Hello folks,
A few months ago, there was a thread requesting that some of
the "Best articles of 95" be reposted for the benefit of the recent throng of new people in this group. I volunteered to collate this list, and then promptly fell down on the job. Well, I'm back, and here it is. By popular demand, and in no particular order, are:
Patrick Olguin <polgu@PARACEL.COM
Big Jim is not on this list, as it's available at Tom Gauldin's ftp site: ftp.vnet.net /pub/users/scoundrl
Editor's note: There were literally hundreds, if not thousands of "collectible" articles this year, and I'm dead certain that I've missed some funny/entertaining/informative ones. I've deliberately left off the flames, save for #4, which was an excellent parody in it's context. My thanks to the thousands of people who contribute to this news group
O'Deen
From: Kenneth Black <black@JUPITER.ESD.ORNL.GOV>
Subject: Another Tool Collection Story
The following account is a true story and it is being written in the spirit of Patrick Leach's recent pattern maker's tool collection story. This story details what most probably represents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me. It is the proverbial "big fish that got away" story - however, in this case the "big fish" was an incredible tool collection.
I live in Knoxville, TN, and I have been building a nicely equipped woodworking shop for the past eight years or so. I have a full complement of power tools and hand tools. Although I am not a professional woodworker by trade, I have spent many hours studying woodworking tools of all types. I primarily study hand tools - planes, chisels, rules, etc.- and my constant companions are price guides for older tools. With that background in place, I will begin with the story.
In the spring of 1993, I traveled to visit my Mom in a Chicago suburb. On a Friday morning at about 9:30 I picked up the local newspaper and was scanning the classified ads section when I came across a small ad that said, "Table saw and band saw for sale." Out of curiosity, I called the number and asked about the saws and the lady said, "They have come in droves." I asked her if she had other things for sale and she said yes but she wasn't sure what was left. Since she was only a mile away, I drove over to her house. When I arrived I was the only person at her house.
The lady was about 75 years old (I'll call her Ardel) and was in the process of selling her deceased husband's power tools so that she could raise money to help her daughter pay-off school loans. Her husband was a machinist who worked for about 40 years in the Chicago area. He died in 1973, and since that time Ardel kept his woodworking shop in tact. The shop was in a small room about 15 feet by 8 feet but was masterfully designed and organized. It was clear that this woodworker was very meticulous about his tools and bought only the best money could buy.
When I arrived Ardel told me that many men had come to her house early in the day. She had planned to sell only the power tools which included (but not limited to) a table saw, band saw, drill press, shaper, jointer, jig saw, lathe, and the accessories for these tools. The men, however, were after the other tools she had that were stored in the drawers and cabinets. She had a difficult time handling the situation because these men were too aggressive. She told me that the above mentioned tools sold very fast and she was proud to announce that she raised nearly $300! Although I didn't see the power tools, based on what I saw remaining I figure that the tools were either older Delta or Craftsman brands. I explained to her that the tools were worth much more money than that and that she should think about what she wanted to do with the rest of the collection before selling anything else. After we became acquainted, she allowed me to begin looking through the remaining tools.
I started my investigation about 10:00 am on Friday. I worked until 6: 00 p.m. on Friday, from 9:00 to 5:00 on Saturday, and five hours on Sunday before driving back home to Tennessee. I never saw the whole collection. The tools were tightly packed into large metal cabinets and large wall-hung wooden cabinets. The tools were machinists tools, woodworking tools, and mechanics tools. Most of the tools were in excellent condition. Along one wall was a cabinet full of hardware stored in about 100 drawers, full of every fastener I had ever seen including sold brass hinges and brass screws of most any size. The hardware selection alone made me think that this guy must have bought out a hardware store before he died. It was amazing and completely organized. I spent only a few minutes looking at the hardware because the tools were beckoning!
When I began looking at the collection, a man came back to Ardel's house (I'll call him "Shark"). He explained to me that he purchased "several" of the tools earlier in the day and was interested in what was remaining (I'll just say that the term "interested" is a misnomer - Shark was sensing blood in the water and he was hungry!). He watched me as I began cataloging the collection - in fact, he tried to stay at the house all day with me! Since he had to leave to pick up his young child at school, I was with Ardel longer than he. When he left, I explained to Ardel that this guy was a "Shark" and he wanted to buy her tools for very little money, and that she had to beware of him. At the end of the first day, based on the tools I saw I was thinking the collection would easily top $5,000. Was I ever wrong!
On Saturday, I began cataloging again and the Shark showed up to "make sure Ardel was O.K.". The shark stayed with me most of the day and again tried to stay there longer than I. Again he failed. Before I left, I told Ardel that this guy meant business and she should not give into any pressure he applies to her to sell him the tools. During the day, the value of the collection kept climbing as I discovered wonderful tools, some of which I had never seen before. By the end of the day, the collection was topping $10,000 without much trouble. I started to discuss with Ardel the techniques she could use to sell the collection and maximize her income. I talked about selling the whole collection, selling at an auction, or selling at a well planned yard sale. The yard sale idea was imposing, however, since it would have taken a couple of weeks to complete the cataloging and pricing of the tools due to the shear volume of the collection. Since I had to drive back to Tennessee on Sunday, I did not have the time to catalog everything and set appropriate prices, not to mention the time needed for the research needed to price some of the tools. Before I left her house, I explained very clearly to Ardel the value of the collection and that I would contact her on Monday from Tennessee to talk more about what she wanted to do. She said she would like to sell me the entire collection, but I told her I was not sure I could raise enough money. I told her that I would only purchase the collection at fair market value - I was not about to take advantage of the situation.
When I left her house I began thinking of this collection. How would I raise $5,000 or so to purchase these tools? How would I be able to transport everything to Tennessee? I began thinking of investors, trucks that can carry some serious weight, etc. By the time I reached Tennessee, I was ready to rob a bank! The passion was intense.
And now the rest of the story.
On Monday evening I called Ardel. And this is what she said (as close to it as I could remember since my blood pressure spiked to the point of nearly passing out): "Oh hi Ken. Do you remember "..." (the Shark)? Well, he came over to my house yesterday after you left. He helped me out." "What did he do for you, Ardel?", I asked. She said, "He plugged a telephone into the wall for me. He is such a nice man."
At this point I new it was coming... She said, "Yesterday I went to Sears and looked at the tools. I saw the prices and have decided to sell the whole collection." I said, "Ardel, I think you are making a mistake. Who are you going to sell them to?". She said, "I am going to sell them to "..." (the Shark). I said, "How much are you going to sell them for?" She said, "..."
Before I say how much she sold them for, I have a few comments I would like to make. If I were the Shark and bought this collection, there is no way I could use these tools. How could anyone work with tools from a collection like this after having acquired them in such a devious manner? This man blatantly ripped her off, and I was unable to stop the bloody feast. I believe that when you work with tools there is a connection between you and the tool, a spirit that develops over time. This spirit cannot develop with tools that literally have been stolen - at least not for me. In Patrick's case, he has a magnificent collection that he will use in the proper spirit. The tools will live on along with the spirit of their previous owners. In the case of this collection, it will die piece by piece as the Shark sells a tool here or there for his personal monetary gain.
So she said, "I am going to sell the entire collection for $300." Yes, that is correct - THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS. I said, "You are selling everything for $300?". She said, "Yes, everything." I said, "I wish I could convince you otherwise, but apparently you have made up your mind. I wish you luck."
So ends the tale. So ends the dreams. Even if I knew she would have taken $300 for the collection, I wouldn't have bought it. I simply couldn't do it. Could you?
