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#1
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Dead Man's Tools
Harper Strode died on a fine Spring day in 1987. They found him
sitting at his lathe with a pretty fancy clock finial nearly done and still spinning in his old Oliver long bed. His lead man, Jimmy Parker, said that Harper died sitting upright on his stool, which he had taken to using when doing the lathe work about the time he'd turned eighty. On the day he passed, Harper was ninety three years old. Jimmy told us that Harper must have gone on to the other side while trying to decide if he needed to strop his gouge, as his finger was on the tools edge and he had a sort of thoughtful look to his face. Harper was a fussy sort about edges, as is about right for a man who'd made some of the finest furniture in Chester County for seven decades and who always was a man to keep a cutting edge just right. He was a neat and orderly man too and it didn't surprise Jimmy a bit that he had died without dropping his gouge and without falling off his stool. Jimmy figured that the first thing Harper would have said to Saint Peter would be, "I wish you'd given me enough warning so I could have shut down the lathe." Harper Strode was for certain sure the best known and best loved cabinetmaker in Chester County and more people turned out for his funeral than had shown up for Deeter Collins', who was a pretty famous baseball player in our parts and who was also a Marine Colonel. We're pretty big on baseball players and Marine's in our town, but Harper's funeral drew half again as many folks as Deeter's had. Harper's work was all over our town and was pretty well distributed throughout most of the other towns in the county, as well as in the farmhouses that were between the towns. He'd never had more than three guys working for him but he'd turned out a powerful amount of cabinets, furniture, clocks and such from his bank barn shop. The clocks were sort of his specialty. In early 1929 he'd agreed to make a tall case clock to sit in the entry way of the First National Bank. Hand shake deals were done even by bankers in those days and Harper had agreed to make a Philadelphia Style Tall Case Clock (which could have been damned near anything, since neither the banker nor Harper could have told you in words what the clock was supposed to look like) for the consideration of two hundred dollars. Ben Timmons, the bank president, and Harper shook hands on the deal and the clock was to be ready before the Christmas Holidays, which was always a big deal at the bank, as the children from the town were toured through to see the vaults and the teller's stations and all that, and they each got a big candy cane and a dime bank card, that was to help them in their learning about saving money. It was Harper's first tall case clock and he was a might worried about how it was going to come out but he contracted with Buddy Charles up in Boyertown to build him the works and they were to be delivered by the end of Summer, so Harper could build the case during the Fall. Well, I guess you know what happened in October of 1929. Old Harper wasn't much on phones and wasn't one to own a radio, but he heard, sure enough, that things had taken a bad turn. Harper saw Ben Timmons at church and told him that he could back out of the deal if things weren't right at the bank. Ben Timmons was the third Timmons to be president of the bank and he was a proud man. He told Harper, "Things aren't too good at the bank right now, Harper but I'll make good on our deal personally." That's the way things were done in our parts back then. Harper Strode was a proud man, too and he told Ben that he wouldn't take his personal money and that he would finish the clock and that, "The bank can pay me whenever times get better." So far as I know (and Ben Timmons said the same to his dying day), no other man on earth had ever said that to a banker before. Now, Harper knew from the pictures that he'd been studying on that his clock would need to have three finials up at the top in order to be a proper Philadelphia Style Tall Case Clock. Most believe that he got this idea from the John Wanamaker Department Store Catalogue, which was, after all, the biggest store in Philadelphia and they should know their business when it came to such things. Problem was, Harper had never turned anything before and he didn't even have a lathe. Turns out that Fess Willard up in Honeybrook had a long bed Oliver lathe that he'd got because he thought he could make a few bucks turning porch posts during the Winter when there wasn't much happening on his farm. Fess had a daughter that was getting married, quick like, before Thanksgiving and he bartered with Harper to trade a cedar hope chest for the lathe. Fess was a rough sort of fella and hadn't made much progress with the porch post business and said that he'd spent most of his time dodging lathe tools as they were ripped out of his hands and flung around the cow barn. So, the lathe was pretty much new. Harper studied on this for a while, as he didn't think that he really needed such a big lathe but, when Fess offered to throw in the lathe tools and a half ton of hay, the deal was struck. Well now, old Harper took to that lathe like a duck takes to water. He just knew in his bones which way to come at the spinning wood with the tool, which is no great mystery since the man already knew damn near everything else about working with wood. He was a flat out natural. The clock was a glorious thing. The John Wanamaker Department Store Catalogue didn't show enough detail to tell how the finials should look so Harper came up with his own idea which everyone in town agreed was right smart and is copied to this day by Chester County cabinetmakers. He got paid by the bank, as time went by, and Ben Timmons made sure that all his banker friends ordered up tall case clocks from Harper, so he got pretty famous for them. He made clocks for most of the banks in our county and quite a few for the counties that bordered us. He made quite a few for churches and quite a few more for regular people, too. As Harper's business grew he hired on Jimmy, who had been working as a machinist at the Sharpless Cream Separator Works, and then Lester Worthington, who was a bit addled in his mind but kept the place clean and, as he was a bull strong fella, was a great help in the heavy lifting. Jimmy Parker was thought to be about the best lathe man at the Sharpless Works but Harper never let him touch that long bed Oliver. Harper so loved turning that he wouldn't let anyone else do it. Even when he'd gotten too old to do the other work in the shop, Harper would come in early in the morning and do the lathe work himself. He was of a habit as to wake well before sunrise and do his turning before the other men started their day. He prized his time at that lathe as he prized nothing else. That's why Jimmy wasn't all that surprised to find him sitting there, dead and thoughtful looking, on that fine Spring morning. Well, Jimmy wasn't a man to run his own shop, although he was plenty happy working for Harper. Harper had no children that were interested in the business, so the whole thing was put up for auction. I went to the auction figuring on just watching while all the stuff went for more than I could afford. The saws went high and the planer went for more than what I could afford. Jimmy bought a chisel set and the old grinder. Stevie Watts bought up all the clamps. The last item was the long bed Oliver. I knew that Jimmy had always wanted to have a go at that lathe and I figured he'd bid but he didn't. No one else did, either. You see, the word had gotten around that this was the tool that old Harper had died at and it seemed to have cooled out the bidding. Jimmy wouldn't touch it, even when it got down to two hundred dollars, which was less than half of what it was worth. He told me later that it just wouldn't have felt right to turn on Harper's lathe. My Aunt Fay was fond of saying that, "God hates a coward." When the price dropped to one hundred and fifty dollars, I bought Harper's lathe. I'd always had an idea that I might like to build tall case clocks, just like Harper's. I didn't know anything about lathe work but I'm a willing learner and thought the price was just too good to pass up. I have to admit that the lathe sat in the back of my shop for months before I got around to having a go at it. It was covered in sawdust when I first tried to turn it on. She wouldn't start. I called Jimmy and he told me, again, that the lathe was running when he'd found Harper dead at it and that nothing had been done to it since then. I spent a good part of a Sunday afternoon cleaning up the Oliver, taking the scale off the bed and even gave her a good coat of paste wax once things were shined up. I turned her back on - she purred like a kitten. Look here, I've never been a superstitious type but I was wondering to myself if maybe Harper didn't see fit to let that old lathe start unless she were properly cleaned up. Just a passing thought, you know. I'd some two by two square baluster stock sitting around and chucked one of them into the lathe. I took Harper's old gouge (I'm not just sure but I believe it might have been the one...) and laid it on the rest with a mind to making a test cut. The damn tool flung itself out of my hands and landed, point down, on my concrete shop floor. Strangest thing - I'd not put but the least bit of pressure on it. There wasn't any sense in having another go at it without a thorough sharpening and stropping, the edge had been made plumb dull by its visit to the concrete floor. After fifteen minutes at the grinder, stone and strop - I ran my finger on an edge that would make even Harper proud. At way past dinner time, my wife came out to the shop. By that time I'd made half a dozen finials, just like Harper used to make for them tall case clocks. Each one was an exact mate to all the others. My wife sat the dinner plate next to the lathe and said, "I didn't know that you could do turnings. They're so beautiful." I looked up and saw she had a funny sort of expression on her face. My wife is a good , strong Christian woman and has no tolerance for superstition or any such ungodly foolery. I smiled at her and said, "Yes, they are beautiful, aren't they?" Regards, Tom Thomas J. Watson - Cabinetmaker Gulph Mills, Pennsylvania http://users.snip.net/~tjwatson Remove CLUETOKEN to reply to email. |
#2
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Dead Man's Tools
