My new mistress, Mary Rose

In the words of Buddy the Elf.

"I'm in love, I'm in love, and I don't care who knows it!!!"

That's right inter-world I have found a new mistress, and her name is Mary Rose. She is from the UK, loves the water, and looks pretty darn good for her age. We met at the museum and it was love at first sight. Before The Boss gets too nervous over my new affair I should mention that Mary is a 500 year old, 700 ton warship that sank over 400 years ago, 1545 to be exact.

Thankfully someone had the good sense to spend an inordinate amount of money excavating the remains of the ship from the bottom of the sea and documented every artifact that was found aboard. As far as I can tell, the Mary Rose is the single best collection of Tudor Era....stuff...that has been discovered in one place.

A second fantastic idea by The Mary Rose Trust was to publish a book covering in detail most of the artifacts found aboard the ship. Before the Mast; Life and Death Aboard the Mary Rose is by far at the top of my recommended reading list...in fact most of my coworkers are probably sick of me with my nose stuck in this book stopping only to show off a new picture, tidbit, or tool that I come across.

This book is far larger than any of my Engineering textbooks....but WAAAAAY better

Of particular interest to me (being a 17th century carpenter philosopher) is the amazing catalog of 16th century tools that were found in and around the ship carpenter's cabin. Rules, planes, chisels, chalk reels, mallets, grinding wheels, braces...I could go on and on. The archaeologist's descriptions and assumptions for some of the artifacts are suspect at best...but their drawings and documentation are top notch.

So if you love historical tool reproductions then stay tuned because I am currently working my way through this book in whatever tickles my fancy. However, if you cant stand historical hand tools and work ways, you should probably find a different blog, because this is totally my jam.

Bitter Sweet

Today was the last day at my current job as a carpenter. It was a bitter sweet day, I am not leaving because I hated my job, or it wasn't paying enough, but rather to follow my passion of hand tool woodworking. Starting on Monday I will be an Historic Arts and Trades Artisan at Plimoth Plantation. This is truly an amazing opportunity, but it does mean that I had to leave my current position at a company that I truly enjoyed.

As a going away present, one of my coworkers gave me an old wooden fore plane. He hoped that I might be able to use it at my new position. It is truly a beautiful tool, and it seems to be a fine worker (once the iron gets a good honing).  I am anxious to put it to wood...but unfortunately I am starting the new job, commuting much farther than normal, fixing up the house to put on the market, and doing all the other normal stuff that goes with life, so I am very short on time. In the meantime it will serve as a badass knick knack, and a reminder of the great company and group of guys that I used to work for.

The Gettin' Was Good

I know that all of you have been anxiously waiting by your computers to find out what tools I got from my excursion to the Hollis Flea Market on my birthday (cue the crickets), so without further adieu, here is a list of what I picked up.

A healthy days take!

Starting from left to right. The larger handsaw is a Disston D8 in remarkable condition. It has the two handed grip (with the thumb hole) and both horns are intact. The tote is stamped with patent dates, the latest being  Nov 18 1879. This places the saw approximately from the early 1880's as Disston was "fiercely protective" of their patents during this time period. The blade is 26" at the toothline, and is filed to an aggressive 7ppi rip pattern with a skewed back. The etch is still clearly visible and the blade seems to have only minor surface rust (although a good cleaning will tell for sure). There is one tooth broken off about 2/3 of the way towards the tote, but I will probably leave this be as long as it doesn't cause major problems after sharpening. There is a gentle bow to the blade,  which from my understanding is the result of being sharpened on a machine.
Price $25

A close up of Disston's patent wars.