Ken
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From: Patrick Leach <leach@BEDFORD.PROGRESS.COM>
Subject: Re: alt.tools.hunting (was Re: Bagging and Emmert! (was re: Bagging the big iron))
It all started on a recent trek home from doing the 9-5 selling my soul to the 'man' thing, when I happened to notice a yard sale in my rear-view mirror. I say to myself "screw it, I never find chi-chi at yard sales" (in choicer expletives), and continue home. Besides, it was a Friday and yupster pal was coming over the following morning to play with that bubinga - the wood that launched a thousand slams in rec.norm - and I wanted to get a start on jointing it.
Next week, on Monday, the yard sale is once again going on as I again notice it in my rear-view mirror. This time, however, something told me to turn around. I made a quick u-turn in the Dunkin Donuts pahking lot, and pull into the driveway. My first impression of the wares was that it was the typical chach-kees one always finds at suburban yard sales, but at least there were no kids' toys or baby furniture. So, I decided to get out of my bubba-mobile and have a look.
I walk into the garage, which right off the bat indicated to me that it wasn't really a yard sale, but a garage sale. Out here in New England, we have several kinds of sales - like tag sales, moving sales, yard sales, garage sales, and I've even seen signs that read "Yard Sale in Basement" (but that was in Fitchburg, so it's no wonder). Anyway, I digress.
Inside the garage, I immediately notice some tools hanging on a pegboard. As I'm scoping them out, the owner of the place comes out and greets me. He's a friendly fellow, in his mid-70's, who, if he lived anywhere near Hollywood, woulda been a celebrity double for Burgess Meredith (but not as the Penguin). He sees me eyeing the tools and tells me that they're not for sale, that they are his users. I'm sorta pissed since there's a nice centering head from a Standard Tool Co. combination square hanging there.
I apologize for checking out his tools, and walk around looking at all the knickknacks of days long past (salt and pepper shakers really do come in an infinite variety) arranged nicely on two picnic tables. I'm about ready to punt, and start to chant my standard mantra "I never find chi-chi at yard sales" when I notice a hollow auger and a wooden tap and die sitting on one of the table's benches.
I asked him how much, and he began asking me questions about them, to see if I knew what they were. I was thinking to myself "hmmmm, he's either starved for company or he must be thinking I'm a total post-Neanderthal maroon what wouldn't know an old tool if it came up and nipped him in the arse." So, I answer his question, and then proceeded to the next round by telling him a bit of the history behind each tools' manufacturer. This is when the game started to get interesting.
For some unknown reason I mentioned the word 'patternmaker'. When I did, it was like correctly answering the Final Jeopardy question of "The profession of my long-dead father". I instantly became his long lost son, as he and I slugged it out trading patternmaker volleys in a game of one upsmanship. He was totally amazed that I, being a 30-something-Chuck-Taylor- wearing-in-sore-need-of-a-shave-who-looks-like-he-oughta-be-tending-a- garbage-scow-for-a-living-'murican-male would have even a remote clue about a trade that's all but dead.
He tells me about all the patternmaking that his father did while employed at a firm just down the road from where he lives. His father made patterns for machinery used to process wool. He then tells me that his great uncle was also a patternmaker. The chat is going back and forth, and I'm thinking "OK, it's time to leave - don't want the poochie tinkling on the Sheraton sofa if I'm not home in time to let him out". I again ask him the price for the two tools that I was interested in, and he says "20 bucks." I counter with "American?" as I whip out a Jackson, and hand it over to him. But, he's not through talking about patternmaking with me. He knows he's got a sucker on the line, and he's playing him for all he's worth.
This is when he decides to tell me that he has a patternmaker's chest that belonged to his father. This is when I decide to say the hell with the dog, my wife can clean up the puddle. I then start to probe him for the particulars, and he responds with vague answers, but he tells me that I can go look at it. I'm starting to get this throbbing sensation in my groin area, imagining what's to come. But it was all premature since he told me that we couldn't look at it then, that he was expecting a phone call, and that I'd have to come back later to have a look. We agreed that it be the following day, and finally bid each other good-bye.
My mind is going nuts, with visions of #56's dancing in my head for several hours, when reality suddenly hits. I tell myself to get a grip, that the chest will be crap, filled mostly with air, and that all he'll have in the way of tools are rusted-solid Coe's wrenches, crappy cherry Stanley levels, taps and dies, and the usual tool detritus I luck into. So, I set my expectations at that level, hoping that finding a #5 will be a pleasant bonus.
I arrive at the guy's place the next day, and he greets me right away. He asks me if I'm ready, and I tell him it's time to rock n' roll. The chest is in the garage down at his son's house, which is a short walk through the woods from where he lives. We're fighting the black flies, chit-chatting about his acreage, when we have to cross a field of dog jigs and the creator of them, right before the garage. We negotiate that successfully (if you're wearing Chuck Taylor's, you learn early on to avoid dog crap), and proceed to the garage, with Fido endeavoring to introduce himself to my crotch and leg.
Inside the garage is a pile of stuff, all arranged about its perimeter. We move to one side of it, and he begins to show me the feared pile of rusted Coe's wrenches, etc. Sure enough, I thought, it's as predictable as stink on crap that I'm gonna be offered rusted Coe's wrenches and cruddy Stanley levels. They were all there, in their filthy glory, before my dejected eyes. The view is salvaged somewhat by my noticing some old patterns hanging on the wall, so I give them a look and comment to the guy about what nice work his father did.
We turn a corner, and there's an oil-covered, beat-to-hell bench piled up with open end wrenches, screwdrivers, and a host of other junk that all belong in the Land of Misfit Tools. But, on the bench is an Emmert's patternmaker's vise. I scope it out, asking him if it's all there, including the near-impossible to find bench attachment which allows it to swing up from the face of the bench. It's there, as he demonstrates. I give the vise a closer look to see if the mounting bracket was broken and repaired, commenting to the guy that most are damaged one way or another. His wasn't broken there, but the face plate was cracked. He didn't know that it was, but it's a no-harm damage. He also has the original instructions for mounting the vise. First time I ever saw them, and he later gave me a photocopy of them.
He then leads me to the other wall of the garage, finally to show me the chest. My eyes are sweeping across the floor trying to beat him to it. Thing is, my eyes shoulda been looking up, since he was fumbling with a lock that was chest-high. It's then when I first noticed the chest - there it was, hanging on the wall, with two raised panels on the front, looking like some 4' x 3' x 1.5' piece of furniture you'd have behind your wet-bar to keep junior outta the drambuie and cognac. This is when it finally dawned on me that there was some real potential here; that this was no John Q. Pattern- maker we were dealing with. More like John Q. Rembrandt, I thought.
The lock was giving him a bit of a hassle, but he finally managed to pop it free. The massive hinges creaked as the front of the chest swung open to the right. I damn near fainted with what treated my eyes! A chest that was virgin, jam-packed with every freakin' tool what ever went into it. A chest that hadn't had a tool added to it in over 75 years. A chest that you only dream about or find on the back page of FWW. To get an idea of what this chest is like, imagine a functional, non-decorative version of the Studley chest. This is it, with perhaps more tools in it than that one has.
This chest wasn't made to be pretentious, just purely functional, with every available space crammed with the tools of the trade - saws galore, 3 sets of chisel (none of which are cranked, strangely enough), machinist's tools, bench planes, shrink rules, trammels, braces, drills, marking gauges, drawers filled with whatever, blah-bity, blah-bity, blah. And get this, there is even a mint Coe's wrench. There are two internal hinged doors that swing open to reveal even more tools. It was tools-a-go-go and I was booga-looing in my drawers.
