Documentation

I spent a quarter hour paging through a binder full of FORD/FERGUSON operator and parts manuals a few weeks ago. I was looking for one detail which I did not find. If I had found it, I would have been able to turn speculation into fact.

The bookshelf above contains documentation with a leavening of hearsay and speculation. There are a few bound auction sale lists. The wrench books include "Antique and Unusual Wrenches," by Schulz's , "Wrench Patents 1790-1911," by Steven Eckers, "Wrenches and Patents," by Don Shockley, a bound set of the Missouri Valley Wrench Club Newsletters from 1982 through 2006, "The History of Old Time Farm Implement Companies and the Wrenches They Issued," by P.T. Rathbone (2 vols. and supplements), and "Indiana Toolmakers and Their Tools" and "Ohio Toolmakers and Their Tools," by Jack Devitt.

The bound newsletter sets are one-of-a-kind as I constructed those bindings myself. The validity of these volumes' content can be tested by going back to the most authoritative sources. Implement manufacturer parts manuals sometimes list hand tools and their purpose. Tool manufacturers' ads or the advertising materials they supplied for hardware wholesalers' catalogs are authoritative. Patents can be misleading because manufactured tools sometimes differ substantially from their corresponding patents.