Karl Andersson
01-27-2015, 4:46 PM
Hi folks, just a little diversion from the winter doldrums; hope you get some entertainment.
Back in the fall I was visiting my father near Norfolk, Virginia in his small antique store (his retirement job). Because of my interest in tools, he asks me to go through his table of rusty relics when I periodically visit him and see if the identifications and prices are about right. This time, after going through his table and “adjusting”some of his labels, he told me there was a box on his work table in back with a tool for me – if I’d do him a favor. Well, I owe him plenty for all he’s done for me, so we got to the favor part first, before looking at the tool.
The story is, his next door neighbor and good friend, Mr. W, was a long-time antiques seller as well as a commercial waterman (crabber/fishing trawler), millwright, junk trader, and all-round shadetree politician.
Mr. W fell on poor health about 10 years ago that caused him to stop working full-time in his shop restoring “antique” furniture. This shop consisted of an early 1900’s wood frame house which was used as the store, several added-on-then-enclosed back porches used for storage, and finally a 40x60 foot pole barn scabbed onto the back end where they kept furniture needing repair as well as dip tanks, workbenches, and parts storage. Mr. W never discarded anything that might be of value in the future, so all the spaces behind the shop were jam-packed with piles of things, parts of things, and things to fix things. It seemed Mr. W knew almost exactly what he had and where, although he didn’t share this knowledge with his family.
Almost 5 years ago, Mr. W died – never having reopened the shop or selling off the contents. His wife and daughter, both in failing health themselves, went through the inventory and sold higher-value items as they could for a few years. A year ago, in short succession, both the widow and her daughter passed away, leaving the family house and shop to Mr.W’s two remaining sons. Both of them could use some extra funds, but were far more involved in being watermen growing up than learning about antiques, so they asked my father to begin selling things for them from the shop so they can sell the building. As a friend, my father won’t accept any fees from them – but they insist that he help himself to anything he wants that he finds in the shop as a form of payment. That’s where I come in, because as he was clearing out a bookshelf full of doorknobs, cookbooks, and carnival glass, he found an old wooden box that had a partial label reading “Stanley” and some metal things inside that looked like old tools and blades. He had put it aside for me so I could pick it up on a weekend visit, and upon going back to his workbench, here is what I saw:
305253305255
Now, I am not a serious tool collector – except to find ones to use or sell – and I’ve never said to myself “I really need a Stanley Combination plane”, so I wasn’t exactly sure how complete the contents of the box were, but I DID know that the main tool, the actual blade-holding plane part, was missing. My dad was waiting for my gasp and appreciation, but instead I said something like “Gee pop, this is pretty old and you could sell these blades for a good chunk of change, but these are just accessories – the tool is missing; where did you get it?” He told me it was from Mr. W’s shop, so I knew that if it had ever had the main body with it, it would still be somewhere in that shop. I told him I’d love to look through the shop and see if the rest of the plane was there – that I could give him values on any old tools I found there as well- and that’s when he informed me that he had already told the family I would do just that later that same day.
That afternoon we went to Mr. W’s shop and started in the storefront, but there were no tools to be found there.Then I entered what must have been “the metal room”. This 10’x12’ room had industrial metal shelves down each wall and a center island of odd tables, milk crates, bushel baskets and boxes, all piled high with mostly rust-covered metal objects. In one end of the room, a dozen or so metal fireplace screens leaned against the wall; on the other was a table full of iron skillets, cauldrons, and stove plates. I dove in, with a rough idea of what a combination plane body looked like, searching the room for it as well as any saleable tools. On the shelves and in the island I found stove lid handles, bathtub feet, hubcaps, new-ish pipe wrenches, scrap metal, star drills, crowbars, pots and pans, casters, brackets, and many more things, but only a few old tools: half a dozen adze heads, including a nice lipped shipwright’s adze with handle,some worn-out auger bits, an ancient forged froe, some ship caulking irons, and what turned out to be a fairly valuable hawsing iron (another ship caulking tool). No planes at all. What I did find was put in a box to go to dad’s store to sell for the sons. So, with flashlight in hand, I went through a doorway to near total darkness.