The chest originally belonged to the current owner's great uncle, who was a patternmaker at Simonds Saw and Heywood Wakefield (the chest even has his 15 year anniversary pin in it). When that guy died, the guy's father inherited it since he was a practicing patternmaker. He used it for years, until he retired in the mid-1960's. He took the chest and hung it in his garage where it remained, mostly unused.
For two hours it was tool-orgasm, as he and I talked about the tools, his father, and the state of the nation. Toward the end of talking, he decides to ask me "well, what do you think about it?" I told him that I was just lucky to be able to see, touch, and experience the tools of his great uncle and father, and that I would kill to own it. He then asked me what it was worth to me. I answered that there are 3 ways to value it - one, which is the way that pains me to witness it as it happens, is the value of the tools as they are thrown to the wolves when the chest is pillaged for profit; two, the value where the sum is greater than the individual parts; and three, the value as a family heirloom, which is impossible for anyone but family to assess. He indicated to me that he did want to sell it, but only for the right price and to the right person. I told him that I would get back to him in a few days with my offer, what it was worth to me, after I had time to stew on it.
When offering somebody money for something that they hold near and dear, you always run the risk of insulting them, if they place a value higher than what you intend to offer. Naturally, we all like to get good buys and I try to make fair offers for stuff that I want to keep. I decide that I'm not gonna mess around, and that I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse.
I returned to pay the guy a visit, with cash in hand, a few days later. I tell him that a minute hadn't gone by without my thinking about the chest, and that I was going to be heart-broken if I didn't get it. He asked me what my offer was, and instead of my blurting it out I handed him a fistful of Benny J. Franklin's to let him count it, to let him get the feel of cold, hard cash. He nonchalantly counted it, handed it back to me, and said that it was a fair offer, about what he had in mind. And then he drove a stake in my heart - he told me that two other guys had to look at it over the week- end. I got thinking that I was going to get involved in one of those dreaded bidding wars, where you never know what's going to happen, that even perhaps he was just using me to 'appraise' the value of the chest. All impure thoughts since I was so sure that I was going to go home with it that day.
He told me that he would have the others over to look at it, and that he would get back to me. He re-assured me that my offer was fair, that he had good vibes about me, and that he wasn't so sure about the intentions of the others coming to look at it. This tempered my anxiety a bit, but the pessimist in me had taken control of my mind's jukebox, where the tune "You Ain't Gonna Get It" played over and over and over. I find waiting for some- thing big to be the worst part. My mind races over the shoulda's, woulda's, and coulda's, which had I done them, I might have been able to take immediate ownership. I had a full week of listening to this tune, and I was about to snap, when the phone rings while I'm watching TOH re-runs for excitement. Wifey-pooh answers the phone, as she always does, since she's nice to the unsolicited huckstering of all expenses paid vacations to sunny Sarajevo if only we come to a seminar on home devices for underwater fire protection. I'm summoned to the cordless, and it's the owner of the chest telling me to come n' gits it the next day. I got about 1 hour of sleep that night.
It was a bit over a week ago that I took ownership of it. It was a very emotional time for the owner. As I was jamming it with bubble-pack, to keep the tools in place, he told me that everytime he opened the chest, the smell of it reminded him of his childhood and his father. He only relunctantly parted with it since he was fearful that his children, who had no appreciation for the tools nor the trade, wouldn't take care of it. He wanted it to go to someone who has that same emotion about tools that he, his father, and his great uncle have/had. He later told me that he was looking for the right person to sell it to for about a dozen years, and that he had a chance to sell it for more than I offered. But fate stepped in the way and set a course for he and I to meet years later.
I'm fortunate that he chose me since I must have convinced him of my sincerity to keep it together and to use the tools. I know that he could sense my passion for the stuff - I sometimes wear it on my sleeve (though never in this newsgroup). I reassured him that the chest was going to be well-loved and that he could make the half-hour drive to my place to see and whiff it anytime he wanted.
The final act was played out as I was loading it to take it away. He wanted me to hold the wedding picture of his mother and father and stand behind the chest so that he could take a picture of it. Sounds kinda whacked, but these aren't just tools. They're the legacy of the man's family. He needed the photo to link the past with the present, and the present with the future.
I arrive with chest back at my cave, and a fellow rec.norm'er, who was coming over for a visit, arrived right after me. He, my father, and I carried the chest into the house, and plopped it down on my walnut work- bench. I fumble at the lock to open it, and only one tool falls to the bench, which is a relief since I thought many more would have come free during the trip. Ah, bubblepack, is there nothing it can't do?
Like a proud father, showing off his new John Deere riding lawn mower, I stand there as the crowd of two ooh's, aah's, and gasps at the marvel of 19th century toolchest efficiency that leaves Snap-On in the starting blocks. After the viewing, the throng exits, content that they've gotten their money's worth. I'm left alone and continue to absorb the pleasure of my new toy while thinking about what the previous owners made with it. A spiritual sense overtakes me as I too take in the sights, the smells, and the feel of the tools. I began to think what I'll do with it once I go to that YB-plane in the sky. My only hope is that I, too, can find someone who'll worship it as much as C.A.Jewett, J.A.Crocker, B.Crocker, and P.Leach do.
The end.
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Patrick Leach
Just say I've ruined my perfect streak of finding diddly at yard sales. etc.
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From: Patrick Olguin <polgu@ATC-1S.HAC.COM>
Subject: Your Biggest Boner
Sorry, this is not a cross posting from alt.sex.large_appendages :-). It has to do with your biggest blooper/boner related to woodworking. I made a wildly funny mistake while almost woodworking the other day. I related it to a couple of rec.ww chums, and they suggested I post it if I could stand the ridicule. So here goes.
I had some old 3/8" plywood that had been sitting outside in the weather... well, what passes for weather down here in So Cal :-). Anyway, I decided that my father-in-law could use the plywood for firewood, since it was ruined for any other use. So, I dragged the two 4x8 sheets outside, plopped them on my trusty Workmate, and began cutting. Well, it wasn't long before the cheap steel blade in my Skil 77 started to go dull, and bind. So, being the clever guy I am, I whipped out my new, 60 tooth, carbide tipped blade. I unplugged the saw (I'm kinda attached to my fingers), and changed blades. While changing blades, I adjusted the foot to full blade-depth to make the change a little easier.... but then forgot to readjust. With the new blade locked in place, I plugged in the saw, clamped down the workpiece, and proceeded to make the most effortless cut you ever saw: right through that wimpy 3/8 plywood, _and_ the sheet metal of my Workmate! That Skil 77 never even slowed down. When I unclamped the workpiece, the two halves of the Workmate flopped to the ground. My father-in-law started laughing so hard, I really thought he was going to have a heart attack. Pat the mighty woodworker does in his Workmate.
You know how a really nice carbide blade will make shavings, not sawdust? Well, there were neat little wood _and_ sheet metal shavings where my fallen Workmate lay. Oh well, I need to make a _real_ workbench anyway :-).
****************
So, your challenge is to one-up this story, and own up to your horrendous/ silly mistakes. Please, no dismemberment stories this time around =8-0.
Patrick
Just say To Err is human, to really screw up requires a 13 amp, worm-drive Skil 77. etc.
and then the follow-up
Okay, I'd like to try this big boner thing; sounds like fun.