The next saw is another Disston D8. This saw has a 20" skew back blade with a 10ppi crosscut filing. The tote has broken horns, but they have been sanded smooth and refinished. The tote is missing the lowest saw nut, and as a result has a little bit of slop (hopefully a replacement nut will take care of this). Based on the medallion and the etch on the blade I have dated this saw from approximately 1940-1947. There is very little surface rust on the blade, and the teeth are in good shape.
Price $8

Moving along is the small Disston back saw. I have little info on this saw, and it probably wont be usable. It has a 10" blade filed to 14ppi crosscut and a steel back. The handle is a little loose, and the blade has a noticeable kink at the toe. I purchased it because it was cheap and I figured I could use it to practice my saw doctoring skills. As a bonus The Boss said it was "so cute" that we could hang it up for decoration if it was un-salvageable (see True Love).
Price $10

A "Warranted Superior" Medallion Generally means a Lower Quality Saw

The next tool that I found (after many a flea market and antique store search) was a simple 9-1/2 Stanley block plane. For one of the most common planes EVER made, this little guy was surprisingly difficult to find. I search every time I go anywhere, and what I generally find are cheap Stanley knock offs, over rusted pieces of scrap metal, or planes that have been so well loved they aren't square, flat, smooth, usable, or worth a penny. With that being said, I was thrilled to have found this little guy.

A 9-1/2 disassembled. After some love this will be put to hard work.

The iron is in surprisingly good shape, needing only a good honing. The adjustable mouth was seized with rust, but after opening it up it seems a good cleaning and lapping should make it move smoothly. The selling point of this block plane was the condition of its throat. Everything was crisp and strait, just like it was from the factory. The sole of the plane is also in great shape, only having superficial rust.
Price $10

The movable toe should be an easy fix with some cleaning and oiling.

The barrel in the picture is an old nail keg I found at an antique store down the street from the flea market. Not much to say about this, other than I got it as a great replacement for a plastic barrel in my shop. The price was right and it looks much nicer in the corner. I have seen these go for upwards of $70 on ebay.
Price $27

EXTRA PICTURE BONUS!!!

The coup-de-gras of the whole day was hidden under some old paperback books strewn out on a blanket. The dealer didn't even know what it was, and definitely didn't know what it was worth. But as soon as he told me the price I couldn't throw my money at him fast enough. It is a really nice pair of 6" dividers, cast steel, with a friction joint hinge. These are very similar to my favorite set of dividers (what? you don't have favorite dividers?!?!?!) originally shown to us by Joseph Moxon himself. But as apposed to the $125 reproductions made by blacksmith Peter Ross the price was just right.
Price $1

Not quite as handsome as Moxon's, but you can't beat the price.

Overall I am thrilled with my luck for my birthday. Overall I spent $81, but I think I took home way more than $81 worth of tools.

True Love

So today is my birthday, and I have to say that I have THE BEST wife in the entire world! Instead of trying to arrange some big ostentatious dinner that costs her (and by extension me) hundreds and hundreds of dollars, The Boss knows what truly makes me tick and brought me to the Hollis Flea Market.

This dealer is there almost every week, and he never disappoints!

It just so happened that it was opening day for the 2013 season, and everyone who's anyone knows that this is the best chance to find all of the primo stuff the dealers have been hoarding and collecting all winter long. And boy did they deliver!

By far the biggest trammel point I have ever seen.

The smallest eggbeater drill ever?

There were several dealers that dealt exclusively in antique hand tools, and many more that had a decent selection of tools on top of their normal wares. There was so much good stuff that I actually passed on a couple really good planes and saws, simply because there were even better options available.

A new dealer I had never seen before. He had really unique tools, and yes that is a whole box full of wooden planes.

I will have a follow-up post showing some of the sweet stuff that I got, but to anyone within driving distance I would highly recommend making it out to Hollis sometime (I promise you won't regret it). As a plus it is a good test to tell whether or not you have true love with your significant other; because lets face it, there is no other way to describe the patience someone has when you are geeking out over old, rusty, rotten pieces of iron and wood that most people would throw out with the garbage.

PS Head over to my new page to see some great places to find old tools in the New England area!

