Mine was a trading family Living in Nan-Hao district for a hundred years. I was the first to become a scholar, Our house being without a single book. Applying myself for a full decade, I set my heart on bullding a collection. Though not fully stocked with minor writings, Of major works, I have nearly everything: Classics, history, philosophy, belles-lettres-- Nothing lacking from the heritage of the past. Binding up the volumes one by one in red covers, I painstakingly sew them by hand. When... Read Full Story

While sifting through old documents, I came upon this little bit of history that I wrote up a few years ago concerning the famous British Planemaker, John Green and the connections to one Phillipson and Thomas Granford. Herewith in full is...I was curious about the relationships between Grandpa Furdeus (at one time thought to be Thomas Grandford) and Thomas Phillipson after comparing the similarities between the planes. After a bit of investigation, herewith are my discoveries...Yeah and did... Read Full Story

It's peculiar how the world is changing. The digital bandwagon seems to be overtaking us faster than we can run away from it. Over at work, we are all hellbent now on digitizing a major section of our collection. Space is needed for research and the Library has to give up a whole lotta square footage. Of course, we had proposed digitizing material en mass a few years ago...Now that researchers are used to getting their stuff in PDF, they want everything in PDF. Books, journals, old reports... Read Full Story

When last we met, The Chronicle digitization project was wending it's merry way along the path to success. With an end in sight, I solicited and drafted a merry band of volunteers to help with the work of compiling jpeg images into PDF files. Stepping up to the proverbial plate were Jim Esten, Peter Evans, Michael Miller, Bill Kasper, Kirk Eppler, Matthew Groves, Mike Darling, Michael Rogen, Paul Morin and Kari (aka The Village Carpenter). In due course a whole mess of scanned jpeg images... Read Full Story

FolksLuke Townsley, creator of UnpluggedShop.com, is looking for a new owner for the blog. Alas, keeping a blog organized and running is a time consuming enterprise and Luke has his hand's full. To use his words:"These last nine months or so of running unpluggedshop.com have been interesting and profitable to me personally. I have enjoyed doing this site, and believe it fills a needed niche. I am not thinking about closing it, but I don't have the time or incentive to take it to the next... Read Full Story

Somehow, I missed this one. But, following the bread crumbs left by one Galooticus of rec.ww fame, I found my way to the Woodworking Handtool Forum. If I had to come up with a name for a forum devoted to handtools, I could not have done better than to cut to the chase and name it thusly. Read Full Story

We all do it. Watch Ebay auctions to see what the item will sell for. We can then either kick ourselves in the seat if it was a steal, or guffaw at the price some people will pay for a hand painted Disston saw. I monitor Ebay auctions mostly to keep up to date on pricing, what's selling, what's not selling, how much my stuff is not worth any longer, etc. Once in a while I watch something just to see if anyone will actually bid on it. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they do in a big way.Every... Read Full Story

On one hand there is the Chronicle project. On the other hand there is the Moxon project. On the third hand there is a box of Zomig for migraines. Sometimes I believe that Toby Hall has it right... we should return to letterpress printing. Gutenberg was no fool. The Chronicle project is moving along. We have a team of 8 volunteers who happily assemble PDF files from the scanned images I provide. I get the PDF files back and process them through Acrobat for OCR, cropping and the like. I was... Read Full Story

Every now and then I take the time to look back through some of the photographs in my collection. It's hard enough finding early images in good shape, let alone those that feature trades and industries. My particular interest is wood, although leather workers creep in there too. Here and there I can turn up an image of a tradesman and the toolchest that held the tools of his trade. Ok, so that last sentence was a bit repetitive. I thought I would revisit a few images that normally live over... Read Full Story

Recently I picked Early Planemakers of London from my bookshelf for a re-read. Written by Don & Anne Wing and published in 2005, the book is sub-titled "Recent Discoveries in the Tallow Chandlers and the Joiners Companies". This book spoiled me. This is how books should be written. Particularly books that cover an historical subject. From the get-go, the authors state that this is a work in progress, that the material held within the volume is the result of their personal research and that... Read Full Story