Actually, I have two stories. They kind of relate to woodworking, I guess, although marginally. Since I'm new to woodworking, I don't (yet) have any good misuse-of-tools or forgot-my-fingers-were-there stories, so forgive me my shoehorning of these into the category, but I'll think you'll enjoy the stories, anyway.
Story #1: "The Stripper"
When I was seventeen I moved out of mom and dad's house, and rented an apartment with a buddy. The apartment was the attic in a house built in 1835 on Staten Island. The walls in my bedroom were peeling-off wallpaper from the 30's or so, and it looked like hell, so I scraped it off and slapped up plaster with my hands, a la stucco or something. (Okay, I was seventeen, all right? It looked good to me then.) Then the door started to look bad in comparison, so I decided to strip the many old coats of paint from the bedroom side of the door and put on a varnish. I was a kid, but not *too* stupid, so I knew to remove the door from the hinges and take it outdoors to apply the chemical paint stripper. I carried this old-time solid door (heavy!) down three flights of stairs and propped it onto sawhorses in the front yard. The stripping took about eight coats of stripper before I was down to bare wood. Towards evening, hours and hours and a gallon of Red Devil later, I was finally finished. I left the door outside on the porch overnight, and the next morning I carried it back up those six flights of stairs -- it's double going up -- and set about hanging the door back on the hinges. To my incredible horror, I immediately discovered that I had stripped the paint from the wrong side of the door!
One of the guys living downstairs was a bona fide hippie carpenter type -- mighta been Roy Underhill as a lad -- and he heard me laughing and crying and came on up to see what the commotion was all about. He ended up doing some bona fide hippie carpenter stuff with the door jamb and the hinges and whatnot, and we hung the door upside down and backwards so that I could still get the side I had worked on to face the inside of my room. Alas, the doorknob was now shoulder high, but seventeen year old hippies aren't slaves to convention.
Story #2: "Careful, or You'll Poke an Eye Out"
In my early thirties I was still alive and still in college, having taken a number of years off from school to become a veteran. I was renting a house with some school friends. We had a fireplace, and since I was the only non-lazy non-spazz in the place, it usually fell to me to split the firewood. Since I really enjoyed splitting, I didn't mind. The logs were stacked out on the front porch, which was just one step up from the front walk leading out to the street. One evening, it was evening, and I was splitting wood out on the sidewalk directly off the porch. As I was taking my swings Dimitri the Landlord, who lived a few houses up the street, happened to stroll by. In the dark and from his slight distance, it was hard for him to tell if I was splitting the wood down on the concrete sidewalk (which was okay by him) or up on the porch (which wasn't). So he called out, "Hey, Steve, you're not splitting those logs up on the porch, are you?"
"No, Dimitri, I'm not," I replied, "I'm down on the sidewalk".
Being a native New Yorker, though, you can't just answer a question matter of factly; you're sincerely required to ridicule the question or better yet, the questioner. So I added snidely, "Hey, I have brains." But I'm also half Italian, so it's illegal for my mouth to speak alone; my hands won't allow it. They instead insist on performing an ongoing manual translation of my speech. (Gesticulatory supplementation is the street term for this back in Little Italy.) So while my mouth was uttering the word "brains", my left hand was compelled to point to my head, to show Dimitri that that's where brains are. But my hand got so carried away in this gesture that it forgot that at that very moment it was holding a foot-long sliver of wood that I had just pulled away from the sides of a log. The end of the sliver was pointy and sharp, and I stabbed myself directly in the eye with it. The timing, of course, was impeccable. I stabbed my eye precisely at the utterance of the word "brains". As a result, it came out "brainsaaaaaaarrrrrgh."
Dimitri took me to University Hospital Emergency Room. No bad damage, they said, just to the cornea, the eye's outer part, which heals itself quite well, thank you. I learned from a nice nurse there that three body parts will heal about three or four times faster than any others: the tongue, the stomach lining, and the cornea. (Don't ask why, 'tis just so.) After fixing me up, the same nice nurse encouraged me not to poke my eye out with any more sticks -- now why didn't *I* think of that? -- and wished me good health and a good night. Unless I wanted to stick around, she added, which I pretended not to hear.
I lived for a couple of days in total humiliation and an eye patch and then I was as good as new. (Yo, Norm! Wear *these*!)
Nowadays I still see Dimitri around Seattle from time to time. ("With which eye, Steve?") Coincidentally, he's also a native New Yorker, from the Bronx, so everytime we see each other he delights in inquiring, "Hey Steve, how's your brainsaaaaaaarrrrrgh?"
Cripes, eye hate that.
-- Steve LaMantia
Seattle, WA
[... "Keep your remaining fingers well away from any spinning blades. And remember, the most important safety rule of all is to always cover your good eye with this, a safety monocle."]
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From: Snick the Woodcarver
Subject: Gay Woodworkers
(editor's note: after a lot of flamage, Snick writes: )
I would think that being a gay woodworker brings its own unique set of problems. Instead of boldly wading right into a project, the Gay Woodworker must fuss and waiver about on design details, form, and whether the beauty of the piece will openly hint at his sexual orientation. When the GW finally starts the project, he must be careful to use special jigs and fixtures to guide the cuts, because his wrists are not strong. While sanding or planing, the beauty of the wood often brings a tear to the GW's eye. He must be careful to keep these tears off of the work, lest they raise the grain. He must be careful about to whom he shows the finished project -- if they comment on how "creative" he is, it could be a veiled insult. (Incidentally, you can differentiate between a GW and a SW by how they refer to "patterns" or "plans". It's a secret signal.) ---
/Snick
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From: Patrick Olguin <polgu@ATC-1S.HAC.COM>
Organization: Guardian ATC - Hughes Aircraft Company
Subject: BIG hand plane in my mailbox
I got something in the mail yesterday. It's big, it's heavy, and cuts wood. The return address said it was from some guy named Leach in Massachusetts. Maybe you've heard of him? He occasionally deals in old tools. The box I received was slightly smaller than a refrigerator, and contained a Stanley #8 jointer plane.
To the uninitiated (like me), a Stanley #8 is quite a sight. I didn't measure, but it took up most of the kitchen table. My wife, upon seeing it said, "Well, go out and make some shavings....". "O.K.", I said. "Let me put on my work clothes". So, replete in my swimming trunks, and Nike swim sandals (this _is_ California after all) I went out to the shop with my large hunk of iron and rosewood in tow.
Once in the workshop, something strange came over me....
I sighted down the sole of the mighty plane... slowly adjusting the worn, knurled brass knob. It's smooth action reacted pleasurably to my smallest movement. When I saw the pencil-thin outline appear above the surface of the sole, I was ready to go. My palms were sweaty.... I trembled with anticipation. I had never seen a plane this size, much less held one, or tried to _use_ one.
I placed one foot on the flimsy step of my cheapo Workmate... the plastic bench's dogs firmly in place. I placed the sole of my new wood warrior on the piece of virgin hard maple (this sounds like a Penthouse Forum letter). ....I plunged forward with slow, yet inexorable force. The planes blade touched the wood. Goooooouuuuuuuuuuuge! Hmmmm. I turned the plane over. Gosh, the blade looked a little funny. I raised the cap lever. I removed the iron/cap assembly. Oh! Patrick covered the blade with the cap for shipping. Tee Hee. GOH was looking down at me, laughing.... with me, of course.
