Every piece we list here has already been through a kind of quiet scrutiny - condition checked, history researched, wear described honestly rather than hidden. But every so often something comes along that asks for a different, slower kind of attention. Recently, that was a 1930s Berkel and Parnall's flywheel bacon slicer, found sitting neglected in Westonaria.
Berkel and Parnall's isn't a name most people recognise today, but it should be. The company was the British manufacturing arm of the original Dutch Van Berkel's Patent slicing machine business, operating out of its own factory in Enfield, Middlesex. Rather than simply importing the European-made machines, Berkel and Parnall's built its own line of flywheel slicers on British soil - solid, purpose-built commercial equipment made for butcheries, delis, and grocers who needed to cut bacon and other meats at real scale, day after day. The machine we found carries the maker's plate plainly: Berkel and Parnall's, Enfield, Middlesex, British Made.
It arrived in rough shape - dust, grime, surface corrosion, the accumulated neglect of who knows how many years sitting unused. But structurally, it was remarkably complete: the red enamel body, the flywheel and blade guard, the sliding carriage and thickness-adjustment mechanism all still present and largely intact. That combination of genuine age, genuine wear, and genuine completeness is exactly what makes a restoration worth doing properly rather than superficially.
Restoration work is starting now, and it will not be quick. Stripping the machine down to assess what's original and what needs attention, cleaning decades of grime without damaging original finishes, sourcing or fabricating parts where necessary, and reassembling it all to genuine working order - that's a slower, more deliberate process than most of what passes through the shop. It's also, we think, a useful thing for people to see: not just the finished piece on a shelf, but the actual work of bringing something like this back.
We are documenting the full process - teardown, repairs, reassembly, the lot - over on Streampunk's Workshop journal, where this kind of hands-on restoration work naturally belongs. If you want to follow the whole story as it happens, that is where it is being told.