The Maine Event:
As indicated in earlier posts, Saturday after descending to Anemone Cave, and ascending the Beehive, Mrs LS was driving the LSmobile through Hulls Cove, where we intended to eat - hmm, what was it...pulled pork? Oh no, it was lobster, and drink, uh, Atlantic Brewing Co IPAs - when she spotted the Tool Farm / Tool Barn sign, and pulled over (I was head-down, editing a slomo video of Thunder Hole wave crashes). (BTW, let me add here that observing wild turkey courtship from the Park Loop Road is another thing to do on Mt Desert Island, in addition to gobbling up popovers. The turkeys in my parts of PA haven’t been doing so well the past couple of years, so this was an unexpected treat.)
Whoa, this was a TOO of unprecedented proportions for me, or as Mrs LS quipped, “Looks like I found your people.”
I did a slow crawl around the place and came away with a modest clutch, while Mrs LS got directions for the proprietor’s Davistown Museum and Liberty Tool Co store in Liberty ME, for a follow-up next day.
Sunday, on the way, we stopped at three flea markets, where I spent $15 on a Bonney no.23 bumping hammer, a Utica 90-12 adjustable, and an unmarked saw sharpening vise lacking only the tightening lever. That was actually the FOURTH one I saw - the other three were priced $25-ish, and one of THOSE had been welded in two places.
There were a lot of tools at Liberty. A big vise had come in that morning and sold while I was looking around ( I think it was a 5” Prentiss). There was also a 4” Chas Parker, and one of those Athols with the T-groove on the bottom for the heads of bolts. The only item I felt was over-priced (@$100) was the static/anvil portion of a Rock Island no.390 farm vise. All of the most interesting parts of that are on the dynamic side, and it just wasn’t there! Drawers and drawers of sockets, and a zillion (yes, I counted them) glass jars with various junk-drawer items. Every item marked with a price (nice, very nice). Combined with what I bought Saturday at the other location, I spent $23.80. For that I got three big old Utica pliers, a modified Utica pliers, two Craftsman Underline combos, a Dunlap 1/4hex driver, a Stanley Victor screwdriver, a Bonney waterpump service wrench, two Bonney sockets, and an unmarked 1/2hex dr universal (with no detents!?). There were countless other things I would have dragged home, but didn’t.
The museum was undervisited, in my opinion. Two floors hand tools, including neolithic items, primitive iron, and more refined items. Best part, most of the items are for handling! And some interpretive art and artistic photography of tools.
Before leaving Liberty, we moseyed down Main Street four doors, past the Library and Post Office to Frapoli’s Place, a Viet Nam veteran’s antiques & hand tool shop. He had some fascinating recollections and just one concession to power tools - a Walker-Turner drill press, if I recall. There was a shelf of a half-dozen or so adjustable hollow-auger bits, a bin of slate hammers, and other items. What caught my eye there was a Victor Jersey / Stanley Rule & Level no.744 clamp-on vise priced a bit above what I would pay, and an Athol 623 (3” swivel-base) vise, priced, I thought very reasonably. But since I am NOT a vise-collector (especially when Mrs LS is around), I left them both for the next visitor. In my tool-drunk state, I failed to properly examine the clamp mechanism on the 744, which is broken off and missing from my SweetHeart-era 742, so I still don’t have a clear image of what it should look like.
Afterwards stopped at one other place, a barn that was stuffed with fairly-well organized **** of every description, but I was too weary to give it my best effort. Only thing that really held my eye there was a pair of heavy iron lathe legs. NOTHING was priced. Oh well.
So, in all, I escaped Maine having spent a miserly $38.80, which is less than lunch at “market price.”
. I used to live not to far from there.