I exposed the blade about 3/64" from the cap. I readjusted. I re-trembled. I crouched, I leaned, I even angled the plane a little bit, just like in the movies, I shot..... The crowd hushed. A clean shaving of maple lifted up from the wood, curling neatly in front of the cap. The large plane, in the hands of the rank amateur glided off the end of the workpiece, like a majestic vintage warplane removed from mothballs and recommissioned into service. It did a victory roll as it swooped past the beltsander and circled around for another pass. Like a P-47 Thunderbolt, mercilessly strafing the beaches at Normandy, did the Stanley #8 remove shaving after shaving from the workpiece. Knots were not a problem. It laughed at curly grain, scoffed at wind, cup, bow and warp. This was a tool with which to be reckoned.
I put it away, the iron still warm in my hands. As I closed up the shop, I looked back with anticipation at the stacks of cherry, curly maple, flame birch, birdseye maple, curly oak, mahogany and walnut. "You're next!", I cried, and strolled triumphantly out into the cool October night.
Another satisfied customer,
Patrick O. ---
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# There's an old Spanish saying: Musica pagada no son.
# It has nothing to do with this message, but it _is_ an old Spanish saying.
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From: Patrick Leach <leach@BEDFORD.PROGRESS.COM>
Subject: Re: workshop
Dee Purchase <dee@BOI.HP.COM> writes:
>I have come across an old barn, a really well-made 2x6 framed structure with >ship-lap siding, approximately 40' x 40' that I want to disassemble, then >reassemble at my place. I intend to use it as a woodworking shop. Does >anyone out there have any recommendations as to how to reassemble a structure >so it will at least partially resemble the original?
I've never dismantled stick-framed structures - seems too much a pain in the arse, if you ask me - but I have done a timber-framed building. Maybe some of what I spew may help you, but I doubt it. Just make sure your shots are current, and think things out ahead of time before you do them. You can save yourself some injury and trouble.
Mine was/is an actual house, built ca. 1810. It's a typical hip-roof, central hall Federal, with 9 rooms, 8 fireplaces (2 chimneys - one each to either side of the ridge pole). The house was built by a local prominent merchant who later went on to build several thriving mills in the town in which he built the house. Thus, the house is an above average example of the typical house for the common Joe of the time.
The church, located next door to the house, acquired it during the 1960's to use as a Sunday school. Had they not done so, the house would have been left in the condition it was when it was first built. The church did some really groovy modernization by chopping chair-rails and door frames out so they could install cheesy paneling and hollow-core doors. They also put in a dropped ceiling. The house also had that fun-to-snort asbestos siding that was fashionable during the 20's and 30's. Oil prices got too high for the church to keep the building so they wanted it gone for a parking lot. I put a bid of 1k for it and got it.
Just my brother and I did the dismantling, save for a few times when we needed help. The first order of business for us was to de-modernize it. We ripped out all the paneling, hollow-core doors, and dropped ceilings. Then it was up to the attic to start knocking down the plaster. We started at the top and worked our way down. If you've never experienced the joy of knocking out plaster and laths, be sure to try it sometime - you'll love it! Just keep telling yourself that you're a home wrecker and that it's fun to be covered head to toe in plaster.
With the walls opened up, the next to go was all the pipes and wires. This was neat to see - the wiring was knob and tubing with the insulation on the wires falling off. Of course the pipes had asbestos insulation on them. As we were doing the insides, I had a local crazy guy carefully remove the asbestos siding so that he could use it on his house.
All the woodwork had to be popped off and numbered. This was very difficult since 2.5' wide by 16' long wainscoting nailed directly to studs is tough to remove without splitting it. Some of the remaining delicate moldings also gave us fits, but we managed. Each piece of woodwork was marked by floor and room, in a clockwise fashion starting from the cornerpost (each room, except one has a cornerpost).
After that, all the interior studs, strapping (for the laths), door-frames, etc. were removed. They were marked in the same manner as the woodwork was. Next project was the chimneys. This seemed to take forever. Brick after brick, from the roof to the basement (this house had a full basement the full area of the house). There must have been 20,000 of them, all of which had to be popped from the mortar without breaking them (many did break), cleaned, then hauled. Dimensions of the fireplace openings had to be logged before their bricks could be removed. To this very day, I sometimes still dream about lugging bricks! And the nightmare isn't over since I get to re-build these chimneys.
With the bricks fresh in my head, it was next time to take on the roof. We stripped it of the shingles first, of course. Then we spray painted the decking by color and side (a hip roof is sorta like a 4-sided pyramid). Some of the decking was in tough shape, but it was all numbered. There were two layers of decking, which was something unusual. The first layer was the typical 1" board, but below that was some very wide (20") and very thin (1/2") decking. The two were arranged so that the seams on each layer didn't overlap.
We had to remove all the trim from the cornice. This was another fun ad- venture for me since I hate being up on ladders. I don't mind roofs, but ladders give my knees the shakes. All the trim had to be numbered for re- assembly. This is where I made the decision to reference the front right corner post as my starting point for all numbering. All of the frame and exterior trim were numbered from that post in a clockwise fashion. We finally were now able to remove the first part of the frame. If you've never seen a hip roof framed, it's an amazing bit of work. There are two king posts that each carry 5 principle rafters - two front and back, two from the corners, and one from the side. They all join at the top of the king post in an unbelievable thing of joinery beauty. Nothing but moon gravity, and their force against each other, holds them in place. Each principle rafter had a small post at its midpoint to transfer weight down to the girt directly below it.
Coming off the corner rafters, are several common rafters that grow smaller in dimension as they get closer to the corners. Between the king posts is the ridge pole. This house had no purlins, except the two that spanned the rafters that run front and back. The builders probably didn't feel the need for them since they used the two layers of decking. Whatever the reason, they weren't needed since the roof didn't sag.
The principle rafter bottoms were tenoned and pinned into the girts that carried them. We took a 1" metal rod to knock the pins out. After that, the rafters lifted right out (the principle rafters were heavy suckers). We lowered them to the floor below, then took them down to the ground. The common rafters were also tenoned into the girts, but they weren't pinned. All of the rafters were spray painted with a number starting at 1 and then proceeding clockwise.
When we got them all down, and started to load them for removal, I noticed some crudely painted numbers at each rafter's bottom. All the numbers were incremented by one, with the first number naturally starting at 1. It then dawned on me that these numbers were the original assembly numbers that the framers had painted before they raised the frame. Wondering if my numbers matched theirs, I looked at a random rafter to see what number I had painted on - mine matched. I then checked a few more. They matched. Sorta excited, I searched for my rafter #1, and found that it, too, was marked #1 by the old paint. I thought it kinda cool that I guessed the exact numbering sequence for the roof frame. I also numbered the studs and post in the exact sequence, all by coincidence.
We then set about to removing the girts. These are the beams that span the plates, from front to back, and then from the sides. They not only carry the rafters, but give the house rigidity by tying the walls together. Each was a massive beam - a 10x10 - of varying length. Where they sit atop the plates, they are joined to them by a clever dovetail joint so that they actually draw the walls inward when they are seated. Nothing but moon gravity held them over the plates. The shorter girts had their inner ends tenoned and pinned to the two main girts.
All that remained now was the flooring, the joists, the exterior walls, and the framing for the four walls. We removed all the clapboards off the walls before we did anything else. The clapboards were the original ones, made of eastern white pine. They were milled, and very long - some around 16'. Where they butted against another, they were scarfed to overlap each other by about 2-3". This was to prevent water from seeping in. The clapboards were in very good condition, which ought to dispel the notion that white pine is n.g. for clapboard - these babies were out there taking a beating for 100+ years.
We next removed the second floor windows and the sheathing from the roof line to the just above the second floor line. Here, too, each piece was numbered by side. I didn't need to take the time to number it, nor the roof decking, since I didn't re-use it when I reassembled the house. I still have a bunch of it, if anyone in the New England area needs some weathered "barn board".
