to assembled Oldtool listers:
greetings and here is this (if must be):
remember it well to this day. shuffling or as that guy Judge Bork
would say, slouching, into a yellow-hued Quonset hut type building.
long, narrow and leaky. neon tinged gloom. smell of oil and blood. in
front, and if memory serves, separated from the throng by a cage of
mesh fencing, sat the presiding officer, Mr Cotter. ah yeah,
'Chrome-dome Cotter.'
"Welcome to the first day of 7th Grade shop class!"
it would not be an exaggeration to say that a youthful student of
American Civil War issues, Single-Wing formations and the best means
of keeping horse stalls mucked out, found this new encounter something
of a put-off.
'tuned out' was a phrase not much current in those days but that's the
course the youth took. zero-out was the response in kind from
'Chrome-dome.' might have been a D-, can't recall for sure. all that
is clearly remembered was that there seemed to have been a huge
quantity of plastic-embedded pennys produced....
fast forward 11 years. not-as-callow youth returns from year long
tropical vacation provided by Uncle. whilst away, youth (you know how
it's pronounced) had been contemplating, amongst other topics,
cabinets or perhaps colonial furniture. barrows some 'ShopSmith' type
equipment outcome of which was a bench type seat from 5/4 material,
with mortise and tenon joins, not precise enough to qualify as joints
one confesses, (pinned with dowels, of course, that being the colonial
way) and legs after a pattern but with each of the four having
individual characteristics. product still in one piece to this day
albeit never finished and now having various crayon inscriptions as
complement. still convinced that those colonists probably used a
better model Shopsmith.
forward again to circa 1977 (+/- a few Stroh's dimmed years in there)
and an article in the 'Friendly Free Press Sunday mag.' the gist of
this piece was that an intrepid student woodcarver named Armand
LaMontagne from North Scituate, (whadda great name for your
hometown!), R.I. had duped the wizard who controls the anti-qs at the
HENRY FORD MUSEUM. a terrific story. if you've heard it, i'll
desist....Mr LaMontagne, using handtools, his thorough knowledge of
the woodworking tactics of the masters and a convenient acetylene
torch, created a replica clever enough to fool the experts. therein
was revealed an interest that could incorporate the best of two fine
arts: cabinet making and fraud! that's for me....
however, as tempus has fugited, the glow from welding rigs dimmed and
Stroh's having vacated their wonderful Detroit river facilities, the
notion of incursion into the realm of classic furniture has faded. in
fact the only outcome of recent wood butchering endeavours has been
one rather lame Adirondack chah (not to be confused with char , refer
to previous paragraph) after the fashion of HWNWNBMBM (oh never mind:
Norm). stop me before i mill again...if you've worked around spooling
jet engines for almost 4 decades, the buzz of a routah doesn't make
much of a dent. what?
so now, may an infrequent question or comment be posed? will assume
(that old saw again) so,
sincerely, and wish ah coulda got here sooner,
d dickerson, Austin, TX (only since '83)
ps: "Measure Twice, Cut Once" ain't a bad book
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