Hi all,
So I barged in here a little while ago, asking questions and spouting =20
off. I suppose it's time I send in a bio. Besides, Galoota-claus sounds like too
 much fun, so that may have been the push I needed to get this in. (Sorry if thi
s rambles a bit):

The first old tool I bought was No. 5 Stanley jack plane (=9250s era,
=20 found at a flea market). I was taking a =93Working by Hand=94
woodworking class at Gary Rogowski=92s school in Portland, Ore. I
couldn=92t afford =20 machinery at the time anyway, so I used it to mill
stock square for a =20 long time. What a great way to learn woodworking.
That was almost 10 years ago, and nowadays, I have to confess, I do kill
electrons to do =20 a lot of my grunt work and rough milling (that=92s
what they had apprentices for back in the old days, right?) But I do
love working by hand to do most of my joinery, shaping and surfacing.

Even though I knew I liked hand work back then I really didn=92t think
=20 or know much of anything about =93old tools=94 for woodworking until
I =20 took another class, taught by Brian Boggs, the Kentucky
chairmaker. We were supposed to bring a drawknife to the class. Not
being able to =20 locate one new, I surfed around online and located an
old James Swan.

At the class, Boggs helped me tune it up. I was amazed. What a fantastic
tool! Then he started talking to the class about chisels. He told us, by
the way (this has to go down as a bit of galoot lore), =20 that when he
first started making chairs, he chopped mortises with an =20 old square-
shafted screwdriver that he ground a chisel edge onto. He said he
eventually moved on to vintage socket chisels. And told us a little
about the old chisel makers -- Barton, White, Swan, PS&W. After that, I
started poking around, buying a few and fixing them up -- often an
investment of considerable time -- and I was hooked. I have become
rather obsessed with old chisels.

I began trying to put together a set of Stanley 750s for my basic
furniture work, to replace the Marples Blue Chip chisels I had been
using for so long. But I soon got frustrated. On the site we don=92t
like to talk about I found them going for $25-$30 apiece, plus shipping,
plus the time involved to flatten the back and maybe make a =20 handle,
plus the sandpaper used to flatten the back -- not an insignificant cost
if it was in bad shape.

All of a sudden, those newly introduced $50-apiece Lie-Nielson chisels
weren=92t looking so expensive after all. So I took the leap and bought
a set. That was 2004, I think. They are fine and lovely tools, nearly
ready to go right out of the packaging. And yet Why did I always reach,
when I could, for that old Swan firmer that I =20 had fixed up. I loved
the patina, the feel of it -- like it had a soul. The L-Ns certainly
hold an edge well, but I am not convinced I can get them quite as sharp
as that old Swan. So now, piece by piece, =20 I=92m building up a set of
Swan bench chisels.

I have a variety of others, too, in various states of repair. It
takes time to tune them, but I have found there is something magical
about that instant, after getting the back of an old beat-up chisel
flat and polished, and then grinding the bevel, and then honing the
bevel -- and just like that this glorious glinting, shiny, perfect
edge emerges on a tool that maybe hasn=92t seen an edge like that for
=20 50 years. Somewhere, an angel sings and a long gone cabinetmaker
gets =20 his wings.

Someday, when I get my "new" set of old chisels finished, I may just
sell off the L-Ns.

I still have that chisel obsession, but I=92ve started down the broader
=20 slope, too: planes and saws mostly. I don=92t consider myself a
=93collector.=94 I don=92t think I would buy a tool unless I planned to
fix it up and use it in my woodworking, which is still my first love.

I=92m a big James Krenov fan (I like making my own wooden planes, too).
=20 Though I think what I admire most about his work is not the designs
themselves, but the way he leaves the evidence of his hand work on his
pieces. Toolmarks left behind can be sloppy or they can be art. His are
definitely the latter.

I have a day job, working as a copy editor at a newspaper in Eugene,
Ore., a wonderful wife and a young daughter -- but I try to steal as
much time in the shop as I can.

I=92m happy that I found you people. This is a great forum =96 for just
=20 being part of a chat, or for getting good helpful information.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Welcome to the porch John! 

