I’m setting this list to go off a little later in the day this time to give the folks on the west coast more of a chance to look things over. This For Sale List includes a lot of good, usable tools including two really nice exotic wood smooth planes, some Stanley bench planes, lots of saws, molding planes, and other fun stuff.
I hope you find something you like. Thanks for reading!
Josh
Good Morning!
Tonight I put the finishing touches on a new batch of fresh old tools loaded and ready to be released at 9:00am. This update includes some good user tools, hand planes, saws, molding planes, and other fun stuff. It also includes some true rarities including a couple of extremely scarce Disston saws, a matched “nest” of saws from a joiner’s chest, and an exceptionally rare Shaw’s patent No. 10 handplane by Sargent. The tool list is here. I hope you find something you like. If you have any questions or wish to purchase a tool please contact me.
I hope all of you had a nice Holiday season. I wish you a healthy and happy New Year. As always, thanks for reading and thanks for your support throughout the past year.
Josh
Good Morning!
I added around 60 new old items to my For Sale page today. It’s a mix of stuff from Stanley planes, to chisels, some good books, some exceptional molding planes, and other fun stuff. I hope you find something you like!
I hope to get one more tool list out before the end of the year. If I don’t get it out before the holidays I hope you have a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and a wonderful holiday season.
As always, thanks for reading.
Josh
Good Morning!
By the time this post goes out there will be 70+ new old tools on my For Sale Page. It’s a good mix of usable hand tools from bench planes, to molders, chisels, saws, and more. I hope you find something you like. As always, if you have any questions or want to purchase an item please contact me.
Since it is Thanksgiving this Thursday, I think it’s a good time to take a moment to thank all of you for your ongoing support and patronage. While I’ve been selling old tools for several years, it was almost exactly one year ago today this hobby turned into a true business. Just before Thanksgiving last year, Chris Schwarz mentioned my site on his blog, resulting in an avalanche of new customers. Since then I’ve been lucky to have a number of other folks recommend me to friends, students, and fellow woodworkers. I appreciate all of your comments, referrals, and most of all, your loyalty.
While I thoroughly enjoy selling tools, this business is also keeping us afloat in this crummy economy. My day job is in the IT industry working for a software company. For almost four years, since the financial troubles of 2008, we’ve all been partially laid-off, working only part-time. It’s been frustrating, but at least I have a job which in this economic climate is not something to take for granted. So I spend my furlough days and many late nights (it’s close to 2am as I write this) selling tools and helping to make ends meet. It’s a lot of fun, and I’m lucky to have such loyal and enthusiastic customers.
Thank you all for your support, and thanks for reading.
-Josh
Two weeks ago I attended the Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool Event in Manchester, CT. I mentioned this on my blog and invited you to stop by and say hi. A number of you asked for a report so here it goes, complete with pictures.
The two day event was a huge success for me. I went there with high hopes but almost no expectations. My idea was to setup a few tables of tools for sale and set out some tools from my own shop to demonstrate. Having never setup at an event like this my goals were simply to meet a few of my customers I had previously only communicated with by email, and perform a few demonstrations without making a fool of myself. Along the way I hoped to sell some tools as well.
Good Morning!
I finished adding about 80 new tools to my For Sale page tonight (actually at this point it’s very early in the morning). It’s a mix of good, usable tools including molding planes, bench planes (including a few from Lie-Nielsen), chisels, handsaws, and the usual mix of other fun stuff. This message will go out in the morning and you can take a look. I hope you find something you like.If you have any questions or would like to purchase a tool please Contact Me.
Thanks for reading!
-Josh
Hello everyone!
The freak October snow storm hit us especially hard here in Connecticut. The snow fell fast and piled up to more than a foot at our house. It was a wet, heavy snow that stuck to everything. Most of the trees still had their leaves which resulted in lots of snow build-up. The heavy limbs broke and took entire trees down. The damage was incredible- dar worse than the hurricane that hit less than two months ago. We lost power and utilities for five days. There are still several tens of thousands without power in the towns north of us. Overall we fared very well. We lost several trees but sustained no damage to our home. After the hurricane, which left us without power or water for seven days, we invested in a good inverter/generator so this time we had water, lights, and some basics. Our wood stove, as always, kept the house warm. Again, we were very lucky.
Yesterday I had a visit from a local sawyer I found. Back in August we had some tree work done on our property to remove some of the more hazardous trees that were too close to the house for me to cut myself. I’m good with a chainsaw but I won’t cut any decent size trees within a tree length of the house. We were left with close to five cords of firewood on the ground and six decent logs that I wanted to have sawn.
Logs Waiting to be Sawn
Hi Folks,
I’m excited to announce that I’m going to participate in the Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool event this coming Friday and Saturday, October 28th and 29th, at the Connecticut Valley School of Woodworking in Manchester, CT. If you haven’t been to one of these events before, they are a great way to check out Lie-Nielsen’s complete lineup of hand tools and to see hands-on demonstrations and meet local tool makers and woodworkers.