One of the hardest parts of the operation was next - removing the four plates. The plates are the equivalent of the sills, but they are up in the air some 20'. All of them are 8x8's. The front and back ones are 40' long and 4 posts, and roughly 25 studs tenoned into them. To compound matters, the side plates, each 36'long, had their ends tenoned into the ends of the 40' plates, to say nothing of the post and studs tenoned into them.
It was very difficult for us to get our center of gravity under them to lift the 40' plates up and out to free them. So, we threw in the towel and got some help from my father and two other guys. I don't know how we did it, but we managed to get them off. As my brother was carrying one of them, he stepped into an air vent hole in the floor that we forgot to cover up before hand. He damn near broke his leg.
After this, it was pretty much down hill. All the second floor studs were numbered and then popped out of their tenons (they were nailed to the frame). All that stuck up beyond the second floor were the 10 posts and their braces the second floor framing.
We popped the flooring, and removed the joists, which also weren't nailed. The rest of the sheathing was removed, down to the sill. We numbered the rest of the frame, and then went about knocking the pins out of the second floor bracing of the posts.
We started at one corner post to let it free from the framing. It's sorta tough to control a 20' 8x8 piece of chestnut when it's vertical so that it doesn't freefall. These are stupid things that you just don't think about until you're ready to do them. We tied a line at the top, cleated off the bottom, and then slowed its wanting to go horizontal. Gloves are mandatory here.
The girts that spanned the corner post to the center posts were tenoned and pinned into the posts. They also had the studs tenoned into them. These were very manageable since they are only about 16'L and 8x10. Four of the girts had summer beams, each 10x10, tenoned and pinned into them. These were a bit more difficult to free, but we rigged up some jacks to hold the summer beams up as we removed the girts.
The last thing to go was the entrance. We left that framed and intact. We freed it from the flanking posts, lashed some rope around it, and let it down carefully. I threw it on the back of a pickup truck and did my impersonation of a Wide Load while transporting it.
The first floor frame was not salvageable. The heating system for the house was an old boiler, which had introduced a lot of dryrot into the frame. I probably could have managed to get something useful out it, but I decided that it would be best to reframe the first floor, and have a good starting point so that the rest of the house can last another 175 years.
Every vertical member of the frame, except the king posts, is made of American chestnut, and was milled. Every horizontal piece of the frame is made of Eastern white pine and is hewn. The only portion of the frame proper that had any nails in it are the ends of the studs where they intersect the bracing. The nails used were roseheads, which I saved each and every one. It's interesting to note that cut nails were used to hold the sheathing to the frame, but roseheads were used in the frame. I don't have any idea about why this was the case. Perhaps the framers only had roseheads, and another crew - the one to sheath it - had cut nails.
All of the wooden pins are chestnut. Some of them popped out quite easily, but others offered a lot of resistance. A few of the beams had some chalk figures on them, which was not too readable. I suspect that these figures were used for some ciphering' by the hewers or the framers for figuring their pay or something like that.
We did this all during one summer. It took us one summer to re-frame it, and then me, alone, a few months to re-sheath it. It's surprisingly easy to dismantle an old post and beam structure. I'd love someday to do dismantle a church, after having climbed around a few of their frames. Once you've done it, it's forever in your blood. You'll never look at 2xWhatever construction again.
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Patrick Leach
Just say And that's how I became a Neanderthal. etc.
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Tom Bruce writes:
Seen the ads for _This Old House Magazine_? Wondering where it will all end? Well, the fun's not over, pals and gals, 'cuz now we have NORM ABRAM ACTION FIGURES!
No reason for the tools to stop hummin' and the fun to stop comin' when they roll those closing credits! Now you and all your little "apprentices" can have hours of fun with your very own ActionNorm(TM)!
Basic ActionNorm(TM) Figure comes with flannel shirt, blue jeans, OSHA-approved MiniWorkBoots (TM), working tape measure, glasses, goofy grin, and detachable arms, hands, and fingers.
Think of the fun you and your kids can have patching up ol' Norm when he does a "boo-boo" on the table saw -- you can learn safe shop practice and microsurgery all at the same time!
ActionNorm(TM) PowahPak Tools include battery-powered Belt Sandah(TM), BisKitJoinah(TM) and AihStaplah(TM) among many others. These cost as much as the full-sized tools Norm uses on TV, and they wear out just as fast too!
ActionNorm(TM) WorkPak includes ToolBelt, plans for a miniature blanket chest, Lumbroid(TM) Action Building Material, folding edible Extend-O-Rule, made-to-scale 1" wire brads, and Tourn-O-Kit RepairPak for when Norm does a "boo-boo" on the table saw.
ActionNorm(TM) Endorse-o-Pak includes signed agreements with most major tool manufacturers, a toolbox full of real cash, and a Talking Mouthpiece(TM) lawyer figurine which utters 12 baffling but authoritative phrases!
BUT WAIT....THERE'S MORE!
Ever wonder whose Delta Norm's checkin' out when he's not in the shop? Well, she's here, she's from Revere, and her name's DoveTail Donna(TM)!
DoveTail Donna comes with Save The Rainforests T-Shirt, designer jeans, OSHA-approved patent leather WorkBooties(TM), and fully equipped DoveTail Donna(TM) ToolBelt (choice of earth tones or teal/purple/black). Optional accessories include chuck-key-lanyard hair band, emery boards (80, 150, 220, and 340 grit), and full line of Bartley's Gel System Cosmetics. Optional outfits include NurseDonna(TM) outfit with Tourn-o-Kit and Press-o-Bandages -- that's right, DoveTail Donna's a real RN, so that when ActionNorm does a "boo-boo" on the table saw, she's right there to help! Remember, kids, ActionNorm(TM) gets it done twice as fast when Donna's holding the other end of his workpiece!
AND IF YOU ACT NOW, WE'LL THROW IN A FREE BOOK!
Ever wonder why Norm's projects go together first time, every time? It's because he knows what every professional craftsman knows: those "swear words" are really _secret mantras_ which can improve your projects and and make them look just like they were done by the pros! Now, in _Talk Like a Tradesman with Norm Abram_ YOU can learn to cuss just like real craftsmen do! Norm lets you in on the "trade secrets" that were "too much" for _This Old House_ and _New Yankee Workshop_:
-- "Sonofabitchin' bahstahd!" -- the way to drive big nails
straight _every time_!
-- Get those joints tight, tight, tight with "mizzable
cahksuckah"!
-- "the hahse ya rode in on" -- handling problem personalities
at the Home Center and on the jobsite!
We'll throw this valuable book in FREE with your purchase of ActionNorm and DoveTail Donna -- or you can take it as your FREE GIFT for joining the Norm Abram Woodworkah's Book Club! Other titles include:
--"Make Things Which Have Geese On Them with DoveTail Donna"
--"Martha Stewart's Guide to Heavy Earthmoving Equipment"
--"Clip Your Own Poodle and Save A Bundle with Bob Vila".
Operators standing by....
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Andy Wilkins <awilkins@physics.adelaide.edu.au> Said:
Discussed the idea of electrolysis in the bath using mains electricity with belinda (wife) last night. I even had a big diode _and_ a fuse
ready but unfortunately mentioned the word `dangerous' and that was it --- "dangerous, you didn't say it was _dangerous_" etc etc. as jg
would say `go figgure' - any bachelors out there want to give it a try?
