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I've  always had an appreciation for old work shops.  This is a picture of the shop my wife's father toiled away in when he had a need to fix or build the odd or end around his farm. The tools that are left are familiar. My Dad's father had a tool shed I spent hours in squeezing things in the vice and cranking the handle of the drill press ( mounted on the wall in foreground right).  Once in a while I would find a drill and try to punch a hole in a piece of wood. It was a tough go for a kid but the mechanism fascinated me. The crank drove bevel gears that turned the shaft the drill was chucked to.  There was a cam that lifted a lever that shifted a ratchet  at the top of the drill shaft which, in turn, caused the drill to be advanced a bit deeper into the thing I wanted to put a hole in.  Things would go pretty smoothly until the drill got buried in the "workpiece".  Since the drills I usually found were dull and the wood scrap dead dry and probably aged hardwood I would lose momentum and get to the point where a grownup could just put his back into the work and power through.  I, however, had a lot less back than my dad or his dad.  I would get so far and the cranking engine (me) would stall and force me to back up the drill and pick a new spot to have a go at.

 I would eventually give up and go spin the the big wet stone that could be cranked with a pedal.  The first time I looked through the side window of this shop behind the house my wife grew up in it struck me that there must have been a standard by which workshops were laid out and equipped in the 1930's.  The drill press, the vice clamped to the bench, the grinders cobbled up from pillow blocks and v-belt shivs. The welding helmet sitting on the bench being the only artifact of modernity.  Lucky for my dad and his father I didn't have an arc welder to marvel at and attempt to figure out.