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
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> ----------
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> history, usage, value, location, availability, 
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