Through Hollywood-sized cobwebs I found the dip tank room, now filled with about 200 concrete balusters from some building demolition. The store was in its heyday during the late 70’s and 80’s when antiques dealers typically immersed whole pieces of painted or refinished furniture in caustic chemicals to remove layers of paint, varnish, and any other coatings and get the piece down to bare wood, then they restored, repaired, and lacquered or varnished them to build up a decent new coating. This was not fine furniture,but late Victorian/ turn-of-the century factory-produced stuff like golden oak dressers and mission/ arts and crafts rockers that were painted over in the1950s and 60s to make them look more “modern”.The dip tank was long gone, and there was no plane among the piles of balusters. Across from the dip room was the rinsing room, where pieces pulled from the dip tank would be rinsed with water to remove any remaining flakes ofpaint as well as the caustic solution.The floor was bare concrete and, because of the chemicals and the salt air and high humidity in this area, the steel I-beam structure and galvanized steel wall siding were extremely corroded. The bottom 3-6 inches of the steel walls were rusted away, allowing in a little light and a few critters to enter– such as the two stray cats that bolted from their hiding place and out through the holes, taking about 10 years of my life with them. No plane here either, although there were buckets and crates of used industrial pipe fittings; there must have been a plan for them at one time.
Next, I entered the large 60x40 workshop and storage area. The first 30 feet contained the woodworking equipment- all older belt-drive models with a variety of motors bolted to them.There was a drill press, band saw, drum sander, and radial arm saw, all almost unnoticeable because they were in a sea of milk crates, buckets, and boxes full of parts, scraps, etc. that was easily 3 feet high, and in some places more. Every horizontal surface and the floor had something piled on it, and then that had a few boxes teetering on top of it. There was a row of shelves making a wall across the width of the shed, and it too was jammed with things. There was no real walkway, just footprint-wide paths that often dead-ended when the piles fell over. I tried to think like a woodworker; “now if I were using this plane, where would I put it down?” I looked on the decks of all the machines, having to lift crates and boxes off them, usually in sequence to prevent a rusty avalanche, but only found a few screwdrivers. I looked in each crate, box, and bucket in case a plane or something valuable was there. I found several saleable items (like a large box full of old wooden cigar boxes) and a few tools to sell – including an 8-foot long teak T-square for lofting, a Stanley folding rule, and a very nice panel gauge that was missing its cutter. Still no plane.
Beyond the workshop area I found that almost the entire back half of the shop – at least a 30x30 foot space – was where the “furniture reserve” was kept. The entire floor space, and up to a height of at least 12 feet, was packed with furniture; dressers on top of dressers with more dressers and vanities and tables on top of them. A quick glance gave me the impression these were run-of-the mill pieces that needed to be stripped and sold cheaply, so they had been set aside for slow days.I figured if the plane had been set down somewhere in there, it would be lost forever.
I turned back to the workshop and had to climb over a tumbling row of crates full of chair spindles and assorted pieces and found a small space where my feet were actually on bare concrete again. On one side was a moldy plywood table that had two enormous industrial grinders bolted to it – but at about 2 feet wide, 18 inches tall each and with very heavy-looking cast iron bodies, I opted not to unbolt them to send to the store. I could barely bend over to look, but checked under the table, on the table, and in the boxes jumbled around it. No combination plane, just a very rusty high-knob number 3 plane without blade or lever cap. On the side opposite the grinders were shelves full of scrap wood and moldings taken off furniture – no tools there.
That left the outside metal wall, which had metal shelving against it and an old plywood bookcase leaning on it because years of sitting on a damp concrete floor had rotted the feet off the front. The metal shelves were promising because I could see a plane handle and a hand drill sitting on them. So, I moved the delaminating bookcase from in front of the shelves and leaned it face-first against the outside wall and started slowly removing layers of wood, metal, magazines, etc.off the shelves to get to the tools. First tool was a Disston hand saw, new enough to have a painted logo on the blade instead of an etch.Then I found some plastic-handled Craftsman chisels, totally rusted despite their young age. The plane handle I saw belonged to a blue-bodied Stanley No. 5 (sellable, but cheap), sharing space with an equally-aged 220 block plane. More rummaging on the shelves produced a few more, fairly modern tools, but not the plane I needed.
After spending about 3 hours up to this point, I left the workshop area and started looking in, on, and under the 20-foot -long workbench opposite the furniture pile.The workbench top was surprisingly clear, with just a few boxes on it here and there, but it had a single row of drawers running along its entire length and ashelf underneath. Some 16-foot lengths of 2x4, 2x6, and 4x4 lumber, along with anything else that came in 10-foot or longer lengths such as rugs, 4-inch PVCpipe, drain tile, and the cardboard tubes from carpets were piled on the floor in front of the bench where a person would normally stand, so I had to walk carefully as I moved along. I spent another hour looking through all the drawers and on the shelves, and found a bunch of small treasures, but no plane. There was an enormous iron plumb bob – about 10lbs in weight – that must have been left from Mr. W’s millwright days. My dad wanted me to keep it, but I seriously couldn’t think of a use for it or an argument that would convince my wife to let it stay on a shelf indoors.
