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Who has time for woodworking when there are lumberyards to tour and dealers' shows to attend?
The PATINA and Brown International shows are in close succession,
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New additions to my collection include: a well-maintained "user" moulding plane; a book entitled Carpentry and Woodworking—A Handbook of Tools, Materials, Methods, and Directions (1945); a jeweler's saw; an inexpensive, but workable wooden
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If you attend enough of these shows, you start to make friends and see familiar faces.
Last year, I met Bob Baker, an antique tool restorer, who made a reproduction of the famous Thomas Falconer plane and a reproduction of one of my favorite planes—the Moisset.
Apparently, when they were dishing out bowls of talent, Bob went back for seconds. He's blessed with a heaping helping o
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At these shows, you'll find a lot of user tools that are just waiting to be adopted and put back to work. But you'll also find some rare and unusual ones.
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Jim Bode carries a number of unique tools, some of which you may have seen in fine tool books. Poke around his site and you'll see what I mean. I snapped pictures of an ivory figurine of Japanese carpenters and a fish hammer.
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The last group photo shows some pieces that will be auctioned off today.
But I'm sitting this one out and staying home to play with my new old tools instead.