I could read your stories for hours, Tom. Thanks for putting these memories
into words for the rest of us. Mike "Tom Watson" wrote in message ... Harper Strode died on a fine Spring day in 1987. They found him sitting at his lathe with a pretty fancy clock finial nearly done and still spinning in his old Oliver long bed. His lead man, Jimmy Parker, said that Harper died sitting upright on his stool, which he had taken to using when doing the lathe work about the time he'd turned eighty. On the day he passed, Harper was ninety three years old. Jimmy told us that Harper must have gone on to the other side while trying to decide if he needed to strop his gouge, as his finger was on the tools edge and he had a sort of thoughtful look to his face. Harper was a fussy sort about edges, as is about right for a man who'd made some of the finest furniture in Chester County for seven decades and who always was a man to keep a cutting edge just right. He was a neat and orderly man too and it didn't surprise Jimmy a bit that he had died without dropping his gouge and without falling off his stool. Jimmy figured that the first thing Harper would have said to Saint Peter would be, "I wish you'd given me enough warning so I could have shut down the lathe." Harper Strode was for certain sure the best known and best loved cabinetmaker in Chester County and more people turned out for his funeral than had shown up for Deeter Collins', who was a pretty famous baseball player in our parts and who was also a Marine Colonel. We're pretty big on baseball players and Marine's in our town, but Harper's funeral drew half again as many folks as Deeter's had. Harper's work was all over our town and was pretty well distributed throughout most of the other towns in the county, as well as in the farmhouses that were between the towns. He'd never had more than three guys working for him but he'd turned out a powerful amount of cabinets, furniture, clocks and such from his bank barn shop. The clocks were sort of his specialty. In early 1929 he'd agreed to make a tall case clock to sit in the entry way of the First National Bank. Hand shake deals were done even by bankers in those days and Harper had agreed to make a Philadelphia Style Tall Case Clock (which could have been damned near anything, since neither the banker nor Harper could have told you in words what the clock was supposed to look like) for the consideration of two hundred dollars. Ben Timmons, the bank president, and Harper shook hands on the deal and the clock was to be ready before the Christmas Holidays, which was always a big deal at the bank, as the children from the town were toured through to see the vaults and the teller's stations and all that, and they each got a big candy cane and a dime bank card, that was to help them in their learning about saving money. It was Harper's first tall case clock and he was a might worried about how it was going to come out but he contracted with Buddy Charles up in Boyertown to build him the works and they were to be delivered by the end of Summer, so Harper could build the case during the Fall. Well, I guess you know what happened in October of 1929. Old Harper wasn't much on phones and wasn't one to own a radio, but he heard, sure enough, that things had taken a bad turn. Harper saw Ben Timmons at church and told him that he could back out of the deal if things weren't right at the bank. Ben Timmons was the third Timmons to be president of the bank and he was a proud man. He told Harper, "Things aren't too good at the bank right now, Harper but I'll make good on our deal personally." That's the way things were done in our parts back then. Harper Strode was a proud man, too and he told Ben that he wouldn't take his personal money and that he would finish the clock and that, "The bank can pay me whenever times get better." So far as I know (and Ben Timmons said the same to his dying day), no other man on earth had ever said that to a banker before. Now, Harper knew from the pictures that he'd been studying on that his clock would need to have three finials up at the top in order to be a proper Philadelphia Style Tall Case Clock. Most believe that he got this idea from the John Wanamaker Department Store Catalogue, which was, after all, the biggest store in Philadelphia and they should know their business when it came to such things. Problem was, Harper had never turned anything before and he didn't even have a lathe. Turns out that Fess Willard up in Honeybrook had a long bed Oliver lathe that he'd got because he thought he could make a few bucks turning porch posts during the Winter when there wasn't much happening on his farm. Fess had a daughter that was getting married, quick like, before Thanksgiving and he bartered with Harper to trade a cedar hope chest for the lathe. Fess was a rough sort of fella and hadn't made much progress with the porch post business and said that he'd spent most of his time dodging lathe tools as they were ripped out of his hands and flung around the cow barn. So, the lathe was pretty much new. Harper studied on this for a while, as he didn't think that he really needed such a big lathe but, when Fess offered to throw in the lathe tools and a half ton of hay, the deal was struck. Well now, old Harper took to that lathe like a duck takes to water. He just knew in his bones which way to come at the spinning wood with the tool, which is no great mystery since the man already knew damn near everything else about working with wood. He was a flat out natural. The clock was a glorious thing. The John Wanamaker Department Store Catalogue didn't show enough detail to tell how the finials should look so Harper came up with his own idea which everyone in town agreed was right smart and is copied to this day by Chester County cabinetmakers. He got paid by the bank, as time went by, and Ben Timmons made sure that all his banker friends ordered up tall case clocks from Harper, so he got pretty famous for them. He made clocks for most of the banks in our county and quite a few for the counties that bordered us. He made quite a few for churches and quite a few more for regular people, too. As Harper's business grew he hired on Jimmy, who had been working as a machinist at the Sharpless Cream Separator Works, and then Lester Worthington, who was a bit addled in his mind but kept the place clean and, as he was a bull strong fella, was a great help in the heavy lifting. Jimmy Parker was thought to be about the best lathe man at the Sharpless Works but Harper never let him touch that long bed Oliver. Harper so loved turning that he wouldn't let anyone else do it. Even when he'd gotten too old to do the other work in the shop, Harper would come in early in the morning and do the lathe work himself. He was of a habit as to wake well before sunrise and do his turning before the other men started their day. He prized his time at that lathe as he prized nothing else. That's why Jimmy wasn't all that surprised to find him sitting there, dead and thoughtful looking, on that fine Spring morning. Well, Jimmy wasn't a man to run his own shop, although he was plenty happy working for Harper. Harper had no children that were interested in the business, so the whole thing was put up for auction. I went to the auction figuring on just watching while all the stuff went for more than I could afford. The saws went high and the planer went for more than what I could afford. Jimmy bought a chisel set and the old grinder. Stevie Watts bought up all the clamps. The last item was the long bed Oliver. I knew that Jimmy had always wanted to have a go at that lathe and I figured he'd bid but he didn't. No one else did, either. You see, the word had gotten around that this was the tool that old Harper had died at and it seemed to have cooled out the bidding. Jimmy wouldn't touch it, even when it got down to two hundred dollars, which was less than half of what it was worth. He told me later that it just wouldn't have felt right to turn on Harper's lathe. My Aunt Fay was fond of saying that, "God hates a coward." When the price dropped to one hundred and fifty dollars, I bought Harper's lathe. I'd always had an idea that I might like to build tall case clocks, just like Harper's. I didn't know anything about lathe work but I'm a willing learner and thought the price was just too good to pass up. I have to admit that the lathe sat in the back of my shop for months before I got around to having a go at it. It was covered in sawdust when I first tried to turn it on. She wouldn't start. I called Jimmy and he told me, again, that the lathe was running when he'd found Harper dead at it and that nothing had been done to it since then. I spent a good part of a Sunday afternoon cleaning up the Oliver, taking the scale off the bed and even gave her a good coat of paste wax once things were shined up. I turned her back on - she purred like a kitten. Look here, I've never been a superstitious type but I was wondering to myself if maybe Harper didn't see fit to let that old lathe start unless she were properly cleaned up. Just a passing thought, you know. I'd some two by two square baluster stock sitting around and chucked one of them into the lathe. I took Harper's old gouge (I'm not just sure but I believe it might have been the one...) and laid it on the rest with a mind to making a test cut. The damn tool flung itself out of my hands and landed, point down, on my concrete shop floor. Strangest thing - I'd not put but the least bit of pressure on it. There wasn't any sense in having another go at it without a thorough sharpening and stropping, the edge had been made plumb dull by its visit to the concrete floor. After fifteen minutes at the grinder, stone and strop - I ran my finger on an edge that would make even Harper proud. At way past dinner time, my wife came out to the shop. By that time I'd made half a dozen finials, just like Harper used to make for them tall case clocks. Each one was an exact mate to all the others. My wife sat the dinner plate next to the lathe and said, "I didn't know that you could do turnings. They're so beautiful." I looked up and saw she had a funny sort of expression on her face. My wife is a good , strong Christian woman and has no tolerance for superstition or any such ungodly foolery. I smiled at her and said, "Yes, they are beautiful, aren't they?" Regards, Tom Thomas J. Watson - Cabinetmaker Gulph Mills, Pennsylvania http://users.snip.net/~tjwatson Remove CLUETOKEN to reply to email. |
#3
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Dead Man's Tools
GREAT STORY!!! Tom....... Thanks for sharing....
