Farmall Cub

Rosanne's uncle died several months ago. He lived with Rosie's sister's family for the last three or four years and was a bigger pack rat than me. Over that time he had accumulated a basement full (no exaggeration) of tools and such. Vicki asked me to come over to help her price some of the stuff and said I could have anything I wanted. Since I didn't have my 24 foot enclosed trailer with me I just stuck to enough stuff to fill three five gallon buckets. I had a decent 4" grinder, some extra taps for chasing threads, a couple of grinding wheels and a good assortment of standard size nuts and bolts. There were a few other things, like several vice grips (real ones) some clamps and gear pullers but that was about it.

I found one box sitting on a shelf that I had to check out. When I opened it I found this.


I opened it up and found someone had recently put new batteries in it but they have poor record keeping.


I tested the voltage capabilites and it reads pretty good. I never had a chance to test
the ohms but the only resistance I ever find around here is when I ask Rosie to fix dinner.


The negative wire had become so brittle that it had cracked at every fold.


Under the tester I found a pair of antique ear wax extractors in like new condition.


After very extensive research, (I Googled "Grass Instruments") I found that Grass Instruments is more well known for medical equipment. Does anybody know anything about this company?

By the way, I did aquire a few hits on "Blue Grass Instruments". Now, let's see, where did I lay my mandolin! I love that music.

That meter should work well for checking out charging systems. I'm not familiar with Grass Instruments but most of them made in those days were pretty decent quality.

The scales would go along with medical equipment. It was probably made for doing testing of older electronic monitoring equipment, etc. At that point in time most test equipment was specialized for it's application rather than having multiple uses as it does now. You can get a rough idea if the ohms scales are good by checking if it will ZERO on each scale.

Funny, those batteries are 2 months older than i am. Going on 52 years.

Nice find.

Dale Shaw wrote:

Funny, those batteries are 2 months older than i am. Going on 52 years.

I was exactly 6 years old when the batteries were installed. 9/22 is my birthday.

Speaking of cleaning the basement, my father-in-law died in May and we have been cleaning out the house to prepare it for renting out. Anyway, yesterday my wife called me at work and said that the basement had flooded. The house has never had an issue with water so I assumed a water line had ruptured, a correct assumption. I quickly left work and found about 30" of water in the basement. What a mess!!!