At this point, I was almost willing to concede that I had a box of parts, but no plane. I climbed back to the workshop area and back to the metal shelves where I had found the most hand tools. I looked again, but found nothing more. I had looked on everyshelf, every table.I had gotten totally filthy from the dusty, rusty, greasy contents of the shop, banged my shins on countless obstacles, and even cut my hands on some nails sticking out of the sides of the rotten plywood bookshelf.That shelf now leaned against the outside wall, its splintered back panel to me, at about a 70-degree angle.Ipulled it away from the wall, avoiding the nails through the sides this time,and spun it to look at the shelves.There was a plane just about eye level sitting on a shelf.A quick check with the flashlight confirmed this was THE plane.It was the plane body, configured with the long arms and the sliding section, auxiliary center bottom,and a fence assembly; basically all the parts that appeared to be missing from the box. A 3/8” plow blade was mounted in the plane from its last use – which was long enough before that the shelf surface had molded and rotted away and the plane’s narrow metal soles had sunk into the plywood, keeping it from falling to the concrete floor when the shelf leaned over. I gave the required victory shout, released the plane from its resting place and, after scanning the other shelves for parts or other tools, climbed back out to relish my fortune.
305256
I placed the plane in its box and when I got home I did an inventory of all the parts after downloading the owner’s manual. If the design features are the same as a No. 45, according to the Walter book it is a type 9,from about 1908. All the parts are there, including every one of the blades.The only things missing are three washers for thumbscrews and the two screws that attach the plates of the beading depth guide.These latter are the same size and pitch as a Stanley spokeshave thumbscrew, which appears to be 10-28,so I’ll have to look around for replacements or a suitable die. It does have both nickers (straight type), the slitting blade and depth stop, the main and auxiliary depth stop, and other commonly-missing pieces. Here is what Igot for about 5 hours of searching and digging out about $500 worth of tools and antiques.
305258305259305252
continued...
Back in the fall I was visiting my father near Norfolk, Virginia in his small antique store (his retirement job). Because of my interest in tools, he asks me to go through his table of rusty relics when I periodically visit him and see if the identifications and prices are about right. This time, after going through his table and “adjusting”some of his labels, he told me there was a box on his work table in back with a tool for me – if I’d do him a favor. Well, I owe him plenty for all he’s done for me, so we got to the favor part first, before looking at the tool.
The story is, his next door neighbor and good friend, Mr. W, was a long-time antiques seller as well as a commercial waterman (crabber/fishing trawler), millwright, junk trader, and all-round shadetree politician.
Mr. W fell on poor health about 10 years ago that caused him to stop working full-time in his shop restoring “antique” furniture. This shop consisted of an early 1900’s wood frame house which was used as the store, several added-on-then-enclosed back porches used for storage, and finally a 40x60 foot pole barn scabbed onto the back end where they kept furniture needing repair as well as dip tanks, workbenches, and parts storage. Mr. W never discarded anything that might be of value in the future, so all the spaces behind the shop were jam-packed with piles of things, parts of things, and things to fix things. It seemed Mr. W knew almost exactly what he had and where, although he didn’t share this knowledge with his family.
Almost 5 years ago, Mr. W died – never having reopened the shop or selling off the contents. His wife and daughter, both in failing health themselves, went through the inventory and sold higher-value items as they could for a few years. A year ago, in short succession, both the widow and her daughter passed away, leaving the family house and shop to Mr.W’s two remaining sons. Both of them could use some extra funds, but were far more involved in being watermen growing up than learning about antiques, so they asked my father to begin selling things for them from the shop so they can sell the building. As a friend, my father won’t accept any fees from them – but they insist that he help himself to anything he wants that he finds in the shop as a form of payment. That’s where I come in, because as he was clearing out a bookshelf full of doorknobs, cookbooks, and carnival glass, he found an old wooden box that had a partial label reading “Stanley” and some metal things inside that looked like old tools and blades. He had put it aside for me so I could pick it up on a weekend visit, and upon going back to his workbench, here is what I saw:
305253305255
Now, I am not a serious tool collector – except to find ones to use or sell – and I’ve never said to myself “I really need a Stanley Combination plane”, so I wasn’t exactly sure how complete the contents of the box were, but I DID know that the main tool, the actual blade-holding plane part, was missing. My dad was waiting for my gasp and appreciation, but instead I said something like “Gee pop, this is pretty old and you could sell these blades for a good chunk of change, but these are just accessories – the tool is missing; where did you get it?” He told me it was from Mr. W’s shop, so I knew that if it had ever had the main body with it, it would still be somewhere in that shop. I told him I’d love to look through the shop and see if the rest of the plane was there – that I could give him values on any old tools I found there as well- and that’s when he informed me that he had already told the family I would do just that later that same day.
