Hand Tool Diaspora.......

[Admiral]

Just some musings.... I'm a rust hunter, more for the hunt than anything else, but I'll ship tools all over the place.  The Northeast is a good place to find worthy stuff in the wild, other parts of the country, not so much.  I've not been able to definitively say why, except that the larger population in the Northeast might have something to do with it, and the rich history of the region in manufacturing.  Lots of folks worked in manufacturing in the Northeast, and took that ethos home with them, in their spare time making things, in particular out of wood.  Also machinists, for measuring and marking tools.  So I can find them here.  A lot of the tool manufacturers were in the Northeast, Stanley, Starrett, MF, Orange, Witherby, Langdon, Bates, Lion Miter trimmers, North Bros, Disston, and extend into the midwest, Lufkin and Ohio Tools are examples of industry in Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, etc., the list can go on as there are many other firms making tools in the midwest.  

I send things to the west coast regularly, not much of a tool history there, also Texas, the southwest, and the south, where folks don't generally sell or get rid of tools, they tend to keep them in the family, so rust hunting there is much harder (I lived in NC for 6 years, and it was much harder than here in NJ).  

But it struck me today, after I sent off a beauty of a #5C to suburbs of LA, that I am sort of self-satisfied that I can play a small part of redistributing the wealth of handtools found in the northeast to other areas of the country, where they will be used by the new owners for a time, and maybe the passion will last a generation or two, then the tools will find their way into garage sales and flea markets for the next generation of rust hunters.  And so it goes........

[Rob Young]

Not tool related but reminds me of a story from a former boss.  At the time he was a VP for a company with headquarters in Wisconsin but with large sales offices on the east and west coasts.  So Art would regularly fly a triangle route Wisconsin to California to New Jersey and back home for example.  His kid would always give him a small stone from the yard in Wisconsin with instructions to drop it off in California, pick up a small CA stone, exchange that in NJ and bring the NJ stone home.  The kid's theory being that he could re-arrange the geology of North America one rock at a time.

[Bill_Houghton]

Not tool related but reminds me of a story from a former boss.  At the time he was a VP for a company with headquarters in Wisconsin but with large sales offices on the east and west coasts.  So Art would regularly fly a triangle route Wisconsin to California to New Jersey and back home for example.  His kid would always give him a small stone from the yard in Wisconsin with instructions to drop it off in California, pick up a small CA stone, exchange that in NJ and bring the NJ stone home.  The kid's theory being that he could re-arrange the geology of North America one rock at a time.

I like that kid!

[Bill Wilson]

One aspect of rust hunting that I find interesting is when one is able to discover some of the personal history behind a specific tool.  For example, last year I found a nice set of trammel points, mounted to a wooden beam.  There was a name stamped on the beam.  For kicks I Googled the name and found an obituary for, I believe, the very same gentleman.  Turns out he was a builder and architect and with a little more digging, I discovered that he was involved in the design and construction of a farm house in upper New York state that is on the National Historic Registry.  That is the one and only time I was ever able to tie an item to a specific person.  While upstate New York isn't all that far from Western PA, it still makes me wonder how this tool made it's way to a flea market in rural Butler County, PA over a hundred years later.

[AHill]

As one who lives out where vintage tools are practically non-existent, I appreciate guys like you who are willing to redistribute the wealth.  Most all of my vintage tools were purchased from sellers east of the Mississippi.

When you think about it, the mean center of the US population has been ever moving westward since the first settlers arrived.  In 1880 - around the beginning of the metal bodied plane era, the US center of population was 8 miles SW of Cincinnati in Kentucky.  By the time WWII arrived, the center of population moved to Sullivan County, Indiana (west border of IN).  So, it makes sense that the majority of tools that were used were purchased and remained east of the Mississippi.  Larger cities like St. Louis and Cincinnati were also manufacturing hubs, so they drew more tools to the carpentry business for use in building homes and businesses.  Farmers and ranchers used them, but as technology improved, the farms in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois became larger in land.  The farms in the NE and coastal regions were already pretty much landlocked, so-to-speak, and handed down to succeeding generations of family, so the tools there were already capitalized, and there were more per square mile than there were once the US expanded into the Midwest and beyond.

[hbmcc]

All, enlightening and very interesting! 

I transported a fruit crate of tools to the Pacific Northwest originally owned by a relative who set up business in Des Moines Iowa, in the 1870's.

[gMike]

I don't "redistribute" as much as hoard but I enjoy digging into the history of old tools.  Someplace along the line I got interested in Sargent Tools, mostly hand planes, and now I own way too many of them to ever use.  I now also have Sargent padlocks and other tools.  Occasionally, I find somebody that would benefit from a tuned handplane and pass one or two along to someone else. 

The older I get the greater the feeling that what I've "collected" over a few years should go to someone, or a few someones, who will appreciate them for the utility and the history they represent.  I've decided that I won't sell any of my stuff, I'd rather give it to somebody who will use it.  I'm not ready to let it all go just yet and somehow the Mid-West Tool Collectors Association meetings always see me hauling another piece or two down into the basement shop.  During the Winter months I clean up one or two planes and store them against the day they can be useful for someone else.

[jcredding]

Being the guy in the LA suburbs who's getting that 5C, I can promise it will only end up in a garage sale over my dead body! The rust hunting just plain sucks out here, and without people on Woodnet I wouldn't have nearly as many nice usable planes.

[Martin S.]

As one who has bought tools from you before, I thank you for your efforts to help those of us who live in the tool poor parts of the country.

[cputnam]

I've bought more than a few tools from the Admiral and that is the only way they were ever going to get out here. I'm out of action for the next some months (stuck in a wheelchair waiting for my foot to heal) or I would have jumped on more than a few deals - like that miter box.

My son lives in Florida so whenever I croak what tools he wants will migrate there and the rest of the good stuff will be sold piecemeal and the remainder garage saled. My wife has been learning how to use the tools so she can get stuff done - maybe she will keep some of the stuff. Some lucky dude will find a small windfall of nice stuff though.