Dennis McDonaugh
04-02-2006, 10:29 PM
We accidently ended up at what is billed as the world's largest antique show this weekend in Round Top Texas. Friday night we had gone camping at Palmetto State Park and Saturday we wandered over to Gonzalez to look at some antique stores, but they were all closed. Their owners had gone over to Round Top for the show, which is really in four small towns strung about 10 miles along a two lane blacktop highway. There must have been a thousand sellers there. We spent about 4 hours Saturday afternoon looking at the booths, some were elaborate and had lots of interesting stuff and others had very little of interest. I'd say we got through less than 10 percent of the vendors!
The bad news is very few sellers had any good tools, but the good news is there are so many sellers that there were actually quite a few tools for sale. You just have to walk a lot and look into a lot of booths. Tool prices seemed very high which kept me from buying too much. I got a Stanley Bevel gauge for $10 and saw lots of others for $25 or more. One booth had some interesting chisels and gouges from Marples, Buck, Stanley, New Haven Edge, Swann, and Pexto and an assortment of other nice stuff. A guy had a Stanley 71 1/2 router plane, complete with box for $135, I saw a Winchester plane, about nr. 5 size for $85, and a couple Stanley nr. 4's for $25.
I found a couple other tool-related things I'd rather have though. A tool display from Crecent company was really interesting. One side had two glass display doors with a tool display. It was lots of small holders for wrenchs, pliers and stuff like that. The back side was about 30 drawers of varying sizes to hold the stock. If I'd had $1400 to spend on it It'd be mine in a heartbeat. It was a really great looking piece of Americana. There was also a counter from some type of mercantinle store. Get this, it was 12' long, the top was solid 2" maple laminated like a workbench. Underneath was just as nice. One side, obviously the side facing the customer, was beadboarded, but the reverse side had a series of drawers just under the top about 4" deep, Under the drawers was a series of sliding doors covering a shelf that went the length of the cabinet. The doors slid on wheels and operated like they were brand new. I also saw a couple hardware displays, the octogan shaped ones which rotate give you access to a series of triangle shaped drawers.
I wish we could have gone back Sunday, but I promised we'd take in the Starving Artist show in San Antonio Sunday afternoon. The Round Top show happens four times a year and I'm definitely going to "plan" to make it next time and try to get two full days of looking.
The bad news is very few sellers had any good tools, but the good news is there are so many sellers that there were actually quite a few tools for sale. You just have to walk a lot and look into a lot of booths. Tool prices seemed very high which kept me from buying too much. I got a Stanley Bevel gauge for $10 and saw lots of others for $25 or more. One booth had some interesting chisels and gouges from Marples, Buck, Stanley, New Haven Edge, Swann, and Pexto and an assortment of other nice stuff. A guy had a Stanley 71 1/2 router plane, complete with box for $135, I saw a Winchester plane, about nr. 5 size for $85, and a couple Stanley nr. 4's for $25.
I found a couple other tool-related things I'd rather have though. A tool display from Crecent company was really interesting. One side had two glass display doors with a tool display. It was lots of small holders for wrenchs, pliers and stuff like that. The back side was about 30 drawers of varying sizes to hold the stock. If I'd had $1400 to spend on it It'd be mine in a heartbeat. It was a really great looking piece of Americana. There was also a counter from some type of mercantinle store. Get this, it was 12' long, the top was solid 2" maple laminated like a workbench. Underneath was just as nice. One side, obviously the side facing the customer, was beadboarded, but the reverse side had a series of drawers just under the top about 4" deep, Under the drawers was a series of sliding doors covering a shelf that went the length of the cabinet. The doors slid on wheels and operated like they were brand new. I also saw a couple hardware displays, the octogan shaped ones which rotate give you access to a series of triangle shaped drawers.
I wish we could have gone back Sunday, but I promised we'd take in the Starving Artist show in San Antonio Sunday afternoon. The Round Top show happens four times a year and I'm definitely going to "plan" to make it next time and try to get two full days of looking.