You know you're in full slide down the slippery slope when you begin looking
at Underhill, Mercer, Sloane, Roubo, Diderot, Moxon, Amman, et al, with the
same lust most folks reserve for new tool catalogs. Keep up the faith, and
by all means keep on slidin'!

Take care,

Ron Banks
Fort Worth, TX
(aka citternmaker on Galoot Image Central)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: oldtools-bounces@r... 
> [mailto:oldtools-bounces@r...] On Behalf Of 
> John Leyden
> Sent: Monday, August 18, 2008 9:28 PM
> To: Old Tools
> Subject: [OldTools] Bio
> 
> Gentle Galoots,
> 
> Like so many before me I have been lurking here on and off 
> for quite some time. Thought I'd say 'hello'.
> 
> I've been a woodworker for some twenty years, theater sets 
> mostly, and of course my home. I was bitten by the old tool 
> bug on or about the time of my dad's retirement some dozen 
> years ago when I realized the the old b***ard knew a damn 
> site more about tools than I ever will, and that I wish he 
> had paid more attention to what *his* dad had tried to teach 
> him back in the day.
> 
> So I'm sure that I fit somebody's profile of a 
> neander-wannabe: IT guy by day, basement woodworker by night 
> (when home and family obligations permit). I own the usual 
> complement of electron killers and prefer to scrounge my old 
> hand tools and wood materials wherever possible (which is a 
> polite way of saying that my meager salary does not permit me 
> to buy from Wenzloff or Knight, though I'd love to...)
> 
> I have been afflicted these past few decades with a desire to 
> obtain rusty old tools (hand and power), restore them, and 
> put them back into use in my own workshop. This is of course 
> not merely a slippery slope but a pit as bottomless as one's 
> home or (homemade wooden!)  
> sailboat....   The nice D-8 inherited from grandpa inspired a few  
> rust-hunting expeditions which, though successful, now 
> require me to learn how to sharpen their ilk. The Stanley 
> 2101 inherited from dad inspired further scrounging for much 
> older, 18th and 19th Century iron braces.... but then one 
> needs a complement of bits... and since they're not so 
> plentiful in this neck of the woods (northerly 'burbs of NYC) 
> then one must buy or make one's own.... which led inexorably  
> to a RR track anvil...  and years later to a garage-sale Trenton...   
> My wife looks on with a mix of kindness, forebearance and 
> resignation, bless her.
> 
> I'm sure this kind of thing is not news to any of you.
> 
> I am an occasional reenactor at the local colonial-era 
> restoration in my town, have made more than a few modern-day 
> replicas of old tools as described in "Ancient Carpenter's 
> Tools" and Moxon for said reenactment purposes, and as 
> practice for such events have adapted certain colonial forms 
> of furniture for use in my basement workshop (e.g.  the 
> whales' tail shelf is my saw-till, the spoon rack is a 
> brace-bit holder,  the pipe box holds turnings and wedges for 
> hammer handles,  there's a joint-stool made of a doug-fir 4x4 
> that's my chair/stepstool/sawbench -- none of which are works 
> of art by any means). I am presently devoting effort to 
> making spokeshave irons, tanged chisels and (soon) a replica 
> bitstock/piercer (without the fancy brass work, though). 
> That's before I get to the list of real furnishings to make. 
> And the list goes on...  Planes or grandfather clocks, anyone?
> 
> Thanks to all for a useful mailing list and archive. I now 
> return to my usual place of lurkature beneath the floorboards 
> where I hope to be able to contribute back something of value 
> one of these days.
> 
> John Leyden
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> ----------
> OldTools is a mailing list catering to the interests of hand 
> tool aficionados, both collectors and users, to discuss the 
> history, usage, value, location, availability, 
> collectibility, and restoration of traditional handtools, 
> especially woodworking tools.
> 
> To change your subscription options:
> http://ruckus.law.cornell.edu/mailman/listinfo/oldtools
> 
> To read the FAQ:
> http://swingleydev.com/archive/faq.html
> 
> OldTools archive: http://swingleydev.com/archive/
> 
> OldTools@r...
> http://ruckus.law.cornell.edu/mailman/listinfo/oldtools

------------------------------------------------------------------------