Anyway, i was also telling her about ActionNorm(TM) in jg's top10 stories and when i came home from chior (pianist) last night i found this:
- - - - - - - - - * * * RECALL NOTICE * * * - - - - - - - - - -
It has come to our attention that several NeanderthalMen(TM), arch enemy of ActionNorm(TM) have been purchased by those under the delusion that they produce furnature, wooden goods, etc.
NeanderthalMan(TM) is simply CollectorMan(TM)'s preferred name for himself. CollectorMan(TM) comes cheaply initially, but thereafter requires an increasing number of accessories. Note: There is an inexhaustable range of these accesories. The price of the current desired item only ever increases. Production of completed projects, furnature, etc decreases in proportion to the size of the accessory collection. The more accessories he gets the less you will see of him (however, you need only look as far as the garage).
CollectorMan(TM) comes installed with a voice box, full of recordings
of stories about the sale that got away, why such and such an accessory is absolutely necessary before the next essential job, Patrick Leach stories, etc. Fortunately it is not necessary to give more than an appearance of attention to these tales.
Please do not return your CollectorMan(TM). Simply allow him to clean his tools by electrolysis using the mains. Your problems will be over in a flash!
- - - - - - - - - - - * * * * * * * * * * * - - - - - - - - - - - -
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More travails...
I finally received my K-Body clamps that I ordered at the Anaheim show. Too impatient to wait to play with 'em at home, I opened them up while they were in the back of the truck, just to try them out. I didn't have anything to clamp, so I decided to try it out on my fingers. I slid the jaws up to make contact, then started to tighten. It took a little more umph than I anticipated to get some pressure on my fingers, but it snugged-up nicely. I loosened it, then put everything away before someone could see me and haul me off to a padded cell.
I got one of the diaper wipes (those things are handy around a truck), and was cleaning my hands from the dust/dirt of the packaging, when I tried to clean under my wedding ring. I had smashed it to a rather flat oval (or was it an ellipse?) that was now squeezing my finger. It was stuck tight. Oops. You know, sometimes, I think I'm one of The Three Stooges, reincarnated. Didn't one of 'em die right before 1960? Hmmmmm. Anyway, I managed to tap it back into somewhat round shape, using my aluminum baseball bat as a hammer (I always carry my baseball equipment around, just in case they go on strike again) and the rear bumper as an anvil. Good thing, too. My finger was beginning to swell up.
Just another day with me and woodworking tools.
O'Deen
Just say No wonder my SO won't let me near a table saw.
...and then Tom writes
Reading O'Deen's story of the K-Clamps struck a familiar chord, and I rushed to my bookshelves and fetched out my copy of the St. James Krenov classic, _The Humility of the Cabinetmaker_. Imagine my surprise to find a similar story on p. 43, reproduced here with an appropriate nod to copyright:
In those early days I didn't have much of a shop, really, just myself and a few fine tools, and a Black-and-Decker Workmate. A Workmate just like the one anyone could buy at the home center, but you see I had modified it in a special way. A customer of mine, a fine man of the Jibaro Indian tribe, came to the shop one day and was astonished to see it. "But you have sawed it in half!", he said, and of course I had, you see, because that was what I could afford, and because it brought me closer to the work. Closer in that way which is known only to the impractical amateur who must work around a problem, away from the 'let's-get-it-done-without-breaking-our-backs' that is too much a part of the craft scene today.
And yet, even living on a shoestring as I was then, I could imagine better things. Clamps, perhaps, to hold down a finely shaped panel of Andaman padouk as I carefully fitted knife hinges with my sharp chisels. And so I resolved to buy some from a man I knew, a clamp dealer in a little shop in Anaheim. "Krenov," he'd ask, "what have you come to pawn this time?". And I would laugh with him, even though I knew him to be a receiver of stolen property. And one day I did say, "Well, I think I'd like to buy some clamps". And he obligingly sold me some.
There I was with my dog sled, outside the little shop, with my fine new clamps. And I had nothing to clamp; the work, of course, was all in the shop at home. This is a dangerous time for the amateur, a time when he is "all dressed up with no place to go", when he is eager for the result and likely to try anything. And so it was for me then, and I thought I would try to clamp my fingers together. It was a glorious experience, and the pain was incredible.
In that moment I was reminded of a ritual of my school days, a rite of passage for apprentices. As a graduation exercise we would make a finely-crafted piece of furniture, a chest of drawers or an elaborate writing desk from pearwood perhaps. Day and night we would work, and of course on the night before judging there was great fear. Would the drawers slide out just so? Had the weather changed? Would a lid squeak, or a leg fall off? Many a sleepless night was spent trimming this and shaving that until things were just right. And after that would come the judging, which was never so bad as we had feared. But then came the real test. A man named Arthur, a silent man who worked in the shop and supervised students like us, would lead the new journeymen outside where he had set up an electrical contraption made from a tractor battery and magneto. And each of us would urinate on it in turn. For many this was a worse experience than the judging, yet they would bear it stoically, for you see Arthur had gone first to show them the way. I do not know what he may have felt at that moment, a little smile playing on his face as he drenched the magneto. I would have been very proud, myself. Arthur has been in prison for many years now, but I imagine that he still thinks back on those moments with a quiet pride, thinking of the role he played in shaping a generation of craftsmen.
But there I was in the streets of Anaheim, clamps on my fingers, with no choice but to take them off. And when I did, I noticed that my wedding ring had been clamped to my finger.
For those of us who wish to remain in close harmony with our work, this is a problem. Which shape is best for the ring? Is it the one which is most comfortable on our fingers? The one which harmonizes best with the delicate shadings of our veins as the circulation gradually fails? Something rounder, or more like an oval? If we are to compose our work, if we are to see things as they really are, these small issues become of the utmost importance.....
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Stewart writes: Thought I would share this story with you guys, as I haven't had the time hitherto.
Over Labor day weekend, I was down in Anaheim staying with my wife's parents. While there, I stopped in at California Woodworking Machinery, which I usually do when I'm in those parts. It's a machinery dealer - particularly old machines. It's kind of a cool place. They have five rooms. The front room is very tidy and has new Jet, Delta, and Powermatic stuff. The second room is fairly tidy, and has reconditioned old machinery, and new SCMI industrial stuff. After that, you're on your own - the back rooms have the machines that haven't been reconditioned yet. They're all jammed together - "is that an old Unisaw back there - let me just climb over this seven foot high molding machine to see". Half of the machinery, I can't even tell what its for, or where you were supposed to put wood into it. They had a jointer there that was 24" wide, and it had a power feeder that looked like a converted Ditchwitch. The front table would lower 2 1/2" below the outfeed table. I've been thinking about it ever since, and I can't think of any application in which it would be useful to joint 2 1/2" off of something. Anyway, in the second room, was a bandsaw. Actually there were a number of bandsaws, but most of them were 36" Olivers that stood 9' high. I knew they would look silly in my shop. But there was this one 20" Davis and Wells bandsaw. Age was somewhat uncertain - the owner claimed it was from the fifties, but I didn't get the feeling he really knew. It was certainly not later than that. The thing was massive - it had a cast frame somewhat like a Delta 14", but much bigger, and the casting continued all the way down into the floor stand. It looked a great deal like the 18" bandsaw which Krenov has pictures of in his book, only it was even bigger than that - especially the table which was 24" square. There was 13 1/2" resaw capacity under the guides. The weight of it was uncertain - they dealer said 600lb, but I'm pretty sure it's more than that. My model 66 is around 600lb and this thing was heavier. It's definitely in the "they don't make 'em like they used to" category. The pulleys are huge, there isn't a single piece of sheet metal on it - everything is a casting, even the wheel housings and the blade guard. They had removed the rust, balanced the wheels etc. I had them run the saw, and it ran very nicely.
