Interesting old tool, "Keystone Ratchet Drill"

[masraum]

The other day, this came up for sale in a FB tool group that I'm on. The group runs fixed price items Mon - Thu, and then Fri-Sun items are auctioned. This thing came up for $5, and no one bid on it. It was cheap and something that I'd never seen or heard of so I bought it (hasn't arrived yet).







I didn't know what I had bought, so went searching the 'Net for it. I found this thread
https://www.practicalmachinist.com/forum/threads/keystone-ratchet-drill-wrench.314758/
Which included the following story/post

I've got a Keystone "boiler ratchet"- another name for the tool you've got. Mine has a number 3 MT socket. I also have the "old man"- the drilling post with the slotted "foot". Believe it or not, these boiler ratchets or ratchet drillers still find use in modern work. When certain turbine/generator shaft couplings are fitted in the field, the bores for the body-bound studs are sometimes not cleaned up to finished diameter on one or the other of the coupling halves. The holes for the studs have to be line-reamed, using an adjustable or expanding reamer.

On one job, we got handed a real joker in the deck. We had a rigid flanged coupling on a speed increasing gearbox that was drilled/bored at the Philadelphia Gear's plant. The turbine shaft coupling was another story. It had apparently been laid out by someone using dividers and a prick punch. The Philly Gear coupling bolts were dead on for equal spacing on the bolt circle. The turbine shaft coupling was off in two directions- not all the holes were equally spaced, nor were they all on the same radius bolt circle. We are talking about holes that were nominally 1 5/8" diameter, with a "light drive fit" on the bodies of the studs, and hubs with flanges around 3" thick apiece. We are also talking about a location where there was no powered drill motor or mag base drill that could get in. We rolled the couplings around until we found the approximate best orientation with the least amount of metal to be removed. I then had the crew pull the couplings together using 1" B7 grade all thread temporary studs, and sock up good on them. Then, it was time to bite the bullet.

I went home and got my Keystone Driller boiler ratchet. I also got a bridge or boiler reamer ( a reamer with a tapered leading section for opening misaligned rivet or bolt holes on structural, shipbuilding, or boiler work). I cut a little piece of hot rolled steel plate and put a centerdrill in it. This was the "bucking pad" for the pointed end of the feed screw on the Keystone Driller to push into. This bucking pad was able to bear against the gearcase bearing housing's end surface. The crew turned to. We ordered a succession of bridge reamers and a larger adjustable reamer. We went up nearly 1/4" on the bores of the coupling stud holes, all with the Keystone Driller. The mechanics made buckets of chips and wore out a few pair of leather work gloves. One guy pumped the ratchet handle and his partner advanced the feed screw. It took the crew something like 4 working days to open the coupling bolt holes and clean them up with the adjustable reamer. When we got done, we ran a hone thru each hole, and we miked the bores. We then had new fitted studs made with the body diameters finish ground to a light driving fit in each of those bores.

The Keystone Driller has been returned to my shop and never used since. A great old tool and not to be dismissed as an antique.

and this follow up

Interestingly, after our using my old Keystone driller on that job, some of the older mechanics back at our home plant took me to a storage area way down deep in our powerplant. There were all sorts of spare parts and rigging fixtures and alignment tools, along with huge reamers and special taps on the order of 4" in diameter. On the shelves were two ratchet drills, made in Japan and furnished by Hitachi when they furnished our four pump turbines in 1972. The old hands told me those ratchet drills were used for line reaming for a number of large fitted dowels during installation. If, in the course of an overhaul, it was ever necessary to "re-center" (these are huge vertical pumped storage units, which can function as hydroelectric generators or pumps) the units, the ratchet drills were there to re-ream for oversized dowels.

I keep my Keystone Driller, the Old Man, and that little "bucking pad" from the turbine coupling job in my shop. I occasionally think I might have need of it on some of the locomotive or steam engine work, but so far it has not happened. I found my Keystone Driller and the Old Man in a pile of junk in the old store-room of a ca 1921 hydroelectric plant. The contents of the store-room were to be thrown in the dumpster. There was stuff down there like "crampons" (aka "Ice walkers") which strapped to a person's shoe soles to walk on ice without slipping. There were ice saws and other hand forged tools, along with pike poles and peavey hooks for dealing with ice jams and debris jams in the forebay of the old plant. There were ancient old-style coffee cans filled with things like red lead, white lead, and similar stuff used around powerplants in bygone days. There were the glass globes for outside plant lighting, painted black with a little slit to let out a tiny amount of light- blackout lighting left from WWII. I grabbed the Keystone Driller and Old Man and a number of other tools supplies, including a couple of hand forged tools, and similar things headed to the dumpster. There were even scythes for cutting the tall grass around the plant. No one, other than myself, knew what they were looking at and throwing away. Some stuff, like the red lead and the white lead was declared as hazardous substances, as were the old lube and transformer oil storage tanks and hand metering pumps, so they were off limits for "salvage". One guy grabbed the scythes and ice saws and axes. I got some nice cross pein engineer sledges, along with the Keystone Driller, so did not do too badly.

[pwd72s]

Guess I'm the only tool junkie so far who enjoyed the read. Just looking at the pics, I wouldn't have had a clue. Thanks.

[1990C4S]

On the 'likely to need this' spectrum' this tool is an outlier even amongst the outliers...but I would probably have bought it too.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by 1990C4S

On the 'likely to need this' spectrum' this tool is an outlier even amongst the outliers...but I would probably have bought it too.

Yeah, I'm sure that I'll never need it or be able to use it, but for $5, a "ratchet drill", and the fact that it's stamped with a patent from 1895. I had to have it.

