I have long loved all the tool restoration videos on YouTube and it seems many of you dig them as well. It is fun seeing something kind of beat up and forlorn get brought back to life, cleaned up, and made to work as designed originally. The more interesting and unique the tools the better, at least for my taste. From old chainsaws to equipment designed to care for a home owner’s property, there’s no end to the stuff people have saved from extinction and then saved from the ravages of time.
In this case we are talking about an awesome pneumatic drill made by the Thor company sometime in the 1930s. When you see the thing you’ll know exactly why it was called a “gun drill” and when you see it come apart and go back together you’ll appreciate how robustly things were made over 80 years ago.
We wonder where this thing would have been used at that time. Pneumatic tools, we’re guessing were (as they still are) likely used in a factory environment rather than a normal jobsite, right? Would a normal guy in the 1930s have a portable air compressor to haul around with him? We’re not sure. With how this thing is made it seems like it would have been used on a big assembly line or something to punch holes in whatever material was in front of it.
A neat drill and a neater operation to save it.
I saw “parts” of a similar one that fell off of a truck before I could avoid it…it wreaked havoc on the undercarriage of my lowered C10.