"Tom Watson" wrote in message ... Harper Strode died on a fine Spring day in 1987. They found him sitting at his lathe with a pretty fancy clock finial nearly done and still spinning in his old Oliver long bed. His lead man, Jimmy Parker, said that Harper died sitting upright on his stool, which he had taken to using when doing the lathe work about the time he'd turned eighty. On the day he passed, Harper was ninety three years old. Jimmy told us that Harper must have gone on to the other side while trying to decide if he needed to strop his gouge, as his finger was on the tools edge and he had a sort of thoughtful look to his face. Harper was a fussy sort about edges, as is about right for a man who'd made some of the finest furniture in Chester County for seven decades and who always was a man to keep a cutting edge just right. He was a neat and orderly man too and it didn't surprise Jimmy a bit that he had died without dropping his gouge and without falling off his stool. Jimmy figured that the first thing Harper would have said to Saint Peter would be, "I wish you'd given me enough warning so I could have shut down the lathe." Harper Strode was for certain sure the best known and best loved cabinetmaker in Chester County and more people turned out for his funeral than had shown up for Deeter Collins', who was a pretty famous baseball player in our parts and who was also a Marine Colonel. We're pretty big on baseball players and Marine's in our town, but Harper's funeral drew half again as many folks as Deeter's had. Harper's work was all over our town and was pretty well distributed throughout most of the other towns in the county, as well as in the farmhouses that were between the towns. He'd never had more than three guys working for him but he'd turned out a powerful amount of cabinets, furniture, clocks and such from his bank barn shop. The clocks were sort of his specialty. In early 1929 he'd agreed to make a tall case clock to sit in the entry way of the First National Bank. Hand shake deals were done even by bankers in those days and Harper had agreed to make a Philadelphia Style Tall Case Clock (which could have been damned near anything, since neither the banker nor Harper could have told you in words what the clock was supposed to look like) for the consideration of two hundred dollars. Ben Timmons, the bank president, and Harper shook hands on the deal and the clock was to be ready before the Christmas Holidays, which was always a big deal at the bank, as the children from the town were toured through to see the vaults and the teller's stations and all that, and they each got a big candy cane and a dime bank card, that was to help them in their learning about saving money. It was Harper's first tall case clock and he was a might worried about how it was going to come out but he contracted with Buddy Charles up in Boyertown to build him the works and they were to be delivered by the end of Summer, so Harper could build the case during the Fall. Well, I guess you know what happened in October of 1929. Old Harper wasn't much on phones and wasn't one to own a radio, but he heard, sure enough, that things had taken a bad turn. Harper saw Ben Timmons at church and told him that he could back out of the deal if things weren't right at the bank. Ben Timmons was the third Timmons to be president of the bank and he was a proud man. He told Harper, "Things aren't too good at the bank right now, Harper but I'll make good on our deal personally." That's the way things were done in our parts back then. Harper Strode was a proud man, too and he told Ben that he wouldn't take his personal money and that he would finish the clock and that, "The bank can pay me whenever times get better." So far as I know (and Ben Timmons said the same to his dying day), no other man on earth had ever said that to a banker before. Now, Harper knew from the pictures that he'd been studying on that his clock would need to have three finials up at the top in order to be a proper Philadelphia Style Tall Case Clock. Most believe that he got this idea from the John Wanamaker Department Store Catalogue, which was, after all, the biggest store in Philadelphia and they should know their business when it came to such things. Problem was, Harper had never turned anything before and he didn't even have a lathe. Turns out that Fess Willard up in Honeybrook had a long bed Oliver lathe that he'd got because he thought he could make a few bucks turning porch posts during the Winter when there wasn't much happening on his farm. Fess had a daughter that was getting married, quick like, before Thanksgiving and he bartered with Harper to trade a cedar hope chest for the lathe. Fess was a rough sort of fella and hadn't made much progress with the porch post business and said that he'd spent most of his time dodging lathe tools as they were ripped out of his hands and flung around the cow barn. So, the lathe was pretty much new. Harper studied on this for a while, as he didn't think that he really needed such a big lathe but, when Fess offered to throw in the lathe tools and a half ton of hay, the deal was struck. Well now, old Harper took to that lathe like a duck takes to water. He just knew in his bones which way to come at the spinning wood with the tool, which is no great mystery since the man already knew damn near everything else about working with wood. He was a flat out natural. The clock was a glorious thing. The John Wanamaker Department Store Catalogue didn't show enough detail to tell how the finials should look so Harper came up with his own idea which everyone in town agreed was right smart and is copied to this day by Chester County cabinetmakers. He got paid by the bank, as time went by, and Ben Timmons made sure that all his banker friends ordered up tall case clocks from Harper, so he got pretty famous for them. He made clocks for most of the banks in our county and quite a few for the counties that bordered us. He made quite a few for churches and quite a few more for regular people, too. As Harper's business grew he hired on Jimmy, who had been working as a machinist at the Sharpless Cream Separator Works, and then Lester Worthington, who was a bit addled in his mind but kept the place clean and, as he was a bull strong fella, was a great help in the heavy lifting. Jimmy Parker was thought to be about the best lathe man at the Sharpless Works but Harper never let him touch that long bed Oliver. Harper so loved turning that he wouldn't let anyone else do it. Even when he'd gotten too old to do the other work in the shop, Harper would come in early in the morning and do the lathe work himself. He was of a habit as to wake well before sunrise and do his turning before the other men started their day. He prized his time at that lathe as he prized nothing else. That's why Jimmy wasn't all that surprised to find him sitting there, dead and thoughtful looking, on that fine Spring morning. Well, Jimmy wasn't a man to run his own shop, although he was plenty happy working for Harper. Harper had no children that were interested in the business, so the whole thing was put up for auction. I went to the auction figuring on just watching while all the stuff went for more than I could afford. The saws went high and the planer went for more than what I could afford. Jimmy bought a chisel set and the old grinder. Stevie Watts bought up all the clamps. The last item was the long bed Oliver. I knew that Jimmy had always wanted to have a go at that lathe and I figured he'd bid but he didn't. No one else did, either. You see, the word had gotten around that this was the tool that old Harper had died at and it seemed to have cooled out the bidding. Jimmy wouldn't touch it, even when it got down to two hundred dollars, which was less than half of what it was worth. He told me later that it just wouldn't have felt right to turn on Harper's lathe. My Aunt Fay was fond of saying that, "God hates a coward." When the price dropped to one hundred and fifty dollars, I bought Harper's lathe. I'd always had an idea that I might like to build tall case clocks, just like Harper's. I didn't know anything about lathe work but I'm a willing learner and thought the price was just too good to pass up. I have to admit that the lathe sat in the back of my shop for months before I got around to having a go at it. It was covered in sawdust when I first tried to turn it on. She wouldn't start. I called Jimmy and he told me, again, that the lathe was running when he'd found Harper dead at it and that nothing had been done to it since then. I spent a good part of a Sunday afternoon cleaning up the Oliver, taking the scale off the bed and even gave her a good coat of paste wax once things were shined up. I turned her back on - she purred like a kitten. Look here, I've never been a superstitious type but I was wondering to myself if maybe Harper didn't see fit to let that old lathe start unless she were properly cleaned up. Just a passing thought, you know. I'd some two by two square baluster stock sitting around and chucked one of them into the lathe. I took Harper's old gouge (I'm not just sure but I believe it might have been the one...) and laid it on the rest with a mind to making a test cut. The damn tool flung itself out of my hands and landed, point down, on my concrete shop floor. Strangest thing - I'd not put but the least bit of pressure on it. There wasn't any sense in having another go at it without a thorough sharpening and stropping, the edge had been made plumb dull by its visit to the concrete floor. After fifteen minutes at the grinder, stone and strop - I ran my finger on an edge that would make even Harper proud. At way past dinner time, my wife came out to the shop. By that time I'd made half a dozen finials, just like Harper used to make for them tall case clocks. Each one was an exact mate to all the others. My wife sat the dinner plate next to the lathe and said, "I didn't know that you could do turnings. They're so beautiful." I looked up and saw she had a funny sort of expression on her face. My wife is a good , strong Christian woman and has no tolerance for superstition or any such ungodly foolery. I smiled at her and said, "Yes, they are beautiful, aren't they?" Regards, Tom Thomas J. Watson - Cabinetmaker Gulph Mills, Pennsylvania http://users.snip.net/~tjwatson Remove CLUETOKEN to reply to email. |
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Dead Man's Tools
Thanks, Tom.
