Re: Let's see your axe's
For sure! Belknap Is renowned, Much like Shapleigh's hardware in St. Louis Or Blish-Mitz. Makers would make and stamp tools just for those big hardware stores. There names and brands became house hold names. Shapleigh's at least in my neck of the woods was TOPS!. You may have heard of a few of there brands. KEEN KUTTER and Diamond Edge. Shapleigh's bought out Simmon's around 1900 if I remember right. Belknap was right there with them! Do you know if they are still in the hardware business? Shapleigh's unfortunately aren't . Blish-Mitz are! So many of the mom & pop's are gone. My local one, Wyeth hardware closed a decade or so ago. A sad day but a great sale! Lots of NOS items. If you are lucky enough to have an old hardware store in your area... support them! And shop for one of those NOS items buried of a back shelf!
The Belknap building got blown up in a movie scene with Sylvester Stallone and I think Wesley Snipes. IIRC the name of the movie was Demolition man. You can google it if you really care.
What's cool is I was at a knife show in Louisville, KY right before they made the movie. The building was still there but in bad shape. I drove right up to it. There was some bricks laying there that were falling off of the corner stone of the building. So I grabbed one. Very cool item. I can't prove where it came from. But me and my son know. He was about 10 at the time. Something to hand down.
One of my biggest regrets of my life happened at that knife show. It was a week end long event. I was after a complete collection of a special edition of the John Primble knifes. I only had money to spend on that.
So the first day there was a really cool foot operated big *** grinding wheel from belknap hardware. It was from the 1800's. The guy only wanted $30 for it. But I could only afford to give up $20 since I was waiting for something in my collection to show up.
I worked on that guy all week end. He wouldn't come down and I wouldn't go up. So on the last day I was the last guy there. I went to give him his $30. I got to watch some guy hand him a $20 and walk off with it.
I still get upset over that and it's been 20 years,,,lol.
The first pic is of a knife display out of the store in Louisville. The second pic is a display case me and my son made 20 years ago. They've just been sitting in my basement collecting dust. Actually my son did sit the store display in my living room just a week ago.
There 15 minutes of your life you won't get back,,,lol. Sorry.