How neglectful I have been

So the weather has been unbelievably nice in my little shore line town and I have used almost every second to be outside. Unfortunately most of that outside time has been for maintenance of the homestead. Fixing rotted wood with dutchmen inserts, sanding the crap out of everything, painting with super paints and fighting back the natural forces of vegetation that wants to take back my lawn and yard.

I have not lost focus I have just refocused in the war against decay and the not so slow process of the reversion to nature. Our home was starting to look a bit tattered on the outside and the winter had accelerated some aging. I am just now coming up for air and thought it would be fun to look at some of the "shop" made treasures that have crossed my path. 

By calling them shop-made it should be assumed that we are talking about wood shop - the class that you went to in middle school or junior high during the 60s. They call it industrial arts now but we just called it shop. Certainly a lot has changed since then - we have all seen the maker people/machines, CAD, CAM and other computerized rigs that some of the better schools teach today.  Surely those that are in my age group would definitely feel out of place in the "shop" class of today.

Right this minute I wish that there were some photos of my old shop class. You can be assured that no one would allow their kids to attend shop if they saw the tools that we had running in the class. I guess that there were just less lawyers back then or maybe we taught our kids differently then or maybe we were just stupid - we can only speculate. Today everything has a mechanical safety and the user in many cases need to depress additional controls to energize any power equipment that has the potential to hurt the user. Todays shop has become very protective of the students and their appendages.

 A shot of a 1913 wood shop class in the US. Notice the emphasis on cabinetry bench and no visible power tools. Perhaps they actually learned how to read a ruler and got some carpentry math skills. You can bet they did not get jammed up with metric conversions in 1913. Aren't we all a little broken from the attempted metric conversion that took place during in the late 60s and early 70s? Does anyone in the US in the carpentry trade actually use metric now? Not digressing too far but the US is one of three countries in the world that did not adapt the metric system. The others are Burma and Liberia - go figure Metric system wiki data.

All I could find in the vintage of my school time was a 1952 shot of a metal ship with students around a large lathe used for metal turning. My point is communicated here as you see no safety cages but you do see what looks like a lab coated instructor just like what I remembered. 

Well anyway, we had open blades - spinning and streaming. We had joint planers and real hammers. When you wanted to use a piece of power equipment you just turned it on and leaned in. Safety was provided by your wits and the shop teacher that kept us all in line.

Our shop teacher was a wiry little man with only 9 full fingers. He wore thick, horn rimmed safety glasses that might have stopped a bullet judging by their thickness. He never wore anything loose fitting and his jump suit was faded blue with his name above the pocket that held his pocket protector. 
Although small in stature, he was a powerful man and he took no crap from anyone. He was also quick to verbally put you in line with a bit more honesty and verbal force than that we consider politically correct in todays world. He was kind of like a prison guard that was paid to keep us from loosing body parts while we delivered a "wishing well pump the water to light it" lamp or a "pull the tail of the horse to light it" lamp.  Pretty complicated stuff for a bunch of kids just graduating from cub scout with a rapidly diminishing attention span.

That kind of describes our shop experience but one can only imagine how "tough" you had to be in the shop classes of the early nineteen hundreds or the pre-war nineteen thirties - where some of the stuff photographed here was from.

 This sail boat shelf was not signed but I estimate that it was made in the thirties or early forties. You can see that it is very crafty and a bit off kilter. It also might have been a summer camp project. It does suggest motion and the lines are saying Deco to me. I really liked it so I grabbed it at a flea market right here in Connecticut.

The canoe tie rack is signed and dated. I was surprised to see a date of 1918 on this little pine beauty. It apparently screwed to the wall and held belts or ties. I am sure that it was on the back of a door for a long time before it was snatched off to a yard sale. I really love the paint job that makes the canoe look kind of scary.

The finish on each of these pieces are a testament to lead paint and oil based finishes. Take a look at something that was finished in Latex in 80 or 100 years - good luck.

Student workbench rescue - from fire wood to repurpose

About two years ago I drove out to Rhode Island to look at a large workbench. I purchased it

 and when I was ready to leave the guy that sold it to me asked if I was interested in a smaller student bench that he had. I took a look and said sure. It was in about 6 pieces and really beat up but I thought that some day I would do something with it. 


The two halves originally had a tray in the center. The business parts of the bench had been beat to death by students learning to use tools in an untold number of shop classes. They are made of laminated rock maple held together with iron rods and no glue. Each top was riddled with holes and other defects that needed to be patched.

I chiseled out the holes and glued in applewood, oak and cherry wood fillers. I planed and sanded the tops to make the patches flush while still retaining most of the "patina" left by the generations of shop students who had their way with the bench tops.


The center tool tray was split into three pieces that needed to be reunited. I glued them up and cleaned out the old glue and gunk that held the tray between the two halves of the bench. The end caps had been destroyed and the rabbit joint was cut at one side to remove the end caps. I had to re-cut a new joint and fabricate new end caps.

