Saturday, July 30, 2016

Vintage Harry M. Fraser Model 500-1 instruction sheet

Last year, I bought a huge stash of vintage (mostly pre-1980) rug hooking supplies from a wonderful lady who was downsizing. Both she (Myrna L.) and her mother (Velma B.) had been McGown-Hookrafter-Guild-trained rug hookers, so she had boxes upon boxes of tools, books, patterns, and wool. I'm so very grateful to her, and I'm going to do my best to pay it forward by sharing the supplies with other rug hookers and sharing curiosities and treasures here on the blog. This is the second post in that series.

Among the supplies I inherited last year were four very vintage Harry M. Fraser Model 500-1 cloth slitters in various states of repair. (As teachers, Myrna and Velma had owned two each.) These classic finely-machined tools for those of use who hook using fabric are still being made (and serviced!) by the original company, and the owners have provided a history of the machine shop and their Bliss and Fraser cutters along with an image-based instruction PDF on their website. My old cutters came with a sheet of text-based instructions that likely date to the 1950s or 1960s (the model being referred to as 500 instead of 500-1 might help date them):

Fraser Model 500 cutter instructions, side 1

Fraser Model 500 cutter instructions, side 2

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