In keeping with the past patio furniture theme I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the Patio Planter Pedestals, or PPP’s as we call them around here.

These are wooden pedestals that stand at various heights giving a great place to put plants on.

They are simple to make. Use 2X at whatever width you want (8″+ is better) and cut to length. Cut the edges at 45 degrees and nail together. Cut a wider top and bottom and nail them on the ‘box’. You can cut or rout the edges of the top and bottom for different styles. Then decorate the front with smaller pieces of wood.

Here’s a photo showing a couple of more PPP’s with different style fronts:

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Contrary to popular belief, here in Nova Scotia we don’t go right from Winter into Summer. No we don’t. There’s a long period of rain in between. However, the past couple of days have been sunny and hot. Really hot. The thermometer was reading 36C on the patio yesterday afternoon. Yep, that is hot. A welcomed Spring anomaly.

So with that my wife and I felt that it was time to pull out the old patio furniture and get ready for summer. I was surprised at the amount of outdoor furniture and garden decorations that one accumulates over the years. I was also happy to see that I had made a fair amount of it.

These projects would have been done over a period of years, and some were made at least six or seven years ago. In fact, some are getting to the point where it’s really time to be thinking about replacing them. Not this year… maybe next… yeah, next year…

The focus of the patio centers around the pergola that my son built. He was home for a few weeks in December a couple of years ago and built this for his mother as a Christmas gift. (I wasn’t even allowed to help. ) It measures 20′ X 10″ and stands around 7′ tall.

To the right of the pergola is a cedar table. This was made from wood that my brother gave me. He had salvaged it from a reno that he was working on. All that I needed to buy was a couple of 2X4′s for the legs. It’s about 40″ square.

Continue reading 'Some Patio Projects Of The Past'

After visiting both Liberty Tools and The Davistown Museum it only seemed right that I should complete my tool tour and drop into The Hull’s Cove Tool Barn in Bar Harbour, Maine, just a couple of hours away.

I arrived early on Saturday morning and was greeted at the door by Judith Bradshaw Brown. Judith lives here in Bar Harbor, next door to the shop, with her husband Skip Brack, where she helps run the Davistown Museum and the tool business. She was quick to offer some friendly help and to tell me a bit about the Tool Barn.

The Hulls Cove Tool Barn is located on the second floor of a barn and has the most extensive selection of old woodworking related hand tools of any of the Jonesport Wood Company’s three stores. It offers several hundred hand planes, Stanley tools of all kinds, collectibles and patent-dated tools and, of course, a whole lot more.

Like Liberty Tools the Hulls Cove Tool Barn is galloot heaven. You can easily spend a day here. It’s like reading a fascinating book, where you can’t turn the pages fast enough. Every corner you turn, each way you look there is a feast for the eyes that has to be explored. Here are some photos to show what I mean:

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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:

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