I used two pipe vises to hold the three sections together while I cut new joinery trued the sections back into a square configuration. 

I found a couple of 3 inch square pieces of mahogany that were aging in the wood pile to make new ends for the bench. I will be glueing and screwing them to the bench later today. 

I plan to raise the height of the bench to either 36 or 38 inches with a couple of oak blocks that I will run under the work top and screw to the legs. The top will be just under 36 inches wide by 48 inches long. 

I really thought about junking the whole thing because I kept having to move it around the shop but decided earlier this week to start working on it again. Now I am really glad that I did not trash or burn the bench. The honey colored maple will look amazing next to the mahogany ends. It will make a really nice hobby table or a great workbench for a small space.  

The dried woods soaked up the linseed oil and turpentine mix that I used to clean it. I am planning to use danish oil to preserve and enhance the finish before I move it to the shop to sell it. I was going to keep it but I already have so many rescued benches that I am getting a little crowded. I will post a final update once the legs have been reunited and the finish has been completed.

I only hope that the new owner will oil the wood once in a while to preserve the wood and make the bench live on for a few more decades. 

Pointing at stuff

Maybe things were just simpler. I found this wooden pointer during a clean-out and began immediately having all sorts of grammar school classroom anxiety flashbacks. I don't know why but holding that pointer made me feel a little queasy. 

It is only a rubber tipped, two foot long piece of wood but it has some power. In the old days, you sat in a class or a meeting and the person speaking had one of these pointers. I think that it's primary purpose was to bring your attention to a smaller subset of information in the bigger picture. The instructor or teacher held it and moved the rubber point to the particular image, word or object that your attention was required to fix upon. 

Nowadays we use laser pointing devices. A usually red beam is shined from a handheld laser pointer to bring your attention to the subject matter at hand. It works pretty well but it somehow fails to have the same presence as the good old wooden pointer. Maybe that is because the wooden pointer many times doubled as a weapon. 

While the laser pointer can also be used in meeting combat, the old fashioned wooden pointer was the equivalent of the knife or bayonet - up close and personal weaponry. The laser pointer could be used from a safe distance but the wooden pointer was a clear weapon of hand to hand combat. I think maybe that is why I get kind of queasy seeing the old pointer.

Then again, maybe it is because the last one I saw in action was used to help instruct us on nuclear fallout avoidance in the early 60s. I vaguely recall the teacher banging one of these on her large oak desk while instructing us to get under our metal desks to be safe from the nuclear blast that was about to happen. A wooden ghost from the past - or maybe a reminder of the fragile times we live(d) in.

Farm periodicals

I came upon these lovely periodicals in a Connecticut antique shop earlier yesterday. One can only imagine the pleasure that was derived when finding these in your mail box - hopefully in a brown wrapper to hide the scandalous and risqué content from prying eyes.

Imagine Uncle Sam asking you the make 1942 "your best year with chicks". If you were lucky enough to be home to read this periodical you would have a pretty good year with the chicks - just saying. Especially true if you were reading this after December 8th when the draft began for WW II.

The cover art certainly looks patriotic and somewhat geared up for what was about to hit the fan in Europe and the Pacific. Even chickens were being prepared for the war effort and we were all apparently waiting enter into the war as this early publication might suggest.

so, who could resist reading about Dairy Dollars from purina? A plethora of valuable dairy information and just plain, old fashioned fun with cows. These topics firmly suggest that farm life before television was obviously an empty desert as far as entertainment goes. 

My personal favorite is Ful-O-Pep Egg Mash. What was in that? Chickens and giant eggs on the cover seemed to suggest that the eggs would be super-sized  Probably resulted in some pretty hyper-active chickens but not gigantic eggs. 

A feed product called Ful-O-Pep is still being marketed except now by Allied Feeds out of Texas. 
Allied Feeds http://www.fulopep.com/poultry.shtml

It is not clear that it is the same Ful-O-Pep that Quaker Oats once wrote about though - no more giant eggs, just tables of nutritional data.

More from the Quaker Oats company featuring talking chickens. Using Ful-O-Pep stuff obviously turns normally stoic chickens into english speaking jabber beaks. Rather articulate chickens too - I might add. 

The two chickens discuss the "matter" in the mash while Quaker Oats  claims to drive egg profits higher, and suggests that chickens talk about their food. These are two things that would be attractive to any chicken farmer in the 1920s. What the heck, tic-tac-toe playing chickens are popular even today so having a chicken to talk with would be priceless.

Something for everyone here; Profitable Pork Production - another riveting title with state of the art graphics. The folks at Quaker Oats seemed fully engaged in the feeding of almost every imaginable farm animal back in the day. 

