I just got back with the last of it all, all the junk bikes are in a dump trailer, stacked like firewood, the decent bikes are upstairs at work and a few came home with me. I took everything but the one narrow work bench along the wall which was only about 18" deep, it was bolted through the block wall and I figured he could use it somehow as it was more or less part of the building. We swept the floor when we were done. We left him with two working garage door openers, the third door was manual only but we unbolted the track and got the key latch working with some lube. The furnace works, but he needs to buy fuel, I dumped in about 5 gallons but just so I knew it would run.
I took all the metal shelves, the tools, tool boxes, three bike stands, (the type that hold the bike by the bottom tube and bb), plus one wall mount Park stand with damaged base. He had that bolted to the one work bench in the basement.

I took another tool box from the basement, but left him with some basic tools hanging on the wall, a set of screwdrivers, some pliers, a hammer, etc. The general hand tools weren't anything special. The one tool box I showed here was the only one with bike tools, its a 5 or 6 drawer Craftsman tool chest that sat on the garage work bench. The back wall of the garage bench was covered with bike tools, he had just about every freewheel adapter there is, plus a few I've never seen before. He even had a few custom cut hardwood blocks marked with hub models, they were used to clamp hubs in the HUGE vise on the bench so he could open internal gear hubs when they weren't in the wheel.
There are several frame repair tools, clamps, straightener bars, threading tools, fork gauges and benders, and rim straigtening tools. While I already had a good assortment of bike tools, this certainly reinforces my collection a great deal.

I still haven't opened all the tubs, at least not beyond just popping the lid to see what type of parts were inside. Those are stacked up waiting for me to go through them. Most appear to be all new parts and are brand or country of origin specific. I counted 14 large tubs, 39 smaller tubs, and over 50 small 12" square boxes full of used parts that were on shelves in the shop. He saved everything, good or bad. If it had so much as a single part left on it he kept it in the main shop. The truck tool boxes, barrels, and crates out in the back shed and in the yard had parts that were either broken, rusted, or that had been stripped of all useful bits. The milk crates and wood boxes we found were all full of used hubs cut out of wheels, many still had the ends of the spokes in them. They were sorted by brand, and spoke count but it appears he saved every hub, good or bad. I counted 7 milk crates of used SA AW hubs, 3 with Shimano 333 3 speed hubs, one with Suntour 3 speed hubs, one large wood box had all New Departure hubs from the 50's, another had only ND model C, and another small tub has only ND model A hubs and parts. There was one smaller drawer cabinet with all ND and Morrow parts in drawers. I counted another 30 or so new geared hubs, several new coaster brake hubs in each brand, and boxes of used bits he saved.
I did find several boxes of bike chain, but only of derailleur chain, I found less than 30 1/8" bike chains but I did find several packs of new skip link chain and two cases of old KMC derailleur chain.
My smaller trailer is packed to the top with beer boxes full of parts as well, these appear to be mostly saddles, stems, bars, tubes, folded up road tires, books, reflectors, (lots of reflectors), rear racks, kick stands, sprockets, pedals, etc. That load will take months to go through, but I think it can be sorted out and consolidated into smaller boxes and shelved eventually. I didn't intend to turn my garage or house into a full on bike shop but its looking that way now. My main hobby has always been wood working but right now my wood shop is overrun with bike parts.

One of the biggest surprises is how many brand new rims he had stashed upstairs, most in case quantities, in all the adult sizes. Most though are 26x1 3/8", 26" MTB and 27" road bike rims. I filled the bed of my pickup twice with just new rims.

He also had two buckets of disassembled freewheels, sorted by brand. He took them apart, cleaned the bits, then bagged them in heavy zip lock bags still apart. The majority of those are Maillard, Suntour, and Shimano in that order with a few Regina, Campy, and odd brands in there as well.

Its sort of apparent that when he wasn't working on a bike, he was most likely parting them out then cleaning and tagging the parts. He had to have been doing this for decades. He told me his favorite thing to do was build wheels, which most likely why I found so many perfect wheelsets hanging all over the place. With most being 26x1 3/8" three speed wheel sets. The majority of the bikes are this style, with old cheap road bikes running a close second. While all the new rims were mostly aluminum, nearly all the wheels are steel, and nearly all the bikes we found would have been steel wheel models. Only one or two of the road bikes were high enough models to even have alloy rims.

I never realized how many different really low end bike brands there were back then. More than 3/4 of the bikes are just junk, too far gone to salvage anything from. About 50 or so would be ridable with air in the tires and some oil. The rest need wheel work, bearings, or simply have sat so long the grease is turned to stone. The late 70's department store and Asian bikes are the worst this way, so many of them are frozen up with dried out grease. The really old bikes seem to roll and pedal fine. One Panasonic three speed is so gummed up it won't roll, pedal or shift. Yet the bike looks really clean otherwise. Even the tires held air.

He did take care of the tools though, he had Rust Blocker blocks in each drawer and most chrome tools were wrapped in oily paper towels. A few are crusty but they will clean up. The best part is that the place was dry, no mildew or dampness anywhere so things that were likely nice when he packed them away, stayed that way.