Preston |
#5
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Dead Man's Tools
Have you published a collection of these stories? If not, you should
certainly think about doing so. "Tom Watson" wrote in message ... Harper Strode died on a fine Spring day in 1987. They found him sitting at his lathe with a pretty fancy clock finial nearly done and still spinning in his old Oliver long bed. His lead man, Jimmy Parker, said that Harper died sitting upright on his stool, which he had taken to using when doing the lathe work about the time he'd turned eighty. On the day he passed, Harper was ninety three years old. Jimmy told us that Harper must have gone on to the other side while trying to decide if he needed to strop his gouge, as his finger was on the tools edge and he had a sort of thoughtful look to his face. Harper was a fussy sort about edges, as is about right for a man who'd made some of the finest furniture in Chester County for seven decades and who always was a man to keep a cutting edge just right. He was a neat and orderly man too and it didn't surprise Jimmy a bit that he had died without dropping his gouge and without falling off his stool. Jimmy figured that the first thing Harper would have said to Saint Peter would be, "I wish you'd given me enough warning so I could have shut down the lathe." Harper Strode was for certain sure the best known and best loved cabinetmaker in Chester County and more people turned out for his funeral than had shown up for Deeter Collins', who was a pretty famous baseball player in our parts and who was also a Marine Colonel. We're pretty big on baseball players and Marine's in our town, but Harper's funeral drew half again as many folks as Deeter's had. Harper's work was all over our town and was pretty well distributed throughout most of the other towns in the county, as well as in the farmhouses that were between the towns. He'd never had more than three guys working for him but he'd turned out a powerful amount of cabinets, furniture, clocks and such from his bank barn shop. The clocks were sort of his specialty. In early 1929 he'd agreed to make a tall case clock to sit in the entry way of the First National Bank. Hand shake deals were done even by bankers in those days and Harper had agreed to make a Philadelphia Style Tall Case Clock (which could have been damned near anything, since neither the banker nor Harper could have told you in words what the clock was supposed to look like) for the consideration of two hundred dollars. Ben Timmons, the bank president, and Harper shook hands on the deal and the clock was to be ready before the Christmas Holidays, which was always a big deal at the bank, as the children from the town were toured through to see the vaults and the teller's stations and all that, and they each got a big candy cane and a dime bank card, that was to help them in their learning about saving money. It was Harper's first tall case clock and he was a might worried about how it was going to come out but he contracted with Buddy Charles up in Boyertown to build him the works and they were to be delivered by the end of Summer, so Harper could build the case during the Fall. Well, I guess you know what happened in October of 1929. Old Harper wasn't much on phones and wasn't one to own a radio, but he heard, sure enough, that things had taken a bad turn. Harper saw Ben Timmons at church and told him that he could back out of the deal if things weren't right at the bank. Ben Timmons was the third Timmons to be president of the bank and he was a proud man. He told Harper, "Things aren't too good at the bank right now, Harper but I'll make good on our deal personally." That's the way things were done in our parts back then. Harper Strode was a proud man, too and he told Ben that he wouldn't take his personal money and that he would finish the clock and that, "The bank can pay me whenever times get better." So far as I know (and Ben Timmons said the same to his dying day), no other man on earth had ever said that to a banker before. Now, Harper knew from the pictures that he'd been studying on that his clock would need to have three finials up at the top in order to be a proper Philadelphia Style Tall Case Clock. Most believe that he got this idea from the John Wanamaker Department Store Catalogue, which was, after all, the biggest store in Philadelphia and they should know their business when it came to such things. Problem was, Harper had never turned anything before and he didn't even have a lathe. Turns out that Fess Willard up in Honeybrook had a long bed Oliver lathe that he'd got because he thought he could make a few bucks turning porch posts during the Winter when there wasn't much happening on his farm. Fess had a daughter that was getting married, quick like, before Thanksgiving and he bartered with Harper to trade a cedar hope chest for the lathe. Fess was a rough sort of fella and hadn't made much progress with the porch post business and said that he'd spent most of his time dodging lathe tools as they were ripped out of his hands and flung around the cow barn. So, the lathe was pretty much new. Harper studied on this for a while, as he didn't think that he really needed such a big lathe but, when Fess offered to throw in the lathe tools and a half ton of hay, the deal was struck. Well now, old Harper took to that lathe like a duck takes to water. He just knew in his bones which way to come at the spinning wood with the tool, which is no great mystery since the man already knew damn near everything else about working with wood. He was a flat out natural. The clock was a glorious thing. The John Wanamaker Department Store Catalogue didn't show enough detail to tell how the finials should look so Harper came up with his own idea which everyone in town agreed was right smart and is copied to this day by Chester County cabinetmakers. He got paid by the bank, as time went by, and Ben Timmons made sure that all his banker friends ordered up tall case clocks from Harper, so he got pretty famous for them. He made clocks for most of the banks in our county and quite a few for the counties that bordered us. He made quite a few for churches and quite a few more for regular people, too. As Harper's business grew he hired on Jimmy, who had been working as a machinist at the Sharpless Cream Separator Works, and then Lester Worthington, who was a bit addled in his mind but kept the place clean and, as he was a bull strong fella, was a great help in the heavy lifting. Jimmy Parker was thought to be about the best lathe man at the Sharpless Works but Harper never let him touch that long bed Oliver. Harper so loved turning that he wouldn't let anyone else do it. Even when he'd gotten too old to do the other work in the shop, Harper would come in early in the morning and do the lathe work himself. He was of a habit as to wake well before sunrise and do his turning before the other men started their day. He prized his time at that lathe as he prized nothing else. That's why Jimmy wasn't all that surprised to find him sitting there, dead and thoughtful looking, on that fine Spring morning. Well, Jimmy wasn't a man to run his own shop, although he was plenty happy working for Harper. Harper had no children that were interested in the business, so the whole thing was put up for auction. I went to the auction figuring on just watching while all the stuff went for more than I could afford. The saws went high and the planer went for more than what I could afford. Jimmy bought a chisel set and the old grinder. Stevie Watts bought up all the clamps. The last item was the long bed Oliver. I knew that Jimmy had always wanted to have a go at that lathe and I figured he'd bid but he didn't. No one else did, either. You see, the word had gotten around that this was the tool that old Harper had died at and it seemed to have cooled out the bidding. Jimmy wouldn't touch it, even when it got down to two hundred dollars, which was less than half of what it was worth. He told me later that it just wouldn't have felt right to turn on Harper's lathe. My Aunt Fay was fond of saying that, "God hates a coward." When the price dropped to one hundred and fifty dollars, I bought Harper's lathe. I'd always had an idea that I might like to build tall case clocks, just like Harper's. I didn't know anything about lathe work but I'm a willing learner and thought the price was just too good to pass up. I have to admit that the lathe sat in the back of my shop for months before I got around to having a go at it. It was covered in sawdust when I first tried to turn it on. She wouldn't start. I called Jimmy and he told me, again, that the lathe was running when he'd found Harper dead at it and that nothing had been done to it since then. I spent a good part of a Sunday afternoon cleaning up the Oliver, taking the scale off the bed and even gave her a good coat of paste wax once things were shined up. I turned her back on - she purred like a kitten. Look here, I've never been a superstitious type but I was wondering to myself if maybe Harper didn't see fit to let that old lathe start unless she were properly cleaned up. Just a passing thought, you know. I'd some two by two square baluster stock sitting around and chucked one of them into the lathe. I took Harper's old gouge (I'm not just sure but I believe it might have been the one...) and laid it on the rest with a mind to making a test cut. The damn tool flung itself out of my hands and landed, point down, on my concrete shop floor. Strangest thing - I'd not put but the least bit of pressure on it. There wasn't any sense in having another go at it without a thorough sharpening and stropping, the edge had been made plumb dull by its visit to the concrete floor. After fifteen minutes at the grinder, stone and strop - I ran my finger on an edge that would make even Harper proud. At way past dinner time, my wife came out to the shop. By that time I'd made half a dozen finials, just like Harper used to make for them tall case clocks. Each one was an exact mate to all the others. My wife sat the dinner plate next to the lathe and said, "I didn't know that you could do turnings. They're so beautiful." I looked up and saw she had a funny sort of expression on her face. My wife is a good , strong Christian woman and has no tolerance for superstition or any such ungodly foolery. I smiled at her and said, "Yes, they are beautiful, aren't they?" Regards, Tom Thomas J. Watson - Cabinetmaker Gulph Mills, Pennsylvania http://users.snip.net/~tjwatson Remove CLUETOKEN to reply to email. |
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Dead Man's Tools
