A Good Haul

This weekend I tricked The Boss into taking a trip up to Southern Maine to check out all the Antique shops along Rte 1. I told her that we could look for decorations for the house, or new props for her photographs...but she could see right through me and knew I was in it for the tools. Well it is a good thing she went along anyways because I found several gold mines.

A modest days take...I am pacing myself.

We found a flyer with "all" the shops listed, which was around thirty, but we found about twice as many stores that were not advertised. We started in York and worked our way up to Kennebunk before the stores closed. Anyone in the New England area should definitely make it up to Rte 1 at some point because we were out for 7 hours and only made it half way up the Antique super highway (my words not Maine's).

Anyways, on to the good stuff. I started off finding a whole basket full of Auger bits, I grabbed a #12 and a # 15, which were two sizes that I needed to fill in my set. All of the bits were in great shape, and there were a couple Craftsman Braces that needed some TLC, but I already have a nice brace.

Two very clean Auger Bits 3/4" and 15/16"

Next we found a great cluttered store that had a front porch chock full of old chisels and clamps. If I had the time, money, knowledge, and inclination I would have spent hours digging through bins and buckets to get some great deals. I saw several large Buck Bros Cast Steel chisels and I am pretty sure I have heard that those are great tools (sound off in the comments to confirm or deny). I left with a 1/4" mortising chisel and an old yard stick, which I will be using in a forthcoming project.

1/4" Pigsticker Chisel, hopefully it sharpens up OK 

Another great find was an Antique mall that had over fifty individual dealers. There were a couple interesting stalls with old tools, but one dealer stood out. There were tons of great looking planes and frame saws, several really good condition bi-fold rules, and the coolest mallet I have ever seen in my entire life, which I will reveal in more detail in my next post.

A Very Interesting Mallet

The final store that we stumbled upon was the best of all. We walked in at 4:57, right before closing, and directly at the front door was an armoire filled with wooden molding planes and other assorted hand tools. It looked as if some of these planes were in service just the day before, which is amazing because some of them dated back to the early 1800s. I grabbed a 1/4" beading plane, and made a mental note to withdraw all of my savings and go back the next day (kidding...or am I).

This 1/4" Beading Plane is in Great Shape

We had such a great time that we are planning on heading up to Scarborough in the Spring and working our way down to cover all the stores that we didn't make it to.

PS. I am a terrible blogger because I was out all day and saw so many great tools but I took ZERO pictures. I feel shame and will work on this in the future.