Old Tool Mecca

I was recently in touch with an acquaintance from high school who informed me that he was also interested in hand tools, particularly for boat building. Through some back and forth messages he  directed me to Liberty Tool Co which is an antique tool store dealing almost exclusively in used woodworking, black smithing, and mechanics tools. This is the kind of place that I have been searching for during my antiquing on the weekends, and it is just too much of a gem to keep to myself.

I found this video online which sums up how incredible this place really is. I encourage anyone in the New England area, or anyone visiting, to stop by this hidden treasure (it is within driving distance from Lie-Nielsen Toolworks so double trouble!). Happy rust hunting!

UPDATE: It has come to my attention that the video may not play on some popular mobile browsers. I don't have a good fix for this so you can simply follow this Link to the video on Vimeo.

A Used Desk?

That is exactly (kind of) what I made The Boss for her Valentines Day present. I wanted to make an environmentally conscious piece of furniture using as much reclaimed material and natural finishes that I could find.

The Boss loves it, and that is all that counts.

It all started at work. We were doing a basement remodel and tearing down some 100 year old walls made out of what I thought was gorgeous old growth pine studs. I asked my employer if it was OK if I took home some of the more usable pieces. "Usable pieces?" he asked me with a very confused look, the studs were twisted, knotty, and full of staples and nails; he thought I was joking.

The character in the wood is amazing.

I couldn't be happier with my "luck". I immediately went to the shop and started de-nailing all of the lumber. This is a tedious task, and fortunately there wasn't any need to be too careful because I wanted a reclaimed look to my final product, so it was OK to make dings and dents.

The next step was "jointing" all of the edges of the studs for the lamination glue up, which essentially means running the pieces through the table saw to get a reasonably uniform glue face. I don't have a power jointer  or a jointing plane, so up until this point the table saw is my method for preparing glue joints (feel free to tell me how important it is to have perfectly straight and square glue joints in the comments section, but be warned I will probably resume using worst practices).

The top looks great with the knots and nail holes!

The base is made from a combination of new and used black gas pipe fittings. I had to supplement in some new pieces in order to get the dimensions necessary for a desk. I de-greased the pipe with some GooGone (made from citrus oils!), and then gave it a couple coats of clear spray paint to prevent rusting in the future (I am currently looking for an all natural alternative for this step as I really don't like working with spray paint).

The iron pipe frame gives a cool industrial look.

This is where the original design was intended to stop, but  I was making this desk for my wife who is starting up her photography business so I got to thinking that it would be great if she could have some storage to hide her equipment, paper work, hard drives, etc. After a little poking around my favorite antique shops and prodding the shop keepers I found some amazing old soda bottle crates that were both the same width, and stacked up to approximately the right height.

It is amazing the crates were exactly the same width.

Back at the shop I added a couple nails here and there to reinforce some of the more delicate and aged joints on the crates and then added some old reused leather from an old couch onto the bottom of the drawers to give a nice uniform, padded surface.

Smooth suede keeps lenses safe!

The drawer action is surprisingly smooth!

The task of mounting my new found "drawers" was a whole different beast entirely. This was difficult because I wanted to keep within the style of the desk, but I didn't want to hide the great graphics on the sides of the soda crates inside the drawer frame. After scratching my head for a few nights, I came up with a plan of using old bed frame stock as angle iron runners from which to construct a carcass.

A closeup of my "carcass" and "runners."

The printing on the side of the crates can still be seen!

To finish the piece I found a really great Eco-friendly, low VOC polyurethane replacement that is actually made out of processed whey protein (the byproduct from the dairy industry). The company is Vermont Natural Coatings and the product goes by the name PolyWhey. I plan on doing a separate post on my perceived pros and cons of this finish, so stay tuned.

Ready for action...now The Boss wants a new computer...what have I done?

PS. I am very proud of this project. It is by far the most unique piece of furniture I have made to date. I am interested in doing some commission pieces (anything to get out of work right?) so feel free to email me if you would like to discuss a similar item.