Had a hard time reading your story. Had an even harder time time writing this post. On account of the tears that kept welling up in my eyes. I've known a few old time artisans and craftsman. This story brought back some memories. Where has the time gone?? And where are all of our old friends?? You take care Tom Watson. You keep livin' like this, and in another fifty years, another generation will be writin' tales like this about you. Lee Michaels "Tom Watson" wrote in message ... Harper Strode died on a fine Spring day in 1987. They found him sitting at his lathe with a pretty fancy clock finial nearly done and still spinning in his old Oliver long bed. His lead man, Jimmy Parker, said that Harper died sitting upright on his stool, which he had taken to using when doing the lathe work about the time he'd turned eighty. On the day he passed, Harper was ninety three years old. Jimmy told us that Harper must have gone on to the other side while trying to decide if he needed to strop his gouge, as his finger was on the tools edge and he had a sort of thoughtful look to his face. Harper was a fussy sort about edges, as is about right for a man who'd made some of the finest furniture in Chester County for seven decades and who always was a man to keep a cutting edge just right. He was a neat and orderly man too and it didn't surprise Jimmy a bit that he had died without dropping his gouge and without falling off his stool. Jimmy figured that the first thing Harper would have said to Saint Peter would be, "I wish you'd given me enough warning so I could have shut down the lathe." Harper Strode was for certain sure the best known and best loved cabinetmaker in Chester County and more people turned out for his funeral than had shown up for Deeter Collins', who was a pretty famous baseball player in our parts and who was also a Marine Colonel. We're pretty big on baseball players and Marine's in our town, but Harper's funeral drew half again as many folks as Deeter's had. Harper's work was all over our town and was pretty well distributed throughout most of the other towns in the county, as well as in the farmhouses that were between the towns. He'd never had more than three guys working for him but he'd turned out a powerful amount of cabinets, furniture, clocks and such from his bank barn shop. The clocks were sort of his specialty. In early 1929 he'd agreed to make a tall case clock to sit in the entry way of the First National Bank. Hand shake deals were done even by bankers in those days and Harper had agreed to make a Philadelphia Style Tall Case Clock (which could have been damned near anything, since neither the banker nor Harper could have told you in words what the clock was supposed to look like) for the consideration of two hundred dollars. Ben Timmons, the bank president, and Harper shook hands on the deal and the clock was to be ready before the Christmas Holidays, which was always a big deal at the bank, as the children from the town were toured through to see the vaults and the teller's stations and all that, and they each got a big candy cane and a dime bank card, that was to help them in their learning about saving money. It was Harper's first tall case clock and he was a might worried about how it was going to come out but he contracted with Buddy Charles up in Boyertown to build him the works and they were to be delivered by the end of Summer, so Harper could build the case during the Fall. Well, I guess you know what happened in October of 1929. Old Harper wasn't much on phones and wasn't one to own a radio, but he heard, sure enough, that things had taken a bad turn. Harper saw Ben Timmons at church and told him that he could back out of the deal if things weren't right at the bank. Ben Timmons was the third Timmons to be president of the bank and he was a proud man. He told Harper, "Things aren't too good at the bank right now, Harper but I'll make good on our deal personally." That's the way things were done in our parts back then. Harper Strode was a proud man, too and he told Ben that he wouldn't take his personal money and that he would finish the clock and that, "The bank can pay me whenever times get better." So far as I know (and Ben Timmons said the same to his dying day), no other man on earth had ever said that to a banker before. Now, Harper knew from the pictures that he'd been studying on that his clock would need to have three finials up at the top in order to be a proper Philadelphia Style Tall Case Clock. Most believe that he got this idea from the John Wanamaker Department Store Catalogue, which was, after all, the biggest store in Philadelphia and they should know their business when it came to such things. Problem was, Harper had never turned anything before and he didn't even have a lathe. Turns out that Fess Willard up in Honeybrook had a long bed Oliver lathe that he'd got because he thought he could make a few bucks turning porch posts during the Winter when there wasn't much happening on his farm. Fess had a daughter that was getting married, quick like, before Thanksgiving and he bartered with Harper to trade a cedar hope chest for the lathe. Fess was a rough sort of fella and hadn't made much progress with the porch post business and said that he'd spent most of his time dodging lathe tools as they were ripped out of his hands and flung around the cow barn. So, the lathe was pretty much new. Harper studied on this for a while, as he didn't think that he really needed such a big lathe but, when Fess offered to throw in the lathe tools and a half ton of hay, the deal was struck. Well now, old Harper took to that lathe like a duck takes to water. He just knew in his bones which way to come at the spinning wood with the tool, which is no great mystery since the man already knew damn near everything else about working with wood. He was a flat out natural. The clock was a glorious thing. The John Wanamaker Department Store Catalogue didn't show enough detail to tell how the finials should look so Harper came up with his own idea which everyone in town agreed was right smart and is copied to this day by Chester County cabinetmakers. He got paid by the bank, as time went by, and Ben Timmons made sure that all his banker friends ordered up tall case clocks from Harper, so he got pretty famous for them. He made clocks for most of the banks in our county and quite a few for the counties that bordered us. He made quite a few for churches and quite a few more for regular people, too. As Harper's business grew he hired on Jimmy, who had been working as a machinist at the Sharpless Cream Separator Works, and then Lester Worthington, who was a bit addled in his mind but kept the place clean and, as he was a bull strong fella, was a great help in the heavy lifting. Jimmy Parker was thought to be about the best lathe man at the Sharpless Works but Harper never let him touch that long bed Oliver. Harper so loved turning that he wouldn't let anyone else do it. Even when he'd gotten too old to do the other work in the shop, Harper would come in early in the morning and do the lathe work himself. He was of a habit as to wake well before sunrise and do his turning before the other men started their day. He prized his time at that lathe as he prized nothing else. That's why Jimmy wasn't all that surprised to find him sitting there, dead and thoughtful looking, on that fine Spring morning. Well, Jimmy wasn't a man to run his own shop, although he was plenty happy working for Harper. Harper had no children that were interested in the business, so the whole thing was put up for auction. I went to the auction figuring on just watching while all the stuff went for more than I could afford. The saws went high and the planer went for more than what I could afford. Jimmy bought a chisel set and the old grinder. Stevie Watts bought up all the clamps. The last item was the long bed Oliver. I knew that Jimmy had always wanted to have a go at that lathe and I figured he'd bid but he didn't. No one else did, either. You see, the word had gotten around that this was the tool that old Harper had died at and it seemed to have cooled out the bidding. Jimmy wouldn't touch it, even when it got down to two hundred dollars, which was less than half of what it was worth. He told me later that it just wouldn't have felt right to turn on Harper's lathe. My Aunt Fay was fond of saying that, "God hates a coward." When the price dropped to one hundred and fifty dollars, I bought Harper's lathe. I'd always had an idea that I might like to build tall case clocks, just like Harper's. I didn't know anything about lathe work but I'm a willing learner and thought the price was just too good to pass up. I have to admit that the lathe sat in the back of my shop for months before I got around to having a go at it. It was covered in sawdust when I first tried to turn it on. She wouldn't start. I called Jimmy and he told me, again, that the lathe was running when he'd found Harper dead at it and that nothing had been done to it since then. I spent a good part of a Sunday afternoon cleaning up the Oliver, taking the scale off the bed and even gave her a good coat of paste wax once things were shined up. I turned her back on - she purred like a kitten. Look here, I've never been a superstitious type but I was wondering to myself if maybe Harper didn't see fit to let that old lathe start unless she were properly cleaned up. Just a passing thought, you know. I'd some two by two square baluster stock sitting around and chucked one of them into the lathe. I took Harper's old gouge (I'm not just sure but I believe it might have been the one...) and laid it on the rest with a mind to making a test cut. The damn tool flung itself out of my hands and landed, point down, on my concrete shop floor. Strangest thing - I'd not put but the least bit of pressure on it. There wasn't any sense in having another go at it without a thorough sharpening and stropping, the edge had been made plumb dull by its visit to the concrete floor. After fifteen minutes at the grinder, stone and strop - I ran my finger on an edge that would make even Harper proud. At way past dinner time, my wife came out to the shop. By that time I'd made half a dozen finials, just like Harper used to make for them tall case clocks. Each one was an exact mate to all the others. My wife sat the dinner plate next to the lathe and said, "I didn't know that you could do turnings. They're so beautiful." I looked up and saw she had a funny sort of expression on her face. My wife is a good , strong Christian woman and has no tolerance for superstition or any such ungodly foolery. I smiled at her and said, "Yes, they are beautiful, aren't they?" Regards, Tom Thomas J. Watson - Cabinetmaker Gulph Mills, Pennsylvania http://users.snip.net/~tjwatson Remove CLUETOKEN to reply to email. |
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very nice........
