It is strange but for some reason the first message that I sent entitled "Old Tools" did not show up on the list but the second part did. I will repeat the original message here along with a final update: ----- Original Message ----- From: Whelans To: NFLD-ROOTS ; NFLD-LAB Sent: Friday, August 01, 2003 9:24 AM Subject: Old Tools I recently acquired a couple of old tools that belonged to my great-great-grandfather's brother. That would place them sometime around the late 1800s. One is a cloth measuring tape that you wind up inside a black case. There are two types of measurements on it. One side has feet and inches. I pulled it out to nearly 48 feet until I met some resistance and then I stopped in fear that I would break it. The underside of the cloth was up to the 72 mark. I don't know what unit of measurement that would be. Those marks are about 7 3/4 inches apart. The other tool is a mystery. It looks like a T with the top of the T being a small wooden handle. The shaft resembles a 6" nail. It is pointed and has threads on the tip about 1 cm long. Above that, there is a gouge in the side of the shaft about 2 1/4" long. It may have been that once you screwed it into whatever the material was, it was then pushed through and raised so that the excess sawdust or whatever would fill the gouge and be raised up to be removed. Mom guessed that it was used in shoemaking to make the holes to lace the top to the soles but I think the holes would have been too large for that. Does anybody know of a website that would help me to identify and/or date these tools? If somebody is willing to take a look at these tools and help me figure this out, I could email a photo. Perhaps you could show it to an older person who would remember what the little hand tool was used for. Thanks, Valerie Update: After discovering that the tape is actually 66 feet long, I went back and pulled it out again and did not stop where I did before but went all the way to the end, hoping that the manufacturer's name might be there. Unfortunately, it wasn't. However, I discovered the significance of it being 66 feet. Apparently that matches up to 100 Links or 4 Poles, whatever that means. On the underside of the tape, with the unusual "Link" measurements, I discovered that 25 Links equal 1 Pole. Has anybody ever heard of this? Thanks, Valerie