My Mallet is Cooler Than Yours

I know that those are fightin' words, but I have full confidence that my wickedly awesome mallet can hold its own. As I mentioned in a previous post I was recently in Southern Maine along Rte 1 looking for some antique tools. At a large antique mall I found the most interesting mallet I have ever seen. It has a brass (or maybe bronze) head, weighs in at a hefty 21.5 oz. and has a handle that is about 6 inches long.

The original mallet before cleaning.

The head looks as if it got in a fight with a wolverine and then thrown into a blender. Obviously this mallet was abused by its last owner, or maybe it was well loved depending on how you look at it. Anyhow, the marred head, sweat-stained handle, and crude steel wedge holding the two together immediately won me over.

Even the Wedge Holding on the Handle is Cool!

There are however a couple hang ups I have with this mallet. First, the handle is twisted...and by that I mean the flats on the sides of the handle don't line up with the orientation of the head. To fix this I pounded out the handle from the head, and re-wedged the two back together.

The original handle was twisted in an awkward position.

The straightened handle... yes, that is Isabelle photo bombing my post.

Next, the faces have some sharp burrs that could possibly dent and ruin the handles on my chisels. I don't mind inward dents...it is the outwards ones that bug me (best Freudian slip ever?) so I took some coarse emery cloth to remove the burs. I then went to progressively finer grit papers until I had nice shiny but textured faces.

The Original Marred and Dented Face

The final step was to take this bad boy for a test spin. With my first solid thump on a 1" butt chisel I was head over heels in love (don't tell The Boss). Not convinced yet? That is because I didn't tell you the best part. I got this sweet piece of hardware for the low low price of $8. So before you comment about your Wood is Good, Lee Valley Journeyman, or Blue Spruce mass manufactured chisel beater, think about weather or not your mallet is 3x, 4x, or even 10x better than mine. And to set the record straight my mallet could beat yours up in a fight, it already has the battle scars to prove it.

A highly polished face doesn't hurt your chisel handles.

PS. I mean no disrespect to any of the above mentioned tool dealer mallets...I just have tool envy and am lashing out on account of my low tool budget.

PPS. Insert Mjolnir joke here.

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.

Antique Saw Vise

So I was out at the antique stores this morning looking for some over priced rusted junk, when low and behold I stumbled across a marvelous find beneath a pile of old cobbler's shoe forms.

An Unique Old Saw Vise

It is an old saw vise unlike any that I have run across. When I saw the price tag for $12 I couldn't give the shop keeper my money fast enough. This was a steal and a half (as far as my skewed mind is concerned) and the shop keeper didn't even know what it was. "I have had that for almost three years now, I didn't think I would ever sell it," she said as she rang me out.

You can see the cam lever released, which opens the jaws of the vise.

So lets start with what I do know. It has a very simple mechanism, a cam actuated lever that closes the jaws, and the entire vise has only three parts, the front jaw, the rear jaw and the cam lever. The vise is just under 10", which is great for my dovetail saw, but a little on the small side for my Sash and Panel saws, but I figure I can sharpen all of my saws with only one re-clamping.

The Japanning is about 50% intact, so I will probably hit it with a wire brush and give it a nice new coat of paint. The top of the jaws has definitely had its run-ins with saw files over the years, but this only adds to the charm of the tool. Finally, and probably my favorite part, there are four mounting holes cast into the body of the rear jaw. This mounting system seems to be a lot sturdier than the clamp style ones that I have run across so often at the flea market.

A rigid mounting system.

There is a makers mark cast into the body under the jaws...but it is rusted over and filled with gunk so it is hard to read. As far as I can tell it reads "STBARRE PAT'D" but my attempts at online research have come up empty handed. After I clean and refinish this vise I might be able to get a better reading of the cast name.

Anyways, I will be spending some time cleaning, oiling, and refurbishing this vise, so follow my blog to stay updated on my progress for this and other projects. Post your comments if you have seen a vise like this, or even better, know when and where this specific model originated.