This may be old hat for some or most of you, but I’m going to share it.
Since I’ve caught the hand tool bug, I’ve scoured the internet looking dealers. Mostly they are in the UK, US and Austrilia.
When looking at tools on par as far as quality (not the usually rusted, missing pieces stuff found on ebay), I’ve found that purchasing from the UK is the best deal. I’ve bought 4 items from dealers over there and have been very pleased.
I find that:
- there seems to be more well taken care of tools over there
- and the prices are better, in general, than American dealers.
What you have to take into consideration is the postage. There is a trade off point where shipping is too much. I.E., a no. 4 stanley will cost $50 to ship. Stay with lighter tools & you’ll be happy. Shipping from Australia is just too much.
Here are a few sites that I’ve purchased from:
http://www.theoldtoolshop.fsnet.co.uk/
http://www.secondhandtools.co.uk/index.htm
Here are three that I’ve not purchased from but look pretty good.
http://www.antiquetools.co.uk/
The one American dealer that I think completes well with them by virtue of an incredible selection every month is Patrick Leach. For those that don’t know of him.
http://www.supertool.com/index.htm
Happy looking!
Replies
Hi Swartz,
If you're tired of buying crappy tools on Ebay from people who are cleaning out their grandpa's garage, try searching for the following Ebay sellers. All of these guys sell good quality tools and all have excellent feedback that demonstrates they have excellent customer service as well.
2lshark his website is http://www.jimbodetools.com/
robwrs
magistone
jlhf1
mr.peabody (Supertool's Patrick Leach)
I also sell on Ebay but mainly Stanley bench planes.
You can also buy tools from Martin J Donnelly http://www.mjdtools.com/ as well as subscribe to Clarence Blanchard's The Fine Tool Journal www.finetoolj.com.
Edited 7/8/2008 9:36 am ET by mvflaim
Be careful buying from UK dealers. If you're looking for user tools, no problem. If you're looking for collector's items, be aware that there is a different aesthetic between the UK and the US (which are likely to be your two largest markets at such time as you want to sell your tools). In the UK, it's perfectly acceptable to polish brass brightly and lap steel surfaces until they're shiny. Heavily cleaning 18th century wooden planes is considered the norm.
Such tools are treated with derision in the US as "overly restored". Here's just one example - at one time or another, it seems that every Ultimatum brace ever produced went through Reg Eaton's hands (the author of "The Ultimate Brace"), and his preference was to highly polish the brass parts. If you can find one that's original and unmolested, it's worth at least 100% more in the US than one of the polished examples.
It's not for me to say whether the British dealer's (and customer's) preferences are "wrong", just that there's a marked difference between the UK and the US.
This addage definitely applies to antique US tools. Due to financial strains, I sold a type 3 Stanley Miller #141 gunmetal plow plane in superb and unpolished original condition to a gentleman in Australia for about $3700 U.S. He thoroughly polished it with something like Brasso until it was shiny and bright - and it's now worth about $2000 as a result.
Patrick Leach (Supertool) and another US dealer, Lee Richmond (http://www.thebestthings.com) can be relied upon not to polish or otherwise mess with tools before sale, if you're on the "original condition" side of the fence.
I'm not a collector, just a user. I just want tools that I can use & have fun with. All I was trying to do was give information to folks out there.
I have heard of the differences between the two markets. Thank you for looking out for me.
Have you thought about locating a local tool collectors guild? These are generally a group of older men who collect and sell older hand tools. They usually will meet about once a month. Everyone sets up their table, there is a bit of haggling that will go on, some comparing of one's tools to that of another's, usually followed by a business meeting and some sort of presentation. At least this way you can examine what you might consider buying, ask questions, and even learn a thing or two if you are not careful. This definitely beats the hell out of buying blindly online.
I find the UK approach refreshing! If I buy an old tool to use, the first thing that I do is clean and polish the thing. How nice to have that already done.I know that from a US collection viewpoint, that just ruins it, but I just don't get why. US collectors' instance on dirt, rust, and tarnish as "patina" on all manner of stuff simply amazes me. But for those of us who watch every "Antiques Roadshow", we get used to the estimator stating ..."Oh, NO! You've CLEANED it! (Gasps all around) "If you hadn't CLEANED it, it would be worth $5 bazillion dollars, but now it's only worth $400. Tsk, tsk, tsk."My dream installment of AR includes the above scenario, whereupon the old lady states "Of course it's clean, you boob! It's been in continuous use in my family for 400 years and the servants have faithfully cleaned and waxed it once a week the entire time. Cleaned, it indeed!" (Fade to black, cheering in the background).Mike D :)
Edited 7/8/2008 4:46 pm ET by Mike_D
"I know that from a US collection viewpoint, that just ruins it, but I just don't get why."
It's an extrapolation from archaeology. In archaeology, you want to preserve an item in its original condition as much as possible, because you don't know a priori whether or not some seemingly insignificant bit of dirt may turn out to hold some crucially important information, at some time in the future when you have additional knowledge.