That afternoon we went to Mr. W’s shop and started in the storefront, but there were no tools to be found there.Then I entered what must have been “the metal room”. This 10’x12’ room had industrial metal shelves down each wall and a center island of odd tables, milk crates, bushel baskets and boxes, all piled high with mostly rust-covered metal objects. In one end of the room, a dozen or so metal fireplace screens leaned against the wall; on the other was a table full of iron skillets, cauldrons, and stove plates. I dove in, with a rough idea of what a combination plane body looked like, searching the room for it as well as any saleable tools. On the shelves and in the island I found stove lid handles, bathtub feet, hubcaps, new-ish pipe wrenches, scrap metal, star drills, crowbars, pots and pans, casters, brackets, and many more things, but only a few old tools: half a dozen adze heads, including a nice lipped shipwright’s adze with handle,some worn-out auger bits, an ancient forged froe, some ship caulking irons, and what turned out to be a fairly valuable hawsing iron (another ship caulking tool). No planes at all. What I did find was put in a box to go to dad’s store to sell for the sons. So, with flashlight in hand, I went through a doorway to near total darkness.
Through Hollywood-sized cobwebs I found the dip tank room, now filled with about 200 concrete balusters from some building demolition. The store was in its heyday during the late 70’s and 80’s when antiques dealers typically immersed whole pieces of painted or refinished furniture in caustic chemicals to remove layers of paint, varnish, and any other coatings and get the piece down to bare wood, then they restored, repaired, and lacquered or varnished them to build up a decent new coating. This was not fine furniture,but late Victorian/ turn-of-the century factory-produced stuff like golden oak dressers and mission/ arts and crafts rockers that were painted over in the1950s and 60s to make them look more “modern”.The dip tank was long gone, and there was no plane among the piles of balusters. Across from the dip room was the rinsing room, where pieces pulled from the dip tank would be rinsed with water to remove any remaining flakes ofpaint as well as the caustic solution.The floor was bare concrete and, because of the chemicals and the salt air and high humidity in this area, the steel I-beam structure and galvanized steel wall siding were extremely corroded. The bottom 3-6 inches of the steel walls were rusted away, allowing in a little light and a few critters to enter– such as the two stray cats that bolted from their hiding place and out through the holes, taking about 10 years of my life with them. No plane here either, although there were buckets and crates of used industrial pipe fittings; there must have been a plan for them at one time.
Next, I entered the large 60x40 workshop and storage area. The first 30 feet contained the woodworking equipment- all older belt-drive models with a variety of motors bolted to them.There was a drill press, band saw, drum sander, and radial arm saw, all almost unnoticeable because they were in a sea of milk crates, buckets, and boxes full of parts, scraps, etc. that was easily 3 feet high, and in some places more. Every horizontal surface and the floor had something piled on it, and then that had a few boxes teetering on top of it. There was a row of shelves making a wall across the width of the shed, and it too was jammed with things. There was no real walkway, just footprint-wide paths that often dead-ended when the piles fell over. I tried to think like a woodworker; “now if I were using this plane, where would I put it down?” I looked on the decks of all the machines, having to lift crates and boxes off them, usually in sequence to prevent a rusty avalanche, but only found a few screwdrivers. I looked in each crate, box, and bucket in case a plane or something valuable was there. I found several saleable items (like a large box full of old wooden cigar boxes) and a few tools to sell – including an 8-foot long teak T-square for lofting, a Stanley folding rule, and a very nice panel gauge that was missing its cutter. Still no plane.
Beyond the workshop area I found that almost the entire back half of the shop – at least a 30x30 foot space – was where the “furniture reserve” was kept. The entire floor space, and up to a height of at least 12 feet, was packed with furniture; dressers on top of dressers with more dressers and vanities and tables on top of them. A quick glance gave me the impression these were run-of-the mill pieces that needed to be stripped and sold cheaply, so they had been set aside for slow days.I figured if the plane had been set down somewhere in there, it would be lost forever.