The cover art reminds me of the Saturday Evening Post styled covers. Except instead of a Norman Rockwell image a gnarly pig head pops out of the circle. Really when you just get right down to it there is probably nothing as attractive as a fattened pig with a bright blood red background.

All very cool examples of advertising propaganda meets farming technology from the first half of the 20th century. Interesting things and evidence of the military industrial complex in it's infancy - right in your local antique center. 

This old house 2: Junk Hunting at The Trove

This old house 2: Junk Hunting at The Trove 



A nice write up on the Trove in Old Saybrook, CT from This Old House II. 

A massive coffee urn - serious caffeine delivery system

I grew up when coffee was made in a percolating device. It was put on top of the gas or electric stove and you watched the coffee go blub-blub into and out of the little glass viewing portal on the top of the pot. That was for everyday coffee and it made the house smell real nice. 

You got your coffee grinds at the local A&P supermarket from a big red and chrome electric coffee grinding machine. There were few safety guards on the beast and it regularly nipped off the fingertips of small children and less sharp parents that would go on later in life to get stuck in the refrigerators because they wanted to know if the lights stayed on if the door was closed. The difference then was that if you did something stupid you paid your own doctor bills and you either got smarter or just did not make it - I digress.

Sometimes when there was a family gathering or you got dragged to some Cub Scout thing

at the school the really big coffee making machine got hauled out. It was about three feet tall and made enough caffeinated sludge to keep all of the adults animated enough to make sure the kids did not kill each other playing dodgeball or kept them awake during the award presentations. Still this was an amateur coffee making device compared to the copper monster pictured here.

We found this one some time ago and just fell in love with it. I don't think that it actually works but I do remember seeing machines like this during our trips to the 1964 worlds fair or when we stopped at the automat in NYC after a double decker train ride from the east end of Long Island. I cannot imagine today with $6 cups of designer coffee what the value of the inventory these babies held would be - but I am sure that the coffee tasted pretty good.



Anybody that drank coffee from one of these is probably pretty damn old and would hate todays Dunkin-Star-buck-corporate coffee when remembering a good old cup served up in a two pound porcelain mug that looked like it had been washed 10,000 times. Served with real milk and a couple of heaps of sugar - hmm.

Slacking again

I am slacking a bit again with my postings… Just a a few photos of the new space hopefully will buy me a few days. I have located some vintage WWII models that I am still researching. I will Photograph them and share the images soon.

 I added the display case and a few new items this week. All fresh to the area.

The right photo shows a nice biscuit barrel with CT markings.

Come by and visit us at The Trove in Old Saybrook, Connecticut. Open 7 days a week. Physical address 1353 Boston Post Rd, Old Saybrook, CT 06475 or call
(860) 391-8636.

A piece of WW2 history - Japanese Destroyer Clock

I came upon this Japanese ship's clock some time ago at an auction in Connecticut. It came with a piece of paper that appeared to be written about the soldier that carried it back from Japan. The soldier (George) claimed that he stole it off of a Japanese destroyer that was in Tokyo Bay on VJ night or more specifically Yokohama Naval Base. I think that the base name might not be correct but it soon became clear that there was an LST 1083 in Tokyo Bay bout the time the letter was talking about. So when I picked up the clock and read the note I knew that I needed this clock to come home with me. 

The letter said (as best as I could read): "History of clock. George stole it from the Japanese on VJ night at Yokohama Naval Base. It was on a Jap. Naval Destroyer. (also the barometer and telescope) on Destroyer Ecott. It was brought back to the country on L.S.T. 1083. From there to Chelsea, Mass., East Kingston, N.H., South Lancester, Mass., East Lime, Conn.". Spelling not corrected.


I won the bid and took the clock and the note home. I wound up putting the clock on a shelf promising myself to do the research and find out if the clock and "story" was legitimate. I did some looking on the internet and found that there was one Japanese destroyer remaining in Tokyo Bay during the surrender (the Hatsuzakura). I also found that the ship that George was on (in the note) was also real. The link to Wikipedia indicates that LST 1083 was in Japan during the signing ceremonies. This particular LST also held the honor of being the first to anchor in Japanese waters after the atomic bomb was dropped. George was definitely in some serious stuff! I can't even imagine what it was like to be there.

I found some images of George's ship and some of the last remaining destroyer. Holding the clock was like time travel - the clock was there - the clock was in Tokyo Bay when the Japanese surrendered. George was gone, most if not all of the people that had seen the clock were gone, the destroyer was gone and LST 1083 was gone but the clock is here, still in my hands. The clock had traveled in time some sixty some years later - almost seventy years now - and it even still worked.  LST 1083 history

So this is why I really like some of the stuff I get my hands on. The same bell noise that the clock made in the mid 1940s it makes today. The same ticking noises heard by the sailors on the destroyer or the soldiers that took it for a souvenir on to LST 1083 is still happening. Kind of cool but a little scary too.