Art historians work the same way: It's hard to tell "good" dirt from "bad" dirt, so they keep all of the dirt.
Antique dealers have inherited this from the art historians. Like the game of telephone, the message gets distorted along the way....
-Steve
Absolutely true, but on a lot of artifacts, the finish is part of the thing. On tools (excluding ancient objects) rust is just rust. Sometimes, even on ancient things, the finish is less than meets the eye, of course. Take the Rosetta Stone. If you see it in the British Museum, or even look at a picture, it looks black. It isn't black. The blackness comes from the ink that people rolled onto it in order to transfer rubbings onto paper. Henceforth, the Rosetta Stone will be black.J
Edited 7/8/2008 6:33 pm ET by Joe Sullivan
There's little doubt that the antique furniture market is guilty (and I do mean guilty in the self-serving sense of the word) on insisting on every bit of grime found on a piece of furniture. That's unacceptable, so the best thing to do if you own a piece of colonial furniture that's been well-cared for that you must sell is to cover it with a mixture of beeswax, lampblack and fine-sieved cattle dung, rub the high spots with a cloth, and present it to one of these guys as a "barn find" - they deserve every bit of it.
That said, what I'm talking about with English dealers goes a great deal deeper than just cleaning an old tool. At least at this point (and its evolving), it's perfectly acceptable to clean an old tool with a bit of wax and a cloth, and perhaps even gently clean away active rust with mineral oil. In fact, it's desirable. Roy Underhill mentioned a pretty good rule of thumb on his 2005 show "Three Tool Chests" - if you're going to do anything, clean the abuse, not the use.
What UK dealers is something quite a bit more aggressive than that, and is akin to sanding a John Townsend original all-over with 220 grit sandpaper. One of the prime reasons US collectors detest this practice and devalue the tools accordingly is substitution. Most (but not all) UK dealers think nothing of substituting parts on old tools to either "improve" on the original or to replace something missing. With the patina entirely removed, that's pretty easy to pull off.
Some have even taken to number-stamping the backs of replacement irons in infill planes. When these planes were made largely by handwork, the infill, blade and sometimes the lever cap were stamped with assembly numbers. And with these planes, their performance (as well as their collectability) sensitively depend on the fit between the blade, infill and mouth. Some of the Norris planes I have (that have the original blade) have a mouth that measures about 2 thousandths of an inch.
When blades were replaced in these planes, the fit was often rather poor and the mouths left gaping. Fine for a roughing plane, but that's not what you have an infill for. Many of these replacement blades have been stamped with an assembly number corresponding to the infill and lever cap by at least one rather unscrupulous UK dealer so that they appear to have the original blade in e-bay auctions.
This is not the only example, there are other British tools that are vulnerable and its more common to find a "made up" example than an original.
This is the root of why the American market rejects polished tools - it's not that us tool collectors like our tools rusty. In fact clean, pristine (i.e., not rusty or dirty) original finishes bring big money at auctions. I've seen levels by Stratton brothers and others with their original laquer go for a multiple of 10 over what their slightly dinged up bretheren are worth.
I had face-to-face dealings with one of these parties this year. I was looking for a small slick, <3". There were none in his display - not particularly pleasant he offered me a large framing chisel, "This is what you want." At least his wife was pleasant!
Got a slick from Barr Quarton - a beauty.
I can not comment on the collectors market because I don't dabble in that.
What I can talk about is my dealings with UK vendors of used tools. There has been nothing snootish or snobby about them. They always tried to keep my costs down by find the least expensive way to ship. That ranges from breaking shipments into two parcels because the lower weight of two is cheaper than the higher of one to informing me that the shiping is just to expensive to be worth my while. They wanted me as a customer but definately wanted to do right by me.
And the tools I bought are nice user tools.
When it comes to the older hand made tools, i.e., not mass produced, I agree the substituting parts from another plane is unacceptable. However, when it comes to the mass produced tools, Stanley, Sargent, Miller Falls, etc., I don't have the same problem. After all a plane, for example, was produced on an assembly line by workers picking parts out of boxes of many hundreds of like parts. There was no unique part to a Stanley plane except for the type consistency of the time period in which it was made.Chuck
Indeed. My reference was about tools that are handmade, one at a time. Nevertheless, to a collector even substituting manufactured parts devalues the piece somewhat.
A good example is the early Stanley-Miller ornate plows. One that has a consistent (i.e., not cleaned and buffed) patina across the fences, plane and fillister bed goes for more at auction than one that's been cleaned to a "like new" condition where the parts can't be verified (or at least substantiated) to have originated with the plane.
This also applies to wooden planes manufactured in large factories in the 1800's. The more desirable plows from Sandusky and Ohio Tools (i.e., the boxwood, rosewood or ebony plows, with or without ivory mounts) are worth more with the original parts, particularly with an original blade set. Even though the fence nuts are generally consistently cut so that they can be interchanged between planes, a substituted one will devalue the plane substantially.
Actually it's because there were so many good reproductions made and sold as antiques that natural patina is considered so important.
Jack
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