Reply To: Alternative to E-Bay
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Hi all,
First post here, but thought I had something to add. I’ve met a tool collector (I bought a job lot of 3 No. 4 planes off him for £23.) who swears by car boot sales and scrap metal merchants for tools. I also bought a ‘Made in England’ Record quick release vise, vgc, for £40.
He claims to be able to buy them for double the scrap metal rate (about £4-5 per vise) then strips them and repairs them, selling them for between £40 and £60.
When it comes to car boots, he says he’s there as they open (or just before) with a torch, looking for old tools. He showed me his store room, it’s full of old tool chests he bought for £200-300 and then sold a couple of things from and kept the rest.
He looked at me like I was crazy when I said I wanted to USE what I was buying. Apparently, no-one he deals with would dream of actually working wood with these old tools.
He buys any Disston on sight and has stacks of them, partnering good handles to good blades. When I say ‘good’, I mean ‘collector good’ rather than ‘working good’. He then polishes them and sells them.
That’s why you can’t buy a cheap saw or plane on eBay anymore. People who will never use them are just hoarding them.
Also, don’t think “it’s OK, they’re keeping them for future generations”. They’re not. From the look of his store room and workshop and of the planes he sold me, all his ‘renovations’ are purely cosmetic. Unscrew a handle and the screws are starting to rot away, there’s no oil where you can’t see the rust. Same was true with the frog screws, under the frog, too. The worst bit was that the guy is a carpenter, but his interest doesn’t extend beyond an old tool’s aesthetic value. He has (and wouldn’t sell to me, despite a rather rash offer on my part) saw stocks – just like the ones in Paul’s saw sharpening video – and thought I was from another planet when I mentioned Paul’s saw sharpening video.
Hopefully he sees it. Hopefully it sparks some interest.
We need some kind of endowment for an international tool library or literally a millennia worth (in terms of remaining working life) of fine old tools will wither into mantlepiece objects within a couple of decades all for the want of some oil and grease.
OK, rant over. Sorry about that. Main point: Tools are best bought rusty, in the real world, for cash. Anything else is just convenience, and convenience costs.