Musing about yard sales, thrift shops and a corner of the barn.

"Arch" wrote: (clip) I'm referring to the satisfactions presented by re-turning and

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Great minds think alike. I get great pleasure from taking a tool that has been badly neglected or abused, and refurbishing it. I don't want it to look new--I want it to look old but undamaged. One of my favorites is to take a chisel that has been mushroomed by hammering, restore it to the original shape, and turn a new handle.

Let me add another twist. Some of the stuff I find has been so badly repaired that it actually makes me laugh. I have a collection of tools that someone has tried to fix. An example: a claw hammer where the wooden handle has been replaced with a turnbuckle. The threads are not stuck, so the head rotates randomly as you try to use it.

Arch (or anyone), if you find things like this, don't pass them up--I'll pay the postage to add them to my collection.

Hi Arch,

You might want to take a look at this book: 'Secrets in a Box (Adventures in Art)' by Joseph Cornell. It is primarily a children's book (grades 3-6), but an excellent introduction to the work of Joseph Cornell who created a career in art from 'found' objects.

See also and an example

Hi Leo, Your collection of 'mis-fixed' tools is great. I was a grown man and off to the big city before I realized that hammers, knives, turpentine tools and wagon tongues didn't all have haywire twisted around the handles and nails to fill up the badly fitted holes to fix the shafts. :)

Hi Lobby, Wonderful references. Thanks. You just revived an old idea of mine (and likely a few hundred other aspirant artist-- turners). I never did it, but I had planned to turn small boxes and seal in with glass discs my signature series: "Some Small Necessities of a Civilized Man". Namely: keys, toothbrush, soap, string, paper clips, kleenex, duct tape, pencils, shoe laces, etc. etc., each in its own separate box with a turned lid to heighten the mystery. Maybe if I captioned in French, collectors would want to aquire the entire series? Naw! :)

Turn to Safety, Arch Fortiter

WHAT?!? You mean baling wire and string aren't suppose to be on there? My grand dad has been able to fix anything broken with these and they work as good or better than original. He refuses to use duct tape because it won't last more than a couple of months. I've seen (and helped) him repair the old Ford 3000 diesel tractor with things he pulled out of the trash. Every barn and garage around here has a roll of baling wire (or even grass string) hanging on a nail on the wall to fix things that don't work anymore.

Arch, old coffee cans are ready made boxes and until you pull the plastic lid off you don't know what you've got in them. And if its like the ones stacked up in my garage, they are stuffed full of a dozen other things I had forgotten where I had put them. I've been guilty of buying old coffee can's at local auctions because I've found some real prizes when I got them home and poured the contents out on the workbench.

Thanks for the memories and its good to reminisce, JD

I know this will sound silly, but I have a lot of old tools that I have just because I try to imagine who had them before, and what they did with them. I have some old chisels and some old Irwin screwdrivers that are of unknown date, and if any way possible, I tried to save the handles on them.

Too far gone to be just "cleaned up", I had to regrind them and knock off the bad hammer strikes (especially on the screwdrivers!). I wound up giving away my screwdrivers to my Dad ( they were like this:

)as he liked them a lot since they reminded him of the screwdrivers they had when he was a kid. I helped a friend of mine clean out his grandfather's house about 30 years ago when he passed on to the great shop in the sky. My prized vintage tools are some real doozies, as he was the head carpenter for the Post Office in the 20's and 30s for our area when he came back from WWI. I have a cutter to get the wood spoke ends cut for a model "A" to fit in the inner and outer spoke holes of the rims. I have several Winchester made (and marked) ball peen hammers. I have some old chisels (beat to death) marked as "Stanley, no. XXX". I have two huge Yankee drills that he assured me used to drill pilot holes and drive 3" screws for wood wagon and cart repairs. I have his rip saws, his crosscut saws, and one of his saw blade kerf setters.

I was lucky enough to meet this gentleman when he was in his 80s, and he was still full of vinegar and piss. Once he passed his early 90s, he just got tired. But he loved to tell me about "the old days", and how a carpenter had to be a bit of a blacksmith as well as do general carpentry. He used to fix yokes on wagons, bend springs for the old Fords, and make fixtures for the shop as well as the office. It was from him that I learned that when a model A or T broke down, they sent a big draft horse with a tackle out to get the broken down auto, or more often, just to pull them out of the mud.

He was a great guy, and always had a story. In fact, he had a story for every tool he had! I listened to him just about as long as he would talk to me.

Sadly, he had a lot of other tools in his old free standing garage (he died in the only house he had ever bought, purchased sometime in the

20s) and the old garage leaked like a sieve. Since no one ever went out there, when he passed it was like opening the rust warehouse. It was sad.

I got what I could, and the family junked the rest as they were so rusty that tools literally stuck together, or would fall apart. Whole wooden tool boxes were so rotted that when they were moved they collapsed and left a pile of rusty "stuff" on the ground.

The things I got were hanging on one wall of the garage, and they were spared.

I actually get those old tools out just to look at them and think of him sometimes. I like what they represent to me, and my imagination really wanders when I think of all those tools have done. I am glad to be their keeper.

Robert