According to my research there was a destroyer named the Hatsuzakura in Tokyo Bay during the surrender proceedings. I found this photo with a few Google searches. It appears that the ship actually was boarded by US troops and brought into harbor while the USS Missouri was

being used as a stage for the signing of US/Japan surrender documents. So the LST and this destroyer were actually in the same place which seems to strongly coincide with George's visit at the end of WW2. 

Fast backup to this past summer during a visit to the Smithsonian Museum. I was walking around looking at some of the captured military stuff (from German V1 bombs to soviet atomic missiles) that the US had on display and I wondered if I should donate the clock to them. It kind of felt like the right thing to do while surrounded by all of the impressive war technology. I thought that it might be nice to to have the clock find its way to a place that other people would get to look at it and perhaps appreciate it. I thought that the price that I might receive in selling it to a private collector would be small in comparison to the value it might have in a museum where tons of people might see it.

That was until I tried to get in touch with someone that might facilitate the donation at the Smithsonian. Has anyone out there tried to do this? Well if you have, you will understand why I have since decided to keep the clock. I might check back some time in the future to see if there might be a streamlined donation experience but for now I will just hold on to the clock.

It does seem a shame that it continues to sit on a shelf in Connecticut where I only lay eyes on it when I go into that particular room. I thought that I should look for a Japanese war museum to see if there is some interest, even though I suspected that they might be more interested in forgetting about WW2 than remembering it. It was not surprising that when my internet searches looking for Japanese "War" museums only yielded Japanese "Peace" museums.

So once again an item from the past has taken me on another little time travel adventure (even if only inside my own head). I also learned a few things along the way. I have someone translating the Japanese characters with the hope I can verify the actual manufacturer and date of production. But best of all, peace museums instead of war museums - what a concept. 

If anyone knows a little more about the Clock, the ships or who George might have been I would be really interested in finding out more.

Antique Technology - What?

So I spent a great deal of my early working career in the technology space. I helped write "baby" systems in the late 80's, massive systems in the 90's and atrophied into a management suit in the 00's.  From the 70's and on, I always bought and sold antiques but my main source of income was building systems and teams to build systems. Now that revenue model has been reversed, what income I do have comes primarily from buying and selling antiques. 

While there are no real parallels between the antiques business and the technology business, there is no business that I can think of that has not be changed in some way by technology. I think that I could successfully argue that the antiques business has been radically and forever changed by technology. More specifically, the impacts that technology has had on the people that might buy antiques has driven major changes to the antiques business.

I am not going to spend a lot of words talking about who or what technology changed the antique business. I will say that the net impact that technology has had on the retail antiques business has been the destruction of the local markets that once thrived. It has become increasingly difficult to make a living by having a local antique shop alone - one must expand digitally. The ability that individuals and businesses have (through technology) to expose once regionally available treasures to national and international buyers has forever changed the way we market and sell antiques.

Next - items once thought to be limited in supply became abundant through the increase in who was selling these products as well as the ease in which the products could be sold on-line. The quality of what was being sold became increasingly important as everyone seemed to have plenty of mediocre antiques to sell. Buyers were able to become more discriminating and demanding about what they would spend their dollars on. Of course the recession has not helped the market either. 

Technology has opened the nations attic (the northeast) and pockets of accumulation

throughout the US to the world. At some point in time, simply putting a sign on a shop and running a few ads in the antiques trade magazines was no longer enough to excel. Shops and individual sellers now need a way to connect to existing customers and locate new through the intelligent use of technology. Making buying antiques natural and convenient for the new plugged in consumer. I am not saying that the old-school buyers have completely vanished but they are getting on in years and there are probably not enough to make everyone successful in this business.

It is also not enough to just slap together a Facebook site. While it is a step in the right direction one must really pay attention to their on-line business persona. The following list should provide a starting point on how to create a steady on-line presence. In future posts I will give some more detailed advice on how to develop each item more deeply. Some of this may sound basic but I am always surprised at how many shops out there do not spend any time or effort in promoting themselves well on-line.

Get a website up an running. There are many places that for a very small investment or even free in some cases where one can launch a website for their business. The company website will become the hub of your internet presence and a tool to electronically brand your business. It will be a place where existing customers can go to find rich content about your shop, actually conduct business with you through e-commerce or via direct links to your eBay account. A well designed website and current content will drive repeated traffic. It will also be a place that new customers will be able to find you through search engines like Google or Bing. Plan to spend from $200.00 to $300.00 a year in hosting and up to $1,000.00 to put together a nice little website. If you are good with technology you can use a template based site builder to create your site for free and only pay the annual hosting fees.

