Tap and die set
 

An interesting tap and die set (not mine) for sale on Marketplace.

Large Whitworth Tap & Die Set
Butterfield & Co, Rock Island, Canada

Butterfield's !!
 

You're talking my language! Butterfield's plant was in a little cluster of three Canadian villages right on the Vermont border. Stanstead where my mother was teaching school when she met and later married my father. Beebe (pronounced B and another B) and Rock Island sort of blur together only the river which forms some but not all of the border. Very typical New England mill towns with dams, industry, houses, twisty roads, and steep grades. Invariably moist from the spray of the waterfalls too. The other industry in the area is granite quarries for gray dull coloured granite stones. The company presently carving my father's headstone is a bit north of Rock Island in the bucolic area of Odgen.

The company went on strike or was bought out, forget just which. The owners folded it up and moved away. Quite a shock because those were well paying high status precision industry jobs.

Yes it looks a good well made set born out by the fact that it is still about. I tend to by old tools as they are generally far better quality than the crap you get now. Unfortunately the seller is asking a bit too much otherwise I would have snapped it up.

Cheers Stephen

Just looking on Google earth and it looks a nice area, right on the boarder. Must be a handy place to live.

My hometown is 25 miles to the north. This is where my father's family had a large trucking business. Some of the most bucolic countryside in the Eastern Townships is just north of Stanstead. There are little villages on the various watercourses, with small odd-shaped fields, and productive farms. One farmer's circular dairy barn survives.

A good place to run about in your M151A2 I should think.

Almost wasn't...Quebec tried to ban civilian owned military vehicles from the roadways a year or so ago.

Has anything been heard about a "final" outcome on this?
My impression is that the policy was enacted, discussions were taking place in hopes of improving the situation and then COVID came along and they suddenly had something real (at least in my opinion) to worry about so they haven't been actively enforcing. But - I haven't heard that the legislation or regulations have been withdrawn. Hopefully I'm wrong and the ban has been withdrawn.

That's pretty... how much is "too much"?

Tim

I can drive my M151A2 in Quebec no problem. It is registered in another province.

The Quebec licencing authority is a separate arm of the public service but separate from the Minister of Transport. They are the no-fault auto insurance providers, and believe they are also the arbiters of good taste in vehicles. If something is uncommon, they don't know what to do. Therefore, the default answers are 'no;' and 'you'll need to fill out a form for that'.

The HMV community was able to prove to the Minister that he'd been misinformed by the insurers. It's never a good idea to lie to the top decision maker. A 1920s Ford Model T cannot be privileged over a 1990s HMMVW. He duly accepted the licencing policy they slid towards him at his desk and immediately exempted HMVs specifically. Or at least for the next few years.