Vintage Tel Aviv - A Souvenir of it's own ★ The Analog Panda ★ Analog Film Photography & Woodworking

It’s about one and a half decades since I entered the door to the Antique Items Store in Olei Zion Street at Yafo Flea Market for the very first time. Crumbled with strange things (always attractive to me) and mountains of other interesting and mysterious things.

And it isn’t hard to understand what attracts me so much about this shop. Entering this time capsule it might seem that there is just another stuck of old souvenirs and useless things. Looking closer you will quickly understand what gems are laying all around you.

The owner seems to have some good contacts, as he’s offering lots of dedicated and rather specialized tools for carpenters, medics, nautical instruments and so on. Not the usual stuff you’ll find on flea markets in tourist hotspots like Tel Aviv.

The Yafo flea market changed it’s face a lot during that one and a half decades – once encircled by dozens of small workshops and repair businesses, where you were able to watch various craftsmen working, creating, repairing. Many times I was there, chatting with carpenters about some details of their recent job, techniques and old handcrafting skills while having a mandatory cup of coffee or tea.

So happy and it’s obviously hard to hide it

These accidential but wonderful conversations are good but gone. The market changed. The crafting businesses get less and less and are replaced by the usual tourist disney LaLa-Land.So let’s share a tear for old times and go on.

Ever since I first entered that vintage store I wanted, wanted, wanted so much to take some of these wonderful things with me. And always, always, always there was a better argument for not doing so; Weight of luggage, travel budget and 1001 reasons more.

But not this time. I went inside, took a heart and bought myself a souvenir. A useful one. Since some time already i’ve been looking in Austria for a good brace/hand drill. It might look out of date, but for some things they are very practically and effective. Just to mention working with fresh wood like it is used for wood carving. Another point is – they’re silently working. So basically I can now go to my workshop at 3 at nicht and drill a hole without waking somebody up. Wonderful, isn’t it?

But what is a brace exactly and where it came from? A brace is a hand tool used with a bit (drill bit or auger) to drill holes, usually in wood. Pressure is applied to the top while the handle is rotated. If the bit’s lead and cutting spurs are both in good working order, the user should not have to apply any pressure other than for balance: the lead will pull the bit through the wood. The earliest carpenter’s braces equipped with a U-shaped grip, that is with a compound crank, appeared between 1420 and 1430 in Flanders.
[Source: Wikipedia]