Start a Facebook page for your business. Facebook is a great way to gain followers organically. If you have a shop post signage to promote "likes". Keep your posting fresh by setting up a regular schedule for postings to be completed. Jot down ideas for postings in a pad when they come to you and make time in your schedule to actually post. Keeping your branding and naming conventions consistent with your website will provide added ways for new customers to find you via search engines. Always provide a link back to your website from Facebook.  Facebook link

Get a twitter account. Twitter accounts are free and can be set up in about 20 minutes. Spend a little time personalizing your Twitter site to convey your business brand. Follow other Twitter accounts that have common business threads or that you believe will have complimentary followers that you can leverage to build your audience. Make certain that your website and Facebook has twitter links embedded.  Twitter Link

Consider a blog if you can find the time to write about your business knowledge. Blogger by google or Wordpress can provide a free platform to write and post blogs. The blog must be well written and again, content must be kept fresh and relevant. You can tweet your blog posts using your twitter account and you can encourage followers to sign up for automatic feeds with tools like Feedburner or and RSS feed. Blogger Link  Wordpress Link

Set up an email contact database. Using a free tool like Mail Chimp or a paid tool like Constant Contact you can keep an intimate dialog with your opt in customers (those that sign up for emails). Email is probably the least expensive way to have direct communications with customers that exists today. Products like Mail Chimp will even allow you to use templates to make your email communications very professional and attractive. Sending sale notifications can be as easy as pressing a few keys on your keyboard and letting the emails fly.  Mail Chimp link  Constant Contact

These are just a few foundation tools that will allow your shop to enter the on-line mode of business. It will also get the word out about who you are and what your shop or antiques business has to offer. Yes it will take a time investment to get most of these tools up and running and it will take a good deal of discipline to keep the on-line machine current, fresh and appealing. For some the most difficult part of the transition will be to recognize that you will need to break old patterns of behavior and make time to learn new tools. 

New Shop - A continuation

Sorry for the off road diversion but recovering from a planned medical procedure has somewhat restricted my writing and I wanted to finish up with the bad group shop - good group shop series. I made arrangements to rent space in a new shop before I decided to leave the old shop. I went to the new shop today and paid the first months rent and made some measurements to make some preparation decisions. Under doctors orders I cannot lift anything too heavy so I plan to get some lighter stuff in tomorrow and wait for help with the cases and larger furniture.

The numbers are as follows: the old space was 8' by 8' the new space is 12' by 9'. This means that I am going from 64 square feet to 108 square feet. Approximately an increase of 64% more space. The difference in rent annually is $1,440.00 or a total increase of 53%. So to recap - 64% more space for only 53% more rent - a deal! Plus, the new shop washes the credit card sale expenses (at cost) the old shop charged 5% of the sale. On $1,000.00 per month in credit card sales this should net me an added $20.00 per month or $240.00 per year actually making the new space an even better deal.

Other equally important attributes of the space are high walls. I now have a full 8' wall on three sides. The back walls are built on an external steel studded wall with full code 1/2" sheetrock. The side walls are 5/8" sheet rock framed on 2 by 3 wood studs. The side walls are braced with a double 2 by 4 in the front and a double 2 by 4 across that top. This means that I can hang large mirrors and pictures without worrying about the load on the walls. 

The booths are well lighted and there are real security cameras that are (actually) recording constantly. Each booth has a 4 plug outlet centrally located in the rear of the booth. The floors are sealed concrete that do not need rugs. I might put a rug down for appearance later but the floor is nice enough that it is not necessary. The building is well insulated so when the winter changes to summer the owner will not go broke keeping the space comfortable for customers.

Battered Cabinet

Most importantly, the new shop has an energetic and engaged owner. The vibe in the shop is overwhelmingly positive. It is reflected in the way that the shop "feels" when you walk in. People are always greeted at the door and acknowledged. The place is clean and according to the owner traffic is up significantly despite the snow battering we have taken over the past month. In the few hours that I was in the shop cleaning and stocking, there were always 3 to 5 people walking the space - a very good sign.


The overall product mix is eclectic but with an average quality to high quality offerings. A nice item from another booth.

Breaking up with a group shop - (it can be hard to do)

Having been in my current shop for a total of two plus years it took a lot for me to make the decision to leave. While there was a new owner that promised a bunch of new things it was clear that because the two counter clerks (one a previous owner that lost the shop and the other an angry dealer) would not be leaving. These two acted like it was their shop and had a heavy hand in the day to day operations. Both were very set in their ways and it appeared that they would continue to lay a heavy hand on the operation of the shop even under a new owner. It was also clear that the new owner never operated a group shop and was already relying on these two so it was time to leave. 

Even so, the decision was a difficult one to make. The shop was so close to my home so it was easy to go to, put some more stuff in my booth, and make a few dollars. The thought of actually emptying the shop, pulling out the big stuff and moving into a new shop seemed a daunting task. I kept remembering how the previous owner said (with a grin) that people rarely leave that bigger spaces because it is so difficult to do. He said that he liked renting the bigger spaces over the cases because "cases were too easy to give up". He was right I stayed there for two plus years even though I was not feeling so great about doing so.