After attending the last hand tool event in Manchester earlier this year, I spoke to Deneb at Lie-Nielsen about participating as a vendor in this upcoming show. I offered to setup to sell tools, offering my usual assortment of usable old tools, and to do some hand tool demonstrations. He said they’d like to have me there and invited me to attend both days. Woo! I’m very excited about this opportunity. I’ve never setup to either sell or “perform” at an event like this. It should be a lot of fun. We’ll have at least one workbench available and I’ll bring some saw benches. I’m planning to bring along some tools form my user kit to demonstrate- molding planes, plows, saws, boring tools, and other fun stuff. I’ll also show some of the methods I use to tune and restore these tools. I’ll probably break out some of the more interesting tools from my collection to exhibit as well.
I’m also excited to say that my friend Matt Cianci, noted saw geek and owner of thesawblog.com, will be attending as well and sharing a space with me. Matt is going to bring along some of his super-tuned saws and will will be demonstrating and talking about saw sharpening. Matt Bickford of M.S. Bickford Hand Planes will also be there showing off some of his superb molding planes and the moldings he makes with hollows and rounds.
So, sell the house, sell the car, sell the kids.. do whatever you need to do to get to Manchester, CT next week. It’s going to be a good time.
Thanks for reading,
-Josh
Just a quick story about a good experience I had in my shop today.
This afternoon I spent my lunch break in my shop.That’s one of the really nice perks of working from my home office. Another benefit is seeing my kids for breakfast and dinner every day. So today my schedule and workload aligned and had an hour to myself to do some actual woodworking for an hour. This may have been the first hour I’ve had in my shop in two months.
I need to work on some small saw benches for an upcoming woodworking show that I may participate in. The idea is to have a couple of multi-purposes benches that folks can use to try out tools like saws, molding planes, boring tools, etc. I’m basing my design on Chris Swartz’s saw bench. I have all the stock milled to the right dimensions and it was time to cut the legs to length. I pulled out my trusty Langdon Acme mitre box but swapped the stock saw, which has served me well but isn’t anywhere near sharp at the moment, for a Disston Jackson mitre saw I just got back from Matt Cianci. Matt’s a friend of mine and fellow saw geek. I scored this saw (which is almost completely mint with all its original bluing, handle finish and a mirror-like plate) up at MJD’s last auction in Nashua. Matt picked out of few things from the auction lots I purchased that day and in return he took the Jackson home and sharpened it. It was virtually unused so it took him “all of ten minutes” to sharpen. This past weekend I met up with Matt at a local auction and he handed off the saw freshly sharpened and ready to go. We did well at the auction, Matt scoring one of the nicest pre-Civil War Disston 7s I’ve ever seen, and I found an even earlier (possibly the earliest ) Disston at the tailgate sale. Those are stories for another day.
Back to today, when I loaded that Jackson in my mitre box and started to cut the legs to length. Wow. That barely begins to describe what using a truly sharp mitre saw in a quality mitrebox feels like. The saw ate through the 6/4 stock in no time, leaving tiny curly shavings rather than dust. It was amazing. I knocked out eight legs and four stretchers in just a few minutes. The saw left an almost perfect surface behind and was able to take thin cuts leaving strips of wood behind no thicker than the plate itself. It was fantastic.
Jackson Mitre Saw In My Langdon Acme Mitre Box
Squaring-Up a Leg, Taking A Very Thin Cut
Resulting End Grain
Matt is definitely one of the best saw sharpeners out there. He is one of only four people I will recommend you send your saws to or that I will drop-ship a saw to that a customer has purchased . I’ve been burned in the past by saw sharpeners who have come well-recommended but who have delivered substandard results to my customers. I guarantee you will be happy with Matt’s work.
That’s it from here. Thanks for reading.
-Josh
Good Morning!
First, I want to say hello to and welcome all the new subscribers and web site visitors I’ve had over the past week. I wasn’t able to attend Woodworking in America this year due to family obligations, but from what I’ve heard from folks who attended and the pictures I’ve seen in the forums it sounded like a fantastic event. Apparently a couple of the presenters recommended my site as a good place to find usable old tools. I’ve had a surge in subscribers since then. I’ll have to thank those presenters!
I added a bunch of new tools to my For Sale page today- hopefully you will find something you like. Please contact me if you have any questions or comments. As always, if you are looking for a particular tool please let me know. I may have it in stock or be able to find it for you. I just ask for a little patience since it will take me a couple of late night to get this batch of tools processed and shipped.
One new development- I can now accept credit card payments in addition to checks and PayPal. I will take credit card numbers over the phone only- please don’t include credit card information in email. If you’d like to arrange a credit card payment please let me know and we’ll work out a good time to chat.
Thanks everyone!
-Josh