy! I chose a “time” theme, with space too. Space-time! You picked a color and selectively colored things. I picked yellow so it was like gold.

You can almost see the “TIME” spelled out along the bottom. It’s easier to see in person than it is in the photo!

Curious. The background almost matches my current blog space-themed background…

A vintage waffle iron with a note from the future…

Look kids!

Here we have a waffle iron.

Back in the day, this was how we made waffles. That was before you could buy ‘em at the store and cook them in your toaster. Or, take them out of the freezer and put them in the microwave.

Yes, these were good ol’ fashioned waffles, where you mixed the batter yourself, and you knew it was done when you started to smell something burning, then you scraped it off the waffle iron and you considered yourself lucky if you got one that was crispy but still soft in the middle. Of course, the worse case was when the outside was burnt and the inside raw, but that made breakfast like a surprise game! You never knew what you’d get, but you’d smother it with butter and pour on the syrup and gulp it down!

Of course, after four years of Obama, who could afford electricity to run these things anymore? Or flour for the batter? Or eggs? Or milk?

But, the Kool-Aid was good. For a while.

We’ll start out Retro Week with 12 mystery men! Maybe someone will recognize these guys and tell me what they are?

All I know about them is that they are plastic and stackable (somewhat). There are no markings on them, aside from a number on the inside of their backs (which is open and hollow), which I assume is likely a mold number. Different colors have the same number and different men have different numbers.

Anyone recognize these smiling faces?

This was advertised as a conductor’s lantern. No, not a musical conductor–a train conductor.

I’m not sure if that’s true, but it looks pretty darn cool.

And, once I clean it up, it will look completely awesome. The inside has room for a huge battery, but I bet I can bring that down to size. The battery connections are all rusty, so I’m not sure whether they’ll be usable again or not. If not, a 9-volt battery and some LED lights would make for a nice upgrade.

Maybe I’ll go for a retro steampunk kind of look with it…

In lieu of Mundane Monday, this Monday I’m presenting these fine vintage office supplies.

Call me silly, but I think this is pretty cool. It’s a mini-office supply bookshelf. It contains gummed labels, transparent mending tape, thumb tacks, gummed reinforcements (for 3-hole punched sheets), pins, dry gum eraser, paper clips, photo wafers, key tags and postage stamps. Or, rather it once contained those things. Most of the boxes are empty.

But, the neat thing is that it looks like a bookshelf and all the office supply boxes look like books. Pretty nifty! They were also available in a version for the kitchen (which contained many of the same items). You can see an example of the kitchen version here. The boxes are the slide-out type (like old matchboxes), so nothing (should) fall out of the boxes when standing upright as they do.

It was made by Dennison (now known as Avery Dennison, after their merger in the early 1990’s).

I’m not sure how old this is. There is nothing on it to indicate age. I’m guessing between the 1940’s and 1960’s. If anyone knows a more accurate date, please speak up! Here’s another version, with an estimated date of 1950’s - 1970’s.

The typewriter and phone are paperweights. Not very heavy paperweights, mind you, but I guess giving them a function makes them easier to sell than just calling them knick-knacks. Oh, and the typewriter will hold two or three business cards; the telephone will hold none. But, I just like that they look old and take up less space than an actual old telephone or typewriter.

According to Practical Points in Nursing, here are the items a nurse in private practice should carry in her bag:

• A clinical thermometer
• A pair of surgical scissors and forceps
• A bottle of brandy
• A hypodermic syringe
• A fountain syringe
• Two glass catheters
• A flexible catheter
• Small bottles of corrosive sublimate tablets
• Carbolic acid
• Permanganate-of-potash crystals
• Oxalic-acid crystals and washing soda
• Rubber tubing
• A razor
• Large and small safety-pins
• Needles and white thread
• One-ounce graduated minim-glass
• A medicine-dropper
• Temperature and nourishment charts
• Gauze sponges of various sizes
• A small ice-pick
• Matches

Just wait until some of the later chapters when we learn what some of these things will be used for. And Dr. McCoy thought the 1980’s were the dark ages of medicine!

Since day one of this blog, I have had an “Antiques” category. Mind you, it’s never shown up in the listing because this is the first post in the Antiques category!

And, now, it doesn’t fit into this blog’s theme anymore. So, rather than occasionally try to shoehorn antiques posts into a “Believe. Act. Achieve!” blog, I will do it as a separate blog. Yes, I am getting dangerously addicted to setting up new blogs. Not that this is a new thing, as I used to set up lots of websites all the time back in the Web 1.0 days.

Now, I need a name for this new blog. Consider that my interests aren’t confined to a single era either, but “Old Stuff that I Like” is somewhat of an uninteresting name. And, I’m not too sure about giving it a name with “Antiques” in the title either, as I’m not sure stuff from the 1980’s (or even 1990’s) can really be called “antique” or even “vintage” for that matter. Maybe “vintage 1995″ or something, but that only seems to really work for electronics, which age faster than something like, say, a chair.

Actually, checking Wikipedia, an antique is something 50 to 100 years old. Some things, like cars, can be considered antique if they are 25 years or older. Some electronics can also be considered antique even if less than 25 years or older.

In other words, my new blog will cover things that are antiques plus things that are just old but not yet qualifying of the “antique” label.

So, what would be a good name for this new blog?

Yes, I am asking you. It’s not a rhetorical question.

I’m liking “retroyears.” What do you think?