Across the street from The Liberty Tool Company in Liberty, Maine, located on the upper floors of the Liberty Graphics building, is The Davistown Museum. Now, this isn’t just any old museum with long-dead artifacts, diminutive dioramas and stone-cold relics. No, this is a tool museum. A hands-on (reread: hands-on) museum for eighteenth and nineteenth century hand tools!

I was able to drop by the museum during my recent visit to Liberty Tools and I spent several (reread: several ) enjoyable and very informative hours there.

On arriving I met staff member Sett Balise, who graciously took the time to explain various aspects of the museum and a bit of history.

The mission of The Davistown Museum is the recovery, restoration, preservation, cataloging, displaying, and interpreting of the hand tools of New England’s early American industries from 1607 to 1930. This includes the tools of shipsmiths, edge toolmakers, forgemasters, blacksmiths, shipwrights, coopers, wheelwrights, sail makers, pattern makers, machinists, tool and die makers, and mechanics.

Since this is a ‘hands-on’ museum you are encouraged to touch and handle the tools. To be able to feel the weight of a tool, to swing an adze (carefully), to pick up and compare the various sizes of drawknives (and a whole lot more!) was a thrill. There are tools there that I had only read about and seen in books.

Here are some photos that I took showing some of the tools on display:

Continue reading 'Tool History At Davistown Museum'

I just returned from a successful ‘rust run’ to Maine where I spent several enjoyable hours perusing the extensive collection of old tools at The Liberty Tool Company located in the small town of Liberty, Waldo County, Maine.

This was a trip that has been in the works since I visited their sister store, Captain Tinkham’s Emporium, last year. It certainly was worth the wait but after this visit I sure wish that I visited a whole lot sooner!

The Liberty Tool Company is owned and operated by The Jonesport Wood Company which maintains three locations, the one here at Liberty, Captain Tinkham’s Emporium in Searsport and the Hull’s Cove Tool Barn just outside of Bar Harbour. Their primary mission is the search for and recovery of usable woodworking tools for reuse as well as for the collections of the Davistown Museum.

Liberty Tools, the larger location of the three, is New England’s largest secondhand tool company and it is easy to see why! The place is jammed full from floor to ceiling with what appears to be every tool that was ever available to man. Seriously, I have never seen so many tools amassed in one place.

Here, have a look for yourself:

Continue reading 'A Visit To The Liberty Tool Company'

A few weeks ago my buddy Phil took me up on an offer to visit my shop and we had a great day as he turned a Maple pen and pencil set!

Although Phil is a woodturner he hadn’t turned a pen before. He was intrigued by the pen demo at the AWA meeting the week before so this day was the perfect opportunity for him to try a bit of hands on pen turning and a chance to ‘try before he buys’ some of the tools and accessories required and that are here in the shop.

Phil arrived at the shop with several sizes and varieties of wood and after great deliberation he chose a dark brown piece of Maple that was large enough to make a matching pen and pencil set.

The pen and pencil set is a gift for his godson. Here’s a photo of the finished pen set that he turned:

Continue reading 'My Buddy Phil Visits The Workshop'

This is an Ash bowl that I originally did quite a while back. It broke from the chuck and did a few skips across the concrete floor. Since it happened at the end of a long day I just picked it up and set it under the bench and that is where sat for almost a year.

Recently I was experimenting with some dyes and thought that this bowl would be great to practice on. I re-chucked and re-turned it and then added a few carved accents on the rim.

My original intent was only to dye the inside black but I made the mistake of applying the dye with a soaked dauber and it leached through to the outside. Consequently, I had to dye the whole thing black which really wasn’t a problem since it gave the piece a different, and in fact a more pleasing, look than what I had planned.

The bowl was dyed using Fiebing’s USMC Black leather dye, which is a permanent spirit-based dye. It was finished it with several coats of semi-gloss wipe-on poly which gave it a nice dull sheen which reminds me of the black, earthenware pottery from Oaxaca, Mexico.

Here are a couple of more photos of the piece:

Continue reading 'A Bowl Of Blackened Ash'