Another interesting drill that I have is a Millers Falls No 97 breast drill (similar to some made by Goodell and Pratt and North Bros/Yankee. They have 5 modes that are user selectable by a switch.

Mode 1 - Like a regular "egg beater" if you turn the crank one way, the drill turns right, if you reverse the way you are turning the crank, the drill turns left.
Mode 2 - Turn the crank one direction using a ratchet motion and the drill turns right
Mode 3 - Turn the crank the other direction using a ratchet motion and the drill turns left

Now is when it gets cool

Mode 4 - Turn the crank in EITHER direction using ratchet motion and the drill turns right
Mode 5 - Turn the crank in EITHER direction using ratchet motion and the drill turns left.

They had 4 variations, either 1 speed or 2 speed and then each of those could come with either 2 jaw chucks or 3 jaw chucks.

Those last two are clearly the work of magic or voodoo. No matter which direction you turn the crank, the drill goes one direction.

Apparently, these were for industry, and promoted is being good for locations with limited space where holes had to be bored, often for cars, carriages, trains, etc...

The Yankee version and Goodell & Pratt versions did away with the 5th mode and replaced that with a "lock" which was meant to make it easier to tighten the chuck.

G&P and MF made one size. Yankee made 3 different sizes.

2 jaw and 3 jaw of 2 speed versions of the Millers Falls


Yankee in 3 sizes

[1990C4S]

I used hand drills a lot before battery powered tools became popular. Drilling plaster or drywall could be done faster by hand than finding a drill and an extension cord.

Now, it's 100% battery powered drilling and installing screws.

[A930Rocket]

Interesting story. Thanks for sharing

[masraum]

There were multiple versions of these drills. It seems like the reason for the difference is that there wasn't a single standard for how the bits/reamers were made, so there were different versions for different bits, at least, that's how I read the catalog pages.



And I think this may have been one of the types of bits used in these ratchet drills. Seems they were primarily used for drilling in metal (vs wood)



And the "boiler" version (what I bought) was specifically designed for (or good for) tight spaces.

[LWJ]

Eggbeaters are a pretty cool tool. I stashed one on my boat (when I had a boat!) because if I needed to drill something it would work without any juice. Never needed it, but it made me feel better. I think a drill is one of the most used tools I own.

[GH85Carrera]

I have a hand powered drill, and a brace that grandpa owned. When I bought my first house, I needed to drill a hole for a telephone line at the back of the attic. I did not own enough extension cords to reach so I used the hand powered drill to drill the hole.

[pwd72s]

What's cool about ratchets? Their basic design & function hasn't changed over the years.

https://hausoftools.com/blogs/news/history-and-origin-of-wrenches-and-ratchets

"In addition to the innumerable styles of conventionally-shaped wrenches we also had the invention of the ratcheting wrench bringing huge innovations to the use of sockets. Not long after wrenches were developed, the wrench got a little bit of a run for its money with the introduction of ratchets for use with sockets in 1863. Sockets had been used with hand cranks for centuries, but J.J. Richardson developed the ratchet wrench to be used with interchangeable sockets which has become such a good match it’s almost unthinkable to think of them separately. Sockets were originally square-shaped but as machining techniques improved with technology, hex, Torx and many other shapes became possible. What Richardson’s ratchet wrench brought to the table was groundbreaking in that it allowed the sockets to be removed and more importantly that it allowed a nut to be turned without removing the tool from the nut and allowed for use in restricted space. Some claim that Robert Owen invented the ratchet wrench in 1913, however this is a number of years after Richardson (and even Joseph Reams’ 1907 ratchet wrench) and quite different in that it has two heads – one for each direction. There doesn’t seem to be as much action nor as many stories involved with the ratchet, however innovation has continued until even until today with probably the best designed ratchet-Wera’s Zyklop Ratchet. The Zyklop is loaded with features and has eliminated pretty much every possible headache that comes with using ratchets."

(edit) The Wera Zykop is a locking roto-head ratchet. Not really all that unique, but roto head ratchets have their place.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by pwd72s

What's cool about ratchets? Their basic design & function hasn't changed over the years.

https://hausoftools.com/blogs/news/history-and-origin-of-wrenches-and-ratchets

"In addition to the innumerable styles of conventionally-shaped wrenches we also had the invention of the ratcheting wrench bringing huge innovations to the use of sockets. Not long after wrenches were developed, the wrench got a little bit of a run for its money with the introduction of ratchets for use with sockets in 1863. Sockets had been used with hand cranks for centuries, but J.J. Richardson developed the ratchet wrench to be used with interchangeable sockets which has become such a good match it’s almost unthinkable to think of them separately. Sockets were originally square-shaped but as machining techniques improved with technology, hex, Torx and many other shapes became possible. What Richardson’s ratchet wrench brought to the table was groundbreaking in that it allowed the sockets to be removed and more importantly that it allowed a nut to be turned without removing the tool from the nut and allowed for use in restricted space. Some claim that Robert Owen invented the ratchet wrench in 1913, however this is a number of years after Richardson (and even Joseph Reams’ 1907 ratchet wrench) and quite different in that it has two heads – one for each direction. There doesn’t seem to be as much action nor as many stories involved with the ratchet, however innovation has continued until even until today with probably the best designed ratchet-Wera’s Zyklop Ratchet. The Zyklop is loaded with features and has eliminated pretty much every possible headache that comes with using ratchets."

(edit) The Wera Zykop is a locking roto-head ratchet. Not really all that unique, but roto head ratchets have their place.

This is a drill designed for drilling through metal. It's designed for drill bits, not sockets. It's got an 1895 patent date on it, although the same sort of drills were patented back as early as the 1860s, so this is a later version.