I turned back to the workshop and had to climb over a tumbling row of crates full of chair spindles and assorted pieces and found a small space where my feet were actually on bare concrete again. On one side was a moldy plywood table that had two enormous industrial grinders bolted to it – but at about 2 feet wide, 18 inches tall each and with very heavy-looking cast iron bodies, I opted not to unbolt them to send to the store. I could barely bend over to look, but checked under the table, on the table, and in the boxes jumbled around it. No combination plane, just a very rusty high-knob number 3 plane without blade or lever cap. On the side opposite the grinders were shelves full of scrap wood and moldings taken off furniture – no tools there.
That left the outside metal wall, which had metal shelving against it and an old plywood bookcase leaning on it because years of sitting on a damp concrete floor had rotted the feet off the front. The metal shelves were promising because I could see a plane handle and a hand drill sitting on them. So, I moved the delaminating bookcase from in front of the shelves and leaned it face-first against the outside wall and started slowly removing layers of wood, metal, magazines, etc.off the shelves to get to the tools. First tool was a Disston hand saw, new enough to have a painted logo on the blade instead of an etch.Then I found some plastic-handled Craftsman chisels, totally rusted despite their young age. The plane handle I saw belonged to a blue-bodied Stanley No. 5 (sellable, but cheap), sharing space with an equally-aged 220 block plane. More rummaging on the shelves produced a few more, fairly modern tools, but not the plane I needed.
After spending about 3 hours up to this point, I left the workshop area and started looking in, on, and under the 20-foot -long workbench opposite the furniture pile.The workbench top was surprisingly clear, with just a few boxes on it here and there, but it had a single row of drawers running along its entire length and ashelf underneath. Some 16-foot lengths of 2x4, 2x6, and 4x4 lumber, along with anything else that came in 10-foot or longer lengths such as rugs, 4-inch PVCpipe, drain tile, and the cardboard tubes from carpets were piled on the floor in front of the bench where a person would normally stand, so I had to walk carefully as I moved along. I spent another hour looking through all the drawers and on the shelves, and found a bunch of small treasures, but no plane. There was an enormous iron plumb bob – about 10lbs in weight – that must have been left from Mr. W’s millwright days. My dad wanted me to keep it, but I seriously couldn’t think of a use for it or an argument that would convince my wife to let it stay on a shelf indoors.
At this point, I was almost willing to concede that I had a box of parts, but no plane. I climbed back to the workshop area and back to the metal shelves where I had found the most hand tools. I looked again, but found nothing more. I had looked on everyshelf, every table.I had gotten totally filthy from the dusty, rusty, greasy contents of the shop, banged my shins on countless obstacles, and even cut my hands on some nails sticking out of the sides of the rotten plywood bookshelf.That shelf now leaned against the outside wall, its splintered back panel to me, at about a 70-degree angle.Ipulled it away from the wall, avoiding the nails through the sides this time,and spun it to look at the shelves.There was a plane just about eye level sitting on a shelf.A quick check with the flashlight confirmed this was THE plane.It was the plane body, configured with the long arms and the sliding section, auxiliary center bottom,and a fence assembly; basically all the parts that appeared to be missing from the box. A 3/8” plow blade was mounted in the plane from its last use – which was long enough before that the shelf surface had molded and rotted away and the plane’s narrow metal soles had sunk into the plywood, keeping it from falling to the concrete floor when the shelf leaned over. I gave the required victory shout, released the plane from its resting place and, after scanning the other shelves for parts or other tools, climbed back out to relish my fortune.
305256
I placed the plane in its box and when I got home I did an inventory of all the parts after downloading the owner’s manual. If the design features are the same as a No. 45, according to the Walter book it is a type 9,from about 1908. All the parts are there, including every one of the blades.The only things missing are three washers for thumbscrews and the two screws that attach the plates of the beading depth guide.These latter are the same size and pitch as a Stanley spokeshave thumbscrew, which appears to be 10-28,so I’ll have to look around for replacements or a suitable die. It does have both nickers (straight type), the slitting blade and depth stop, the main and auxiliary depth stop, and other commonly-missing pieces. Here is what Igot for about 5 hours of searching and digging out about $500 worth of tools and antiques.
305258305259305252
continued...