Asking price was $1850. It had a very old motor which was huge and had a cast iron casing. It was three phase, but only developed 1hp - not very much for a saw of this size, it seemed to me.
Well. I had been planning on buying an LT 18 in a few months time. So later that afternoon, my wife and I headed out to Laguna Beach to see the LT 18s in their native habitat. It's a nice saw, but the whole time we were looking at it, we just couldn't get the image of this cast iron behemoth out of our minds. The LT 18 has a lot of nice features (dust collection, wheel brushes, rip fence, rack and pinion guide adjustment). But the steel case just seemed flimsy compared to
the Davis and Wells. I also wasn't too keen on the drive-train. It's supposedly a 3hp motor, but the motor has a single pulley on it which is about 2" in diameter - something doesn't quite figure there. At least so it seems to me. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I ended up buying the Davis and Wells. There was much bargaining; I left and went back several hours later; I negotiated on the phone with Mike the owner several times. Asking price was $1850. I initially offered $1100. I paid $1450. So I don't know if I did good or not. Clearly I did well not to pay the asking price, but maybe he only had $500 in the saw and was laughing at me the whole time. For comparison, Tool Crib will supply a new Delta 20" bandsaw for $2400, and Wilke has a 21" Bridgewood for $2100. Those saws have a lot more features, but a lot less cast iron and romance. By the time I have put a new motor, starter and Carter guides on my saw, I will be into it for almost the cost of a new Bridgewood of comparable size. It could be a mistake - I don't really know what I'm doing buying used machinery, and I dread that there will be some awful expensive problem to deal with. I'm confident the castings are uncracked, but I worry about the bearings ... On the other hand, new machinery isn't all it's supposed to be sometimes too (When my model 66 came, the miter slots on the table were mismachined and I had to take the table back for a replacement). And it's just so gorgeous ...
The bandsaw deal was closed late Friday afternoon. The dealer agreed to ship it up to Davis on Tuesday, since they were closed Monday for Labor day. They said it would take about three or four days to get there. I arranged for the shipping company to call me before delivery so I could make arrangements to unload it. Late Tuesday afternoon, I called the dealer and confirmed that the shipping company had picked it up, and the dealer gave me the phone number of the shippers. After that, we drove back up to Davis ourselves, arriving in the small hours of Wednesday morning (it's a 7 hour drive from Anaheim).
So I was planning on calling the trucking company to find out when they would deliver - I was hoping that a friend of a friend could be persuaded to help out with his fork lift. But no! Wednesday morning about 9am, I'm woken up by a loud truck engine at the front of my house. Peering blearily through the bedroom window ... Oh Shit!
There's my bandsaw sitting on a truck outside the front of my house. For $85, the shippers have delivered 800-900lb of cast iron to my door in a time that FedEx would be hard-pressed to match. And they haven't called me, and I haven't made any arrangements yet.
So I go out to the truck and greet the trucker. And there's my bandsaw - nearly half a ton of cast iron, seven foot high, sitting five foot off the ground. Do they have a hydraulic tailgate? - no. Pallet jack? - no. How am I going to get this thing down? "I don't know, but I've got a broken wrist, so you're on your own." As evidence, he produces his hand - sure enough it's all strapped up. (Though I do wonder if he keeps the strapping in the glove compartment just for occasions like this).
Well, I was seriously unprepared for this before breakfast. Luckily, I live in a Cohousing community and so I headed round all my neighbors and found all the adult males that weren't at work for one reason or another. These numbered four, including me. So we all stood around and they gave me a hard time about what a huge heavy band saw I had to buy while we thought about getting it down. The problem with it was that it was so heavy and so top heavy as well. We discussed sliding it down some lumber, but we felt that lumber that was long enough that the saw would not topple over would not be strong enough to hold the weight. The four of us could just barely lift it, so we didn't feel good about losing control of it during the operation. We had just come up with a scheme to use a pickup truck - slide it down 2x6s into the pickup bed, drive the pickup a few feet away, and then slide it from there to the ground - when the trucker came up with a better idea.
So this is what we did. He backed his truck up onto our front lawn (with my wife going hairless that he's about to crush plants - but he was very careful. He said that one thing he'd learned in years of making residential deliveries was never to piss the wife off.) He backed it diagonally across the lawn, all the way until the tail was 6" from our house. That left the bandsaw directly under the street tree which grows towards the front of the lawn. Then we wrapped nylon strapping around the main casting of the bandsaw, and around a convenient branch of the tree. The trucker had a come-along, and I had a couple of karabinas, and with those we winched the bandsaw up off the bed of the truck by a few inches. Then he drove the truck off of our lawn (to my wife's relief).
Up to this point, I was completely focused on the details of the operation. However, as he drove the truck out from under the saw, I started to realize that this was a seriously surreal situation. There's my bandsaw behemoth, dangling in a tree, 5' off the ground, listing 10 degrees to the left and swinging gently in the breeze. A bluejay landed on the top of it briefly, and then flew off again. Some passers-by came over and asked what on earth we were doing. My neighbor Perry explained that we were trying to trim the tree branches, and so we had winched the saw up there but we were having a hard time getting it to cut the branch. I got my camera and took a couple of pictures. When I get around to having them developed, I might scan them in for my Web pages.
Anyway, we then winched it down to the ground and it sat on the front lawn for the day (I figured any thief would need a fork lift and I'd probably notice that). By evening, I gathered a crew of ten neighbors and we carried the saw into my garage-shop on its side. It was unharmed, and there it sits now - wonderful and huge in the corner, but so far useless until Baldor delivers its new motor.
But it sure makes a hell of a conversation piece.
Stuart.
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Several people have recently asked this question. I've posted this story before, so if you've read it, can you say delete?
It has to do with the pronunciation of Olguin. Olguin is a Spanish surname (thus my familiar "Old Spanish saying .sig", something I don't use much, in favor of blatantly ripping off Patrick Leach's "Just say", although I do leave off the "etc." at the end).
Olguin is pronounced Ohl-gheen (with a hard "g", accent on the 2nd syllable).
Why do I bother you with this drivel? Well, many moons ago, I was returning a call to a fellow computer doink, whose offices are in Atlanta. The following ensued:
Me: (dialing on touch-tone phone) doo-dee-doo-dee-doo-doo-dee
Atlanta: Brrrrrrrrrrriiinnggggg!
Atlanta: (Spoken in the sweetest Southern drawl imaginable)
Good moanin', Tailtake, meh ah help yew? (Good morning, Teltech...).
Me: Hello, this is Patrick Olguin calling, may I speak to Mr. Williams?
Atlanta: Patrick who?!!?
Me: Olguin.
Atlanta: O'What??
Me: Olguin (saying it: Ohhl-Gheeeen)
Atlanta: Did you say O'Deen!??
Me: (Sigh...) Yes, O'Deen.
Atlanta: One moment Mr. O'Deen, Ah'll fowerd yor cawl.
I related this to a couple net.friends, they started using it, and now it's stuck. At first I didn't think it would last, (sort of like how the original term: Neanderthal, was meant as derogatory, but is now worn as a badge of honor), but seeing as how I'm mostly Irish, despite having a Spanish surname (and knowing enough Spanish to get into trouble), I use it with pride.
So there you have it.
Patrick Olguin
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Merry Christmas everyone, even you, JZ. :^)
O'Deen
Just say My fingers are tired... never could figger out this drag/drop thing.
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