There were a mounting number of good reasons to get out of the shop - bounced checks, creepy over-charges for credit card transactions, and just the angriness of the two retail clerks that had been there for so long. It became clear that the shop had become septic some time ago and would continue to be septic as long as these two gals were still there. More clear was that the dealer space for rent sign was being put out in front of the shop before the open sign. Dealers were coming and going faster than it took to get to know them. Something was really wrong with this shop.

Sticking it out while the previous owner was going through his hard times seemed to be the right thing to do. His wife was very ill and ultimately passed away. So I do feel good about staying the last few months - for his sake. On the business side, I was also owed a good deal of money for January sales so I had some financial pressure to stay as well. But then, as the last check cleared and the new owner was moving in, I started hauling stuff out of my cozy little space.

I started with small stuff by boxing it up and ferrying it to my car in little batches. One of the clerks must have caught on and started giving me a difficult time. Something that I did not expect after faithfully paying my rent on time for two plus years and even giving her discounts above the standard 10 percent on things she liked in my booth. But in the end, she did turn on me actually screaming and acting like a shrew as I took out the larger pieces. She said "you owe the new owner 30 days notice and a months rent". I had given only 18 days because of the previous bounced checks. I am sure that they will bad mouth me as they made a habit of bad mouthing others when they were not around to defend themselves. Like I said it had become a septic shop a long time ago.


So leaving was becoming a difficult thing to do! The counter clerks were attacking me verbally and trying to make me feel guilty about leaving the shop. It did not end with only one of the clerks taunting me, the second clerk caught me in the parking lot the last day that I was pulling stuff out - to jack me up. She turned out to be even nastier than the one inside. Calling me unprofessional and chastising me for not giving the new owner - her new friend a chance. Really?

In the end the departing owner was right, cleaning out the big spaces was a difficult thing to do. Apparently for no other reason than it takes longer to empty a big space and the abuse from the "help" is prolonged and difficult. Farewell and good riddance!

All that is left is a rug stain from the leaky wall - it leaked when it rained out and the rug got moldy, an extension cord and a small pile of sweepings from when I cleaned out the booth. I even removed all of my picture hangers and any nails that were used to tie stuff up. If they had a mop I would have cleaned the floor a little better too. I only hope that the new owner does a better job with this place and the new occupier of my old booth has better luck.

Life is too short - and you must surround yourself with positive people no matter where you are - even if it is in a little antiques group shop in southeastern Connecticut.

Group Shop Logic

I have space in a couple of group shops where I have had some rewards and some frustrations. One shop that I currently have space in is in the process of a getting a new owner. The old owner told people that he had had enough. He also had some personal issues that would probably overpower anyone. It will be interesting to see how the transition goes from old owner to new owner.

I am re-evaluating my thoughts about group shops in general and as a pretty active buyer and seller I thought I might talk a little about what I think makes a good shop from the dealers perspective. 

The good shop does not compete with it's dealers. This means that the owner recognizes  

that their core business is to support the dealers not to compete with them. Too many shops are owned by dealers that use the group dealers to pay their rent. What often winds up happening is the shop owner loads the shop up with his or her merchandise steering potential sales away from the dealers to their own merchandise. This creates a septic environment that should be avoided. My preference is a shop that is run by an owner that does not buy or sell  antiques but profits by running the shop instead. 

The good shop is well curated. To me that means that the owner maintains a good aesthetic by keeping the vendors to a consistent standard. No imitations, no crap and insisting on a frequent rotation of inventory that keeps the shop fresh. That also means that the owner enforces rules about cleanliness and booth appearances. This is extremely important as a shop can get stale very quickly. Too many shops become secondary storage for the collector/dealer and fill up with stale merchandise.

The good shop advertises. Some the shops I have been in see advertising costs as a competitor to their personal profits. They put a small ad in a trade paper and that is the end of it. They never try anything new and they don't measure the effect of their ads. Also many shop owners are skeptical and even hateful of the internet. I think that this is because many of them blame eBay for "ruining the business". I also think that many shop owners simply are intimidated by computers, seeking comfort in their old stuff and what might have worked 20 years ago instead. Whatever the reason a good shop will use traditional methods of advertising as well as new media.

The good shop has enthusiastic help. There is nothing worse than having to deal with lazy,

unenthusiastic help. Entering the store and seeing the shops help with their nose in an iPad playing games or reading a book is a big turn off to most people that walk into a shop. An enthusiastic greeting to new customers and a named greeting for known or returning customers is standard protocol for most successful retail businesses. There is no reason for a group shop to ignore these simple industry accepted behaviors.

