Esteemed Galoots,

Heartwarming story:
In my first email to this august body, I confessed that prior to my birth as a
Galoot, I’d lost a vintage Stanley miter box that was given to me by a friend’s
Dad around 1986, when he brought a tailed apprentice into his shop. I’m happy to
say that I was reunited with my blue friend last week, and he’s not aged a day
since I last saw him. It turns out my parents had stored it in a trunk after I
moved out, and 20 years later we found it last week while sorting my now-retired
folks’ garage stuff. It still bears the 1978 manufacture date in blue ink on the
underside of the wooden deck.

Possibly free to a good home:
I have a ragged Acme Langdon 2 (note this is an Acme not the good one) that I
bought on That Auction Site for too much money. Of course I fixated on the one
picture of the manufacturer’s plate and thought “ooh how cool to have an old
miter box.” Upon getting it I discovered that it had one of the two heads
brazed. The rod that’s supposed to be between them is missing, easy enough to
fabricate but I’ve not taken that step because I don’t want to take a chance on
splitting that brazed head. It works well enough for general carpentry once you
get used to having to raise both heads separately. It cleaned up pretty well,
but it’s ugly, and with my blue friend now home for good I have no reason to
keep the Acme around to remind me of how much I overpaid. So if anyone is
passing through the Charlotte area I’m happy to load it into your car and wish
you well. I really don’t want to ship it but would consider doing so if the
recipient is willing to throw together a box of castoff random junk of
equivalent weight, and ship it to me. I know it’s silly but I will admit it, I
just like getting packages and poring over a surprise pile of junk.

Galotechnical Question:
This weekend I was doing some purely utilitarian work, making a base for my
Prodigal Mitrebox out of some ancient oak flooring. This involved two pieces of
T&G floor plank, with a couple of cleats perpendicular to the grain to keep the
T in the G. Since my 12 year old son was making a rare appearance I figured we’d
have some fun with it and I’d show him how to clench cut nails door-style to
hold the cleats to the flooring. Great lesson about grain right?

I used some apparently old raisin-head cut nails out of a pile that I’d bought.
Obviously I pre-drilled since I was using thin stock, and obviously the nails
went in just fine. I got out my handy 25lb steel plate and was ready to clench.
Just as I’m explaining to Jake how bending the nail over and across the grain
locks it in for life (“dead as a doornail”) just as we saw in the doors at Old
Town Salem . . . .  the damned thing snapped clean off right at the wood.

I dismissed that as part of the fun of working with old stuff . . . . at which
point the second nail did the same damned thing. The gauntlet thrown, I went at
the third one with aplomb, and sure enough, snap went the weasel right at the
point where the nail came out of the wood. As did the fourth.

Mind you I’ve clinched hundreds of nails of all shapes and sizes, beginning at
an early age before I knew it was a technique. This was not my first clinch
rodeo. And I use the very self same technique that both St Roy and Christopher
Schwartz demonstrate in books and videos. Jake was as good as son as you can
imagine as this happened. He was grinning but at least not very wickedly. I made
no excuses. I couldn’t. The moral impairment would have been shattering for both
me and my son.

Please, I implore you, kind, beneficent, generous Galoots, help me restore my
credibility with my son, lest he think his dad a poltroon. It can’t have been
the technique. It’s a nail. You bend it. It has to be the batch of nails.
Perhaps they were recovered from a fire that over-tempered them? Hit by
lightning? Cursed to Ba’al by a carpenter after he mashed his thumb with an
errant hammer blow?

As Scrooge said to the Marleys, “speak comfort to me friends, speak comfort to
me.”

Mark.

In NC, confidence shattered by some sixpenny cut nails