-- Ross Canant www.myoldtools.com "Tom Watson" wrote in message ... Harper Strode died on a fine Spring day in 1987. They found him sitting at his lathe with a pretty fancy clock finial nearly done and still spinning in his old Oliver long bed. His lead man, Jimmy Parker, said that Harper died sitting upright on his stool, which he had taken to using when doing the lathe work about the time he'd turned eighty. On the day he passed, Harper was ninety three years old. Jimmy told us that Harper must have gone on to the other side while trying to decide if he needed to strop his gouge, as his finger was on the tools edge and he had a sort of thoughtful look to his face. Harper was a fussy sort about edges, as is about right for a man who'd made some of the finest furniture in Chester County for seven decades and who always was a man to keep a cutting edge just right. He was a neat and orderly man too and it didn't surprise Jimmy a bit that he had died without dropping his gouge and without falling off his stool. Jimmy figured that the first thing Harper would have said to Saint Peter would be, "I wish you'd given me enough warning so I could have shut down the lathe." Harper Strode was for certain sure the best known and best loved cabinetmaker in Chester County and more people turned out for his funeral than had shown up for Deeter Collins', who was a pretty famous baseball player in our parts and who was also a Marine Colonel. We're pretty big on baseball players and Marine's in our town, but Harper's funeral drew half again as many folks as Deeter's had. Harper's work was all over our town and was pretty well distributed throughout most of the other towns in the county, as well as in the farmhouses that were between the towns. He'd never had more than three guys working for him but he'd turned out a powerful amount of cabinets, furniture, clocks and such from his bank barn shop. The clocks were sort of his specialty. In early 1929 he'd agreed to make a tall case clock to sit in the entry way of the First National Bank. Hand shake deals were done even by bankers in those days and Harper had agreed to make a Philadelphia Style Tall Case Clock (which could have been damned near anything, since neither the banker nor Harper could have told you in words what the clock was supposed to look like) for the consideration of two hundred dollars. Ben Timmons, the bank president, and Harper shook hands on the deal and the clock was to be ready before the Christmas Holidays, which was always a big deal at the bank, as the children from the town were toured through to see the vaults and the teller's stations and all that, and they each got a big candy cane and a dime bank card, that was to help them in their learning about saving money. It was Harper's first tall case clock and he was a might worried about how it was going to come out but he contracted with Buddy Charles up in Boyertown to build him the works and they were to be delivered by the end of Summer, so Harper could build the case during the Fall. Well, I guess you know what happened in October of 1929. Old Harper wasn't much on phones and wasn't one to own a radio, but he heard, sure enough, that things had taken a bad turn. Harper saw Ben Timmons at church and told him that he could back out of the deal if things weren't right at the bank. Ben Timmons was the third Timmons to be president of the bank and he was a proud man. He told Harper, "Things aren't too good at the bank right now, Harper but I'll make good on our deal personally." That's the way things were done in our parts back then. Harper Strode was a proud man, too and he told Ben that he wouldn't take his personal money and that he would finish the clock and that, "The bank can pay me whenever times get better." So far as I know (and Ben Timmons said the same to his dying day), no other man on earth had ever said that to a banker before. Now, Harper knew from the pictures that he'd been studying on that his clock would need to have three finials up at the top in order to be a proper Philadelphia Style Tall Case Clock. Most believe that he got this idea from the John Wanamaker Department Store Catalogue, which was, after all, the biggest store in Philadelphia and they should know their business when it came to such things. Problem was, Harper had never turned anything before and he didn't even have a lathe. Turns out that Fess Willard up in Honeybrook had a long bed Oliver lathe that he'd got because he thought he could make a few bucks turning porch posts during the Winter when there wasn't much happening on his farm. Fess had a daughter that was getting married, quick like, before Thanksgiving and he bartered with Harper to trade a cedar hope chest for the lathe. Fess was a rough sort of fella and hadn't made much progress with the porch post business and said that he'd spent most of his time dodging lathe tools as they were ripped out of his hands and flung around the cow barn. So, the lathe was pretty much new. Harper studied on this for a while, as he didn't think that he really needed such a big lathe but, when Fess offered to throw in the lathe tools and a half ton of hay, the deal was struck. Well now, old Harper took to that lathe like a duck takes to water. He just knew in his bones which way to come at the spinning wood with the tool, which is no great mystery since the man already knew damn near everything else about working with wood. He was a flat out natural. The clock was a glorious thing. The John Wanamaker Department Store Catalogue didn't show enough detail to tell how the finials should look so Harper came up with his own idea which everyone in town agreed was right smart and is copied to this day by Chester County cabinetmakers. He got paid by the bank, as time went by, and Ben Timmons made sure that all his banker friends ordered up tall case clocks from Harper, so he got pretty famous for them. He made clocks for most of the banks in our county and quite a few for the counties that bordered us. He made quite a few for churches and quite a few more for regular people, too. As Harper's business grew he hired on Jimmy, who had been working as a machinist at the Sharpless Cream Separator Works, and then Lester Worthington, who was a bit addled in his mind but kept the place clean and, as he was a bull strong fella, was a great help in the heavy lifting. Jimmy Parker was thought to be about the best lathe man at the Sharpless Works but Harper never let him touch that long bed Oliver. Harper so loved turning that he wouldn't let anyone else do it. Even when he'd gotten too old to do the other work in the shop, Harper would come in early in the morning and do the lathe work himself. He was of a habit as to wake well before sunrise and do his turning before the other men started their day. He prized his time at that lathe as he prized nothing else. That's why Jimmy wasn't all that surprised to find him sitting there, dead and thoughtful looking, on that fine Spring morning. Well, Jimmy wasn't a man to run his own shop, although he was plenty happy working for Harper. Harper had no children that were interested in the business, so the whole thing was put up for auction. I went to the auction figuring on just watching while all the stuff went for more than I could afford. The saws went high and the planer went for more than what I could afford. Jimmy bought a chisel set and the old grinder. Stevie Watts bought up all the clamps. The last item was the long bed Oliver. I knew that Jimmy had always wanted to have a go at that lathe and I figured he'd bid but he didn't. No one else did, either. You see, the word had gotten around that this was the tool that old Harper had died at and it seemed to have cooled out the bidding. Jimmy wouldn't touch it, even when it got down to two hundred dollars, which was less than half of what it was worth. He told me later that it just wouldn't have felt right to turn on Harper's lathe. My Aunt Fay was fond of saying that, "God hates a coward." When the price dropped to one hundred and fifty dollars, I bought Harper's lathe. I'd always had an idea that I might like to build tall case clocks, just like Harper's. I didn't know anything about lathe work but I'm a willing learner and thought the price was just too good to pass up. I have to admit that the lathe sat in the back of my shop for months before I got around to having a go at it. It was covered in sawdust when I first tried to turn it on. She wouldn't start. I called Jimmy and he told me, again, that the lathe was running when he'd found Harper dead at it and that nothing had been done to it since then. I spent a good part of a Sunday afternoon cleaning up the Oliver, taking the scale off the bed and even gave her a good coat of paste wax once things were shined up. I turned her back on - she purred like a kitten. Look here, I've never been a superstitious type but I was wondering to myself if maybe Harper didn't see fit to let that old lathe start unless she were properly cleaned up. Just a passing thought, you know. I'd some two by two square baluster stock sitting around and chucked one of them into the lathe. I took Harper's old gouge (I'm not just sure but I believe it might have been the one...) and laid it on the rest with a mind to making a test cut. The damn tool flung itself out of my hands and landed, point down, on my concrete shop floor. Strangest thing - I'd not put but the least bit of pressure on it. There wasn't any sense in having another go at it without a thorough sharpening and stropping, the edge had been made plumb dull by its visit to the concrete floor. After fifteen minutes at the grinder, stone and strop - I ran my finger on an edge that would make even Harper proud. At way past dinner time, my wife came out to the shop. By that time I'd made half a dozen finials, just like Harper used to make for them tall case clocks. Each one was an exact mate to all the others. My wife sat the dinner plate next to the lathe and said, "I didn't know that you could do turnings. They're so beautiful." I looked up and saw she had a funny sort of expression on her face. My wife is a good , strong Christian woman and has no tolerance for superstition or any such ungodly foolery. I smiled at her and said, "Yes, they are beautiful, aren't they?" Regards, Tom Thomas J. Watson - Cabinetmaker Gulph Mills, Pennsylvania http://users.snip.net/~tjwatson Remove CLUETOKEN to reply to email. |
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Dead Man's Tools
Wonderful way with words and colloquial (sp?) filled descriptions
of a time and place not likely to return -when a handshake was far more binding than any 40 page legalese contract that isn't worth the paper it was printed on. The cast of characters could be found in most small towns and some of the names might even be the same. Much of those days values are all but forgotten - except for a few who carry on the best of those times. Mr. Watson, you are surely one of those few who take pride in doing their work right and then some. And I'm certain that your handshake agreements are more binding than any document you might sign. Thanks - this one's another keeper. charlie b |
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Dead Man's Tools
Keith Bohn, speechless... |
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Dead Man's Tools
Words fail me...
