Posted 11 years ago
TheRoper
(39 items)
I made some experiments with this old tool...
Oldies, but goldies, it measures.
If chosen the right conditions, the level gives a pretty satisfactory results, nevertheless it is broken. I've got to admit I was wondering how it will be, having in mind the
twine sags, until I read the comment of blunderbuss2 it should be accurate only if one place it in the exact middle. This is easy to do, until we can measure the lenght of the line, so probably this was the way old bricklayers use it. You can see it on the second picture, while on the third in the middle is the bubble style line-level and the plumb bob shows visible deviation. As I found, the plumb bob has to be much heavier; This one, as you can see, is made from a 20 g fishing sinker :) .
Meanwhile, the guy, who sell me the item wrote, this was saved from the scrap. In his opinion it is most probably from the 17-18 century period of the Ottoman Empire.
Is it made from bronze?
Here is a link to a very good site on plumb bobs & variants, I would send a picture to them & see what they have to say.
http://www.plumbbob.de/
I've enjoyed the mystery behind this interesting post.
Yes, it is casted bronze with a bit file work; Thank you for the useful link, walksoftly!
You're welcome Roper, it would be very interesting to know more about it.
Very nice find. Triangle levels are really hard to find. Most have the ears broken off and the weights missing. The worst part is, nobody knows what they are so they sell them for scrap metal. Finding a buyer would take time but would be well worth the wait. $2 for scrap or $200 as a level.
This is a link to the site I mentioned above, it is a brochure from the plumb bob collectors meeting 2008. On the page marked 15 (17 in the index file) at the bottom you will see two fancy triangle levels.
https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.plumbbob.de%2Fmedia%2F%2FDIR_42122%2F2c68c3dff6c3d345ffff83acac144221.pdf
I haven't seen any contact info on the website linked in comment #1
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Antique-Ottoman-1800s-bronze-masons-triangle-level-plumb-bob-ONE-OF-A-KIND-/111113830489
The item on eBay is notably overestimated IMHO. I had bought this for about $40 and my first thought was, that it is underestimated - I haven't seen such kind of level before, so when I had seen it on the auction, my first thought was about Baal's Bridge square (search Google). So the truth is somewhere in between, but the price is not the point, at least I am not here for money. Triangle levels from the link look really great! It's always fun to learn something new - thank you, walksoftly!