The good shop has consistent hours. I had hoped that I did not have to even mention this but I don't know how many times that I have passed my primary group shop and they were either not open on time or they closed shop early. This is completely unacceptable - especially when I am paying rent and "buying" time from the group shop I expect the hours to be well documented and consistently adhered to. Customers will quickly change their shopping habits to avoid the group shop that has inconsistent hours.

The good shop avoids front counter cliques. A customer that walks into a shop to be greeted by a gang of gossiping dealers (or customers) can feel intimidated or unwelcome. Shop owners should strongly discourage the help from spending time in the front of the store behaving like a bunch of yentas. Politely moving the cliquey conversations to their personal time should be strongly encouraged.  

The good shop promotes an "appropriate store vibe". No loud or inappropriate music or

news stations playing. Good lighting over every booth and in the main store areas. Clean restrooms, fire extinguishers and clearly marked entrance and exit signs. 

To most retailers these are well understood standards for doing business but for some group shop owners they seem to be missed or ignored. Of course lending a personality to the group shop is important but one must recognize that the real reason that the lights stay on is that customers are comfortable coming into the shop and transacting business. 

Workbench Porn

Let me immediately apologize for the title of this post. I am going to shamelessly admit right away that I am looking for ways to increase viewership and subscriptions to the post. My evil mind says that views might increase if I use provocative posting titles to drive views. If this works you may be proving my worst fears about how the internet actually works - but who am I to judge?. I will only say that the "Politics of Antiques" post set a small but noticeable up tick in view traffic.

For those of you that are disappointed in seeing pictures of older tools on a workbench that I am restoring, well I really not sure what to say - workbench porn - really? Anyway, I got up early so that I could take advantage of the morning light that comes into my garage through the south facing windows and started to take some pictures of rusty, worn and used tools on top of the workbench. 

The first photo was of the the bench top with a few handmade house wright chisels that a timber frame builder might have had in his or her tool box. I also threw a few Stanley scrapers and spoke shaves in the tool tray. Most of these tools are used regularly for legitimate wood working projects. Most are also from the period that the bench was probably manufactured. I liked that way they looked so at home in their new "old" setting. 

The photos are all taken on an iPhone so the quality while ok could be a lot better. I am nowhere near done cleaning up and restoring the bench but I could not resist taking pictures to show what the bench might have looked like while the woodworker that owned it was using it. 

I also could not resist putting a piece of oak between the bench dogs in the clamping position. The wood was held tight and I could see that the bench was going to be fully functional when I stop messing around and start to actually use it. I am not sure of the practicality of clamping such a small piece of lumber for any real useful task but I was pleased that the bench dogs still worked as designed. I was also impressed that the wooden screw used in the vise still tracked almost perfectly. Someone really knew how to harvest and dry wood properly - especially maple.

Once I get a little further along with the repairs to the base of the workbench I will try planing some larger pieces of stock to get a feel for the stability of the bench in action.

Another shot of a rusty old tool, a caliper that I dug out of an old barn a few months ago. The caliper is also period for the bench but it also needs a bit of cleaning and rejuvenation to be of use.

I will leave you with a wider shot of the chisels, an older scraper, a few scribes in the tool tray and an older German jewelers saw.

I think that the bench rescue is coming along well. The colors of the bench top are looking like 100 year old maple should look. 

As one can see in the pictures this bench was made of two wider boards laminated together unlike the much narrower strips that one sees in contemporary bench top construction. One board is 8 inches wide and 68 3/4 inches long, the other is 6 1/2 inches wide and the same length. The two boards are a full 2 1/4 inches thick. The banding around the front and sides of the bench is 2 3/4 inches wide and 3 1/4 inches thick. 

The overall length of the bench top is 74 1/4 inches.  The width of the bench top is 25 inches. The height of the bench is a full 35 inches from the floor to the top. The front vise is 18 inches wide, 2 3/4 inches deep and 7 1/4 inches high. The end vise is 4 inches thick, 15 1/2 inches wide and 5 inches thick. The "L" leg of the end vise is 22 1/2 inches long and 5 inches wide.  All in all a very well made piece of history.

Workbench Rescue - The Top is Mounted

It took a few back to back snow storms here in Connecticut to get me motivated to start working on the workbench again. After snow blowing, shoveling, chipping ice and carrying firewood to the wood stove for like two days straight, I thought that I needed to get busy with the job of exposing patina again.

I took this shot of the bench up on all fours so to speak. I wanted to show the legs as well as the approximately 1/3 of the top that needed to be cleaned of caked on paint. Pardon the mess in the background of the photos as I do plan to straighten up just before the next time that a messiah visits earth - really it's in my to do list.

One of the reasons that I like this bench is that it sits higher than most of the other benches that I have in my possession. I am 6' 3" so it is no surprise that I would like the taller bench right from the get go.