Thank God they do not fail you! Tom "Tom Watson" wrote in message ... Harper Strode died on a fine Spring day in 1987. They found him sitting at his lathe with a pretty fancy clock finial nearly done and snipped wonderful tale |
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Dead Man's Tools
Tom Watson wrote:
Harper Strode died on a fine Spring day in 1987. They found him Regards, Tom Thomas J. Watson - Cabinetmaker Gulph Mills, Pennsylvania Tom, I was born in Lancaster County, and your story took me home for a while. I didn't recognise the names of the people, but I know the places and people like them. My parents lived in Honeybrook for a few years when my father retired. My mother even has a tall case clock like you describe, though her's is too old to have been one of Harper's and has brass finials. Now I'm going to have to go visit . . . Bill Ranck Blacksburg, Va. |
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Dead Man's Tools
There's not a whole lot that can be said following that wonderful story.
Fact or fiction, you have one of the greatest gifts of writing that I have seen in a long while. I hope that there is a book of stories (short or otherwise) somewhere in your future. Steve P. |
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Dead Man's Tools
I have said this before.
I think you are in the wrong line of work. Anybody who can come up with those words needs to be doing it for a living. Tom Watson wrote: Harper Strode died on a fine Spring day in 1987. |
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Dead Man's Tools
Tom,
The story reminded me of my great uncle. Died sitting in his ez chair with his favorite pipe in his hand. His wife had passed on recently. You are a fine writer. Wes Tom Watson wrote: Harper Strode died on a fine Spring day in 1987. They found him sitting at his lathe with a pretty fancy clock finial nearly done and still spinning in his old Oliver long bed. His lead man, Jimmy Parker, said that Harper died sitting upright on his stool, which he had taken to using when doing the lathe work about the time he'd turned eighty. On the day he passed, Harper was ninety three years old. [snip] -- Reply to: Whiskey Echo Sierra Sierra AT Gee Tee EYE EYE dot COM Lycos address is a spam trap. |
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Dead Man's Tools
On Wed, 16 Jul 2003 21:12:50 -0400, Tom Watson
wrote: Harper Strode died on a fine Spring day in 1987. ........ I smiled at her and said, "Yes, they are beautiful, aren't they?" Thanks, Tom Tim Douglass http://www.DouglassClan.com |
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Dead Man's Tools
Tom Watson wrote in message . ..
Harper Strode died on a fine Spring day in 1987. They found him sitting at his lathe with a pretty fancy clock finial nearly done and still spinning in his old Oliver long bed. sniiped Excellent story Tom. Thanks for putting it on paper.. err ...into 0s and 1s. Cheers, Mike |
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Once again Tom, simply marvelous.
Nahmie "Tom Watson" wrote in message ... Harper Strode died on a fine Spring day in 1987. snippage |
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Last night I was straightening out my garage. Against the wall under an ice
chest was a tool box my dad gave me before he died from Leukemia. I walked over and took a look at the tools dad had kept in that old beat up box. He was *no* handyman - bought the little gadgets when he though he might be able to use them - and that was about all there was to it. I've still got them - still in that four tiered tool box. Then you wrote this. Thanks Tom. Jim |
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Thanks, Tom. Pardon me for stating the obvious. You are not only a
cabinetmaker. You are also one damned fine wordsmith. Thanks for the tear jerker. We all occasionally need to be emotioinal. Later, Beej "Tom Watson" wrote in message ... Harper Strode died on a fine Spring day in 1987. They found him sitting at his lathe with a pretty fancy clock Snip of a marvelous story. Regards, Tom Thomas J. Watson - Cabinetmaker Gulph Mills, Pennsylvania http://users.snip.net/~tjwatson Remove CLUETOKEN to reply to email. |
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Thanks, Tom. Pardon me for stating the obvious. You, sir, are not only a
cabinetmaker, you are also one damned fine wordsmith. Thanks again. Later, Beej "Tom Watson" wrote in message ... snip of a marvelous story Regards, Tom Thomas J. Watson - Cabinetmaker Gulph Mills, Pennsylvania http://users.snip.net/~tjwatson Remove CLUETOKEN to reply to email. |
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Dead Man's Tools
Tom Watson wrote:
Harper Strode died on a fine Spring day in 1987. They found him sitting at his lathe with a pretty fancy clock finial nearly done and still spinning in his old Oliver long bed. snip of a beautifully written tale Thank you for sharing this Tom, it was absolutely wonderful to read. I hope you'll submit it for possible publication like Walt does with his. Scott -- An unkind remark is like a killing frost. No matter how much it warms up later, the damage remains. |
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On Wed, 16 Jul 2003 21:12:50 -0400, Tom Watson
wrote: I smiled at her and said, "Yes, they are beautiful, aren't they?" Regards, Tom Thomas J. Watson - Cabinetmaker Gulph Mills, Pennsylvania http://users.snip.net/~tjwatson Remove CLUETOKEN to reply to email. Now there's a first; a story involving banks, and I came out the richer for it! It don't get better than that. Thanks Take Care, Gnube I don't want to win the lottery I just want to win a barn full of seasoned timber! ;O) |
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Very well told. You have a way with words. Thank you.
Bruce |
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I smiled at her and said, "Yes, they are beautiful, aren't they?"
Nice one! Is it true? Does it matter? |
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Dave Davenport responds:
I smiled at her and said, "Yes, they are beautiful, aren't they?" Nice one! Is it true? Does it matter? Nope. It may or may not be factual, but it's true. Charlie Self We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom. Stephen Vincent Benet |
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I want to thank everybody for the kind words about my little story.
