Tools etc
 

Found I'd saved this site on favourites when doing a cleanup.
https://www.proopsbrothers.com/

sort of ye olde shoppe in a Leicester village, just south of Leicester. i remember asking about opening hours, but can't remember the details .

Re: Tools etc
 

Proops go back donkey's years. I was a regular browser in their Tottenham Court Road shop in the early 80s during my lunch break, and still have some bits and pieces that I bought there. They were taken over in the late 80s and started selling the kind of stuff they still sell today. I didn't know they were now based in Leicestershire though.

Re: Tools etc
 

In former times Proops used to have a big stall at Model Engineering exhibitions, selling all sorts of unusual things. I still have a draw full of springs bought several years ago at Ally Pally.

Re: Tools etc
 

I was down in Kent visiting G3ROO and G0BPS (the partners in Kanga) and they said, let's go visit Proops. So we did. Sid Proops was operating from a re-purposed multi-storey car park off the old kent road at that time, which must have been around 1990. He was an interesting character.

Ian and Dick took a train back to Dover/folkestone and I drove north to meet up with the M1.

That car park was a treasure trove.

David

Re: Tools etc
 

You never knew what you might find in their Tottenham Court Road days. I used to drop in when I needed the occasional switch, and often came away with other stuff, for example, Eclipse cold chisels, some optical prisms and achromatic lenses, and a facsimile volume of the Model Engineer for 1904, which has several items on the Wireless Telegraphy Act that had then just come into force, as well as readers' DIY X-ray machines.

Re: Tools etc
 

Possibly an off shoot,but their address is
Proops Brothers Ltd
24 Saddington Road
Fleckney
Leicestershire
LE8 8AW
UK

From memory I've been to their shop to do some telecomms, and if it's the place I remember it's like an old fashioned hardware store .

Re: Tools etc
 

I have some WD dentists tools they were selling and getting on for fifty years ago I bought a Crookes Radiometer for either 7/6 or 12/6 but not a penny more.I only lived a shilling bus ride away,I was often sent to buy a book in Foyles but spent the rest of the time in Lisle St. No Chinatown then! Les

Re: Tools etc
 

I bought a pair of sidecutters and fine nosed pliers from Proops which I still use today, nearly 40 years later.

Re: Tools etc
 

I too used to frequent the Tottenham Court road store.
I recall some rather nice circular fluorescent light fittings that they sold. Two lamps of different wattages, 32 watt and 40 watt, and in the middle a holder for a GLS lamp.
They also sold double insulated, flexible resistance wire which I suspect was intended for the manufacture of electric blankets.
And 200 volt GLS lamps, long after 240 volt supplies were almost universal.