You will notice that the bottom of the legs have been heigh-supplemented through the addition of a four by four that has been lovingly attached across each set of legs. The material that was used is not the same material as the legs but based on the nice aged colors of the material it was probably added quite some time ago. There is also some evidence that the bottom of the extension four by four has been notched ever so slightly to raise the majority of the board up off of the floor and to keep the wicking of moisture into the wood to a minimum. 

It is kind of crude but I really like it just the same.

I have also included a shot of the stripper that I use to gently remove the old paint. I sometimes spread it with a paint brush but in this shot I used a flat metal scraper/putty knife to spread it on. Kind of like Fluffernutter used to look on bread. 

It does look like I put it on a little thick but that was about an inch of stripper in an old (Barney's) almond butter jar or about 1/4 of a cup. I find that in this particular stripping application that I only need very small amounts to "loosen" up the paint. I also do not want to change the underlying patina on the wood beneath so I use it sparingly.

After waiting a few minutes, I repeatedly test to see how pliable the paint has become by using that same putty knife to gently scrape the stripper and the paint. If the color of the paint starts to change the color of the stripper to a muddy darkness I know that it is ready for some real scraping with my more aggressive scrapers. 

For this scraping I use a pair of older Sanvik scrapers now sold under the name of Bahco. These are the scrapers with the little detachable blades. I have both a two inch straight blade unit and a unit with the small triangle shaped blade. A little elbow grease in scrapping followed by a lemon oil cleaner applied with steel wool and some cleanup rags and the wood gets to see the light of day.

Anyway, I will take some better shots of the vises, the tool tray and the tool rail when I have better light. I will also do a better job of showing the sides and how the bench was painted green at one time.

The Politics of Antiques

Being alive in my 50s has afforded me a a bit of time to reflect on the past. I have most of my life behind me but I have lived throughout some pretty amazing times and I truly enjoy some simple things in life. As my parents were "accumulators" and to some maybe hoarders, I caught the collecting bug very early in life. 

I explored the deserted mansions of Long Island, NY, I dug bottles (and garbage) from ancient dumps long forgotten and I visited every tag sale and antique shop on the east end of Long Island starting in the mid sixties. Pure bliss is the only way I can describe the glee of finding a really nice Bitters bottle under a few inched of dirt in the woods or finding a pile of Travels to Many Lands in a dark corner of an abandoned mansion. All of this helped to shape my thinking about the value of reuse and of objects that travel forward from a time past. 

I still feel that bliss as an adult. The thrill is different but it is still a thrill to pick up something that has an old soul. A soul that comes from the patina all over it or just the ascetics of design from long ago or the materials that the object is made of. The fact that many of the objects have been handled by people that are no longer above ground has an impact on those feeling too. 

If you are like me you can (mentally) slip into the context of the person and the time that the object might have existed in. You wonder what that person was like and you may even wonder if one of your ancestors might have come into contact with the object. If they did what were they doing, what were they thinking? For a split second you might go back there too.

Then you come back and you put the object aside or on a shelf or you use it as intended by a modern context or you repurpose it by using it in a context foreign to its original purpose. You don't throw it away though and this is where I intend to insert the notion of politics and antiquing. 

Sure we live in a time where a lot os stuff gets used and thrown away. There are many thoughts I have to why this is, some evil and some just because of bad design. But what I really think is that we have entered an age that ignores the principles that governed the manufacture of goods not so long ago. I will try to explain this as very simply as it came to me when I spent a few years out west in Nevada and California.

My time in the west made me miss my home in New England. Everywhere I went I saw the sameness of everything and everyone. But more importantly (and trying hard to make this point) I reflected on how back in New England all of the older buildings were built in such a way so that they would be there not only for the current inhabitant but that they were built for their great-great-great grandchildren. I reflected on how the churches, libraries and other important buildings were made of stone and had "hundred year" slate roofs. I compared them to the wire-mesh spray-coated, foam buildings I found out west. 

These observations brought me to the conclusion that we were no longer building stuff for our decedents to enjoy but that we were building stuff to be enjoyed by the individual that bought it only. When you pick up a piece of furniture that was made during the later part of the industrial revolution you need some help. Clearly the materials were different then and dictated the composition but the stuff is still here and I would argue that the builder was not thinking about the current buyer but she was thinking about how the product was being built for the decedents of that purchaser. 

So when I can I always choose to reuse. Not just because I like the piece but because I know that the person that made the item did not expect it to be tossed into a landfill or  built it cheap so that it would break in a predictable product life cycle - they built it to travel time and end up lasting a long time. 

To me the politics of antiques are a dissent from consumerism and the sameness of everything. Sure there are some nice things happening in design and manufacture but wouldn't it be nice if the stuff that we built today might be designed to traverse time and not wind up in the trash bin on someones obsolesce schedule?