I'm happy, and a little surprised, that so many people seemed to enjoy it. Thanks again .. Regards, Tom Thomas J. Watson - Cabinetmaker Gulph Mills, Pennsylvania http://users.snip.net/~tjwatson Remove CLUETOKEN to reply to email. |
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In ,
Tom Watson spewed forth and said: I want to thank everybody for the kind words about my little story. I'm happy, and a little surprised, that so many people seemed to enjoy it. Thanks again . No thanks needed. Not only did most of the wreckers enjoy it, I sent it to about a dozen friends that enjoyed it too. I will agree with the majority here though, you could definately give up yer day jobg |
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Ed wrote:
Tom Watson wrote in message . .. Harper Strode died on a fine Spring day in 1987. They found him sitting at his lathe with a pretty fancy clock finial nearly done and still spinning in his old Oliver long bed. His lead man, Jimmy Parker, said that Harper died sitting upright on his stool, which he had taken to using when doing the lathe work about the time he'd turned eighty. On the day he passed, Harper was ninety three years old. Jimmy told us that Harper must have gone on to the other side while trying to decide if he needed to strop his gouge, as his finger was on the tools edge and he had a sort of thoughtful look to his face. Harper was a fussy sort about edges, as is about right for a man who'd made some of the finest furniture in Chester County for seven decades and who always was a man to keep a cutting edge just right. He was a neat and orderly man too and it didn't surprise Jimmy a bit that he had died without dropping his gouge and without falling off his stool. Jimmy figured that the first thing Harper would have said to Saint Peter would be, "I wish you'd given me enough warning so I could have shut down the lathe." Harper Strode was for certain sure the best known and best loved cabinetmaker in Chester County and more people turned out for his funeral than had shown up for Deeter Collins', who was a pretty famous baseball player in our parts and who was also a Marine Colonel. We're pretty big on baseball players and Marine's in our town, but Harper's funeral drew half again as many folks as Deeter's had. Harper's work was all over our town and was pretty well distributed throughout most of the other towns in the county, as well as in the farmhouses that were between the towns. He'd never had more than three guys working for him but he'd turned out a powerful amount of cabinets, furniture, clocks and such from his bank barn shop. The clocks were sort of his specialty. In early 1929 he'd agreed to make a tall case clock to sit in the entry way of the First National Bank. Hand shake deals were done even by bankers in those days and Harper had agreed to make a Philadelphia Style Tall Case Clock (which could have been damned near anything, since neither the banker nor Harper could have told you in words what the clock was supposed to look like) for the consideration of two hundred dollars. Ben Timmons, the bank president, and Harper shook hands on the deal and the clock was to be ready before the Christmas Holidays, which was always a big deal at the bank, as the children from the town were toured through to see the vaults and the teller's stations and all that, and they each got a big candy cane and a dime bank card, that was to help them in their learning about saving money. It was Harper's first tall case clock and he was a might worried about how it was going to come out but he contracted with Buddy Charles up in Boyertown to build him the works and they were to be delivered by the end of Summer, so Harper could build the case during the Fall. Well, I guess you know what happened in October of 1929. Old Harper wasn't much on phones and wasn't one to own a radio, but he heard, sure enough, that things had taken a bad turn. Harper saw Ben Timmons at church and told him that he could back out of the deal if things weren't right at the bank. Ben Timmons was the third Timmons to be president of the bank and he was a proud man. He told Harper, "Things aren't too good at the bank right now, Harper but I'll make good on our deal personally." That's the way things were done in our parts back then. Harper Strode was a proud man, too and he told Ben that he wouldn't take his personal money and that he would finish the clock and that, "The bank can pay me whenever times get better." So far as I know (and Ben Timmons said the same to his dying day), no other man on earth had ever said that to a banker before. Now, Harper knew from the pictures that he'd been studying on that his clock would need to have three finials up at the top in order to be a proper Philadelphia Style Tall Case Clock. Most believe that he got this idea from the John Wanamaker Department Store Catalogue, which was, after all, the biggest store in Philadelphia and they should know their business when it came to such things. Problem was, Harper had never turned anything before and he didn't even have a lathe. Turns out that Fess Willard up in Honeybrook had a long bed Oliver lathe that he'd got because he thought he could make a few bucks turning porch posts during the Winter when there wasn't much happening on his farm. Fess had a daughter that was getting married, quick like, before Thanksgiving and he bartered with Harper to trade a cedar hope chest for the lathe. Fess was a rough sort of fella and hadn't made much progress with the porch post business and said that he'd spent most of his time dodging lathe tools as they were ripped out of his hands and flung around the cow barn. So, the lathe was pretty much new. Harper studied on this for a while, as he didn't think that he really needed such a big lathe but, when Fess offered to throw in the lathe tools and a half ton of hay, the deal was struck. Well now, old Harper took to that lathe like a duck takes to water. He just knew in his bones which way to come at the spinning wood with the tool, which is no great mystery since the man already knew damn near everything else about working with wood. He was a flat out natural. The clock was a glorious thing. The John Wanamaker Department Store Catalogue didn't show enough detail to tell how the finials should look so Harper came up with his own idea which everyone in town agreed was right smart and is copied to this day by Chester County cabinetmakers. He got paid by the bank, as time went by, and Ben Timmons made sure that all his banker friends ordered up tall case clocks from Harper, so he got pretty famous for them. He made clocks for most of the banks in our county and quite a few for the counties that bordered us. He made quite a few for churches and quite a few more for regular people, too. As Harper's business grew he hired on Jimmy, who had been working as a machinist at the Sharpless Cream Separator Works, and then Lester Worthington, who was a bit addled in his mind but kept the place clean and, as he was a bull strong fella, was a great help in the heavy lifting. Jimmy Parker was thought to be about the best lathe man at the Sharpless Works but Harper never let him touch that long bed Oliver. Harper so loved turning that he wouldn't let anyone else do it. Even when he'd gotten too old to do the other work in the shop, Harper would come in early in the morning and do the lathe work himself. He was of a habit as to wake well before sunrise and do his turning before the other men started their day. He prized his time at that lathe as he prized nothing else. That's why Jimmy wasn't all that surprised to find him sitting there, dead and thoughtful looking, on that fine Spring morning. Well, Jimmy wasn't a man to run his own shop, although he was plenty happy working for Harper. Harper had no children that were interested in the business, so the whole thing was put up for auction. I went to the auction figuring on just watching while all the stuff went for more than I could afford. The saws went high and the planer went for more than what I could afford. Jimmy bought a chisel set and the old grinder. Stevie Watts bought up all the clamps. The last item was the long bed Oliver. I knew that Jimmy had always wanted to have a go at that lathe and I figured he'd bid but he didn't. No one else did, either. You see, the word had gotten around that this was the tool that old Harper had died at and it seemed to have cooled out the bidding. Jimmy wouldn't touch it, even when it got down to two hundred dollars, which was less than half of what it was worth. He told me later that it just wouldn't have felt right to turn on Harper's lathe. My Aunt Fay was fond of saying that, "God hates a coward." When the price dropped to one hundred and fifty dollars, I bought Harper's lathe. I'd always had an idea that I might like to build tall case clocks, just like Harper's. I didn't know anything about lathe work but I'm a willing learner and thought the price was just too good to pass up. I have to admit that the lathe sat in the back of my shop for months before I got around to having a go at it. It was covered in sawdust when I first tried to turn it on. She wouldn't start. I called Jimmy and he told me, again, that the lathe was running when he'd found Harper dead at it and that nothing had been done to it since then. I spent a good part of a Sunday afternoon cleaning up the Oliver, taking the scale off the bed and even gave her a good coat of paste wax once things were shined up. I turned her back on - she purred like a kitten. Look here, I've never been a superstitious type but I was wondering to myself if maybe Harper didn't see fit to let that old lathe start unless she were properly cleaned up. Just a passing thought, you know. I'd some two by two square baluster stock sitting around and chucked one of them into the lathe. I took Harper's old gouge (I'm not just sure but I believe it might have been the one...) and laid it on the rest with a mind to making a test cut. The damn tool flung itself out of my hands and landed, point down, on my concrete shop floor. Strangest thing - I'd not put but the least bit of pressure on it. There wasn't any sense in having another go at it without a thorough sharpening and stropping, the edge had been made plumb dull by its visit to the concrete floor. After fifteen minutes at the grinder, stone and strop - I ran my finger on an edge that would make even Harper proud. At way past dinner time, my wife came out to the shop. By that time I'd made half a dozen finials, just like Harper used to make for them tall case clocks. Each one was an exact mate to all the others. My wife sat the dinner plate next to the lathe and said, "I didn't know that you could do turnings. They're so beautiful." I looked up and saw she had a funny sort of expression on her face. My wife is a good , strong Christian woman and has no tolerance for superstition or any such ungodly foolery. I smiled at her and said, "Yes, they are beautiful, aren't they?" Regards, Tom Thomas J. Watson - Cabinetmaker Gulph Mills, Pennsylvania http://users.snip.net/~tjwatson Remove CLUETOKEN to reply to email. Tom, Your post was wonderful and for me brought back many memories of my journey to becoming a cabinetmaker. Many years ago I worked with (not for his words not mine) a cabinetmaker a German gent Fred Farhbach Pop to all that knew him here on Long Island, he taught me things no one could explain the subtle nuances of wood. He was an old timer when I knew him 79 or 80 everyday at 3pm he would sit at his desk and remove his cap and lay his head down and take a nap about a half hour then he was up and going again. The shop at this time actually was owned by his son Bob. Bob would always say that his dad would be very happy if when the time came he would not get up from his nap one day. I moved on and opened my own shop and about 13 years later I hired a man who worked with them after me when we spoke about pop. He told me that he just passed one afternoon at his desk he was 93 years old he died as he lived covered with dust, I cried that day the old timers were the best. To this day I use what he taught both in the shop and in life. Thank for stirring up the memories. Ed That's a story in itself Ed, thank you. Scott -- An unkind remark is like a killing frost. No matter how much it warms up later, the damage remains. |
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Snip of beautiful story...
Thanks, Tom. -Phil Crow |
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So here I am, backtracking a bit.
I remember reading this post when it was first posted, and I was touched. Then, yesterday, I received word that the man that introduced me to woodworking some 14 years ago had passed away. He put his wife on a plane so she could have a brief vacation. He went home, and he died. It took a couple days for anyone to go check on him. By most accounts he passed on the same day as the original post. The woodworking community lost a fine man in R. Puncochar this week. Please pause a short moment and wish him safe passage. He was a damn good man. |
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Dead Man's Tools
I'm rough and tough and don't cry over nuth. . . .. . . . . .
********************************************* Keep the whole world singing. . . Dan |
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