OldTools Archive

Recent Bios FAQ

184467 Albert Treadwell <albietread2@y...> 2008‑11‑06 BIO
I've been lurking for some time, popping up occasionally to comment on
Black Locust or the extinction of the hordes of Naugas that used to roam
the valley south of my shop in Waterbury CT. I met Walt at Brass City
Records through the List and bought a beautiful PEXTO chisel from Tony
Seo at that auction site.=A0 Here's a ten year old (or more maybe) gloat
which might actually involve Tony.=A0 I had a furniture piece accepted
at the annual show by the Hazelton Arts League in Penna and we had to
travel there three times - once to deliver the table, once for the
opening party and finally to recover the (unsold) table after the
show.=A0 Two of these trips were overnight, and the arts people
suggested we find a place in Jim Thorpe, this very cool town just down
the road. (Tony, tell us some Jim Thorpe stories).=A0 We found a great
B&B on the main street and in between the show events did a little
poking around.=A0 In an antiques shop I found a 113 compass plane which
was virtually mint and bought it for $25.=A0 The saleslady told me it
was from a local estate and more items might be available later.=A0 On
our next visit I checked in to explore that possibility and was told
that there were no more items and a local collector was furious that the
radius plane had been sold for that price. If I'm not mistaken Tony's
place is a stone's throw from Jim Thorpe. I am a cabinet and millwork
guy with a shop in an old foundry building .=A0 My concrete floor is so
irregular there are actual train tracks in one area where heavy carts of
molten brass were moved, and even a filled place where a roundhouse
pivot used to be. I have pretty much the full suite of machinery that a
well-equipped shop of say the sixties would have had including a
fantastic Rogers 36" bandsaw which can resaw 17", a stunning 24"
Clements jointer which I described in a Babbitt thread last week and a
40's Unisaw which is upgraded with a 6' biesemeyer fence and a digital
readout. I've always been a handtool guy and so many individual tools
are really precious to me. I have a long T H Witherby 1/2 " mortise
chisel which is laminated (I think they said applied steel) and it holds
an edge like crazy. I build estate entrance gates in 16/4 mahogany, with
big mortise and tenon joinery and I use a huge Marples swan neck chisel
to clean up mortises and that 113 is in play smoothing curved top
rails.=A0 Actually the amazing thing about the radius plane is not just
that it works to clean up the bandsaw marks, but like a jointer plane it
corrects slight deviations in the curved surface.

My block plane is the 118 schoolboy which does it all - low angle,
direct drive adjustment, good hand feel and that tradeschool heritage.

I will add more later, I hope this is good enough to qualify for
Galootaclaus. Got some really cool stuff I want to give somebody. I'm
going to try to attach some photos of work but I'm sort of new at this
computer stuff. Goodbye all, Albert





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Recent Bios FAQ