The pad is lignum vitae, and the wrist handle is very dark rosewood:
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The stamp on the chuck shell reads: Amidon's Patent July 20, 1880, Manufactured by Amidon & White, Made in Buffalo, New York, U.S.A. (only partly legible).
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B&D-91
Price: $95.00
plus shipping
With
the exception of the much-pitted chuck shell, this brace is in
essentially unused condition, with no distortion of the diminutive
jaws, no wrench marks on the chuck shell, and next to no toolbox dings
on the handles. There is a tight check in the rosewood wrist handle and
many characteristic checks in the huge lignum vitae pad. The frame is
coated with the hard layer of black magnetite left after removal of red
rust with steel wool. Don't overlook Amidon's signature swaged ferrules
locating the wrist handle.
The brace was made by the
Amidon & White partnership in Buffalo, New York, and it is marked
with the wrong date (July 20) instead of the correct date (April 20,
1880) of the Amidon patent, No.226,646, reproduced below.
The actual jaws don't follow the patent drawings, but instead allow for
aligning the cylindrical portion of an auger bit while its square tang
is secured in the socket inside the base of the chuck body.
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The jaws in
the Amidon patent at left are easily mistaken for Osgood-patent jaws,
and they are also easily lost, as they tend to fall out when the chuck
shell is removed, but they won't fall out through the center of the
shell, because the transverse slots h-h for the keys g-g aren't continuous across the body.
Note also that the chuck body has a square receptacle d for the tang of the gripped auger bit, relieving the jaws F,F of twisting forces.
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