Thread: Starting out buying hand tools - to restore - or new

Restoring and selling old tools is sort of a lost cause unless you have a supply of starting points that is almost cost-free.

Here in the states, you can find planes, etc, on the ground for very little if you're willing to hang a shingle out as a buyer of tools. That means buying a whole bunch of things, including tools that you might not like that well, but have to take with the lot. You'll get estates of tools that way, and it will feel like work.

The idea of sourcing tools from a common source and making them nicer and then selling them for proceeds doesn't really work. You need to have an advantage. Otherwise selling fees, shipping, transaction costs from currency collection - they make the idea untenable.

(I have had luck here and there getting things on ebay that weren't described properly, but that's about it, and it's relatively uncommon because a single second person seeing it ruins it. An example of that is a spiers infill coffin shaped plane that had excellent wood, but rust on the metal bits, pretty ugly. The seller compounded the problem by showing just the iron separate from the plane in their sale thumbnail, and I got all of it for $127. Two hours of filing and refinishing the wood, and it's in superb looking shape. My advantage in this case was the bad listing, as well as being a planemaker, I knew I could drawfile the body of the plane and make it look fresh. I think I could get a couple of hundred bucks more for it, but that kind of thing is once a year, and I follow a lot of auctions. If I sold it, I'd want to have it back, so now it's actually a loss of $127 and a couple of hours worth of time).

Truckjohn & D.W., I think you are both thinking of a much more sophisticated undertaking than the OP has in mind - I doubt he is yet aware of the more esoteric 'collector' market, for which, indeed, you need to really know your stuff! But there are many different levels in the old-tool market - at any flea market round these parts, you may see people selling a mixture of 'usable' tools and absolute junk, with little or no discrimination reflected in the pricing. OTH, there are the well-informed, either buying or selling, but they have their own preferred ways of operating.

If you are starting out knowing very little about tools in general, you are certainly on a steep learning curve and liable to take a beating on at least a few things before you get the hang of it - that's almost inevitable and pat of the learning process, I reckon. If you don't get too carried away at first, and learn your lessons carefully, it won't take too long to get the fundamentals sorted, but it takes a long time and a lot of focus to become a true expert. The more you learn, the more you realise how much more you don't know!

If you just want to get some decent tools & get started, buying from a reputable dealer is an option. You won't get super-bargains, but you should get decent gear at a fair market price. Some dealers sell planes re-furbished, and some sell them with no added polish, the latter being cheaper, as a rule. One advantage of buying this way is that a reputable seller will stand by their goods and replace or refund if it's not up to stated specs. You don't always get that option buying privately or from market stalls.

Once you do know a little about tools you can spot the occasional bargain fairly easily. For example, a friend & I were passing a fleamarket one day & decided to stop & have a look. It was the usual medley of cups & saucers & other stuff in which I had no interest, & we were just about to leave in disgust when I spotted a table full of rust & decided to take a closer look. In the middle of a row of rusted and inferior-brand #4s I saw a Record 07, looking a bit forlorn & well-rusted (but not pitted), and under the grime, Rosewood tote & knob. The junk planes were all tagged at $50, which was about $49.90 more than they were worth, so I asked the seller what he wanted for the 07, expecting something outlandish. He replied "Fifty bucks". I almost dislocated my shoulder whipping out my wallet! It cleaned up with little effort & is one of my most-used planes. The moral is, you should know the value of what you are buying & selling..

But sometimes a "bargain" is often only a bargain if you can take full advantage of it, as with D.W.'s Spiers. I had a much more modest score on a coffin-smoother, an old body casting, not properly finished, with poorly made infill, no blade & no cap-iron, and a price tag of $45: CICS 1.jpg

I hesitated for quite a while, but thought I could see some potential in it, so I brought it home and put a 'bit' of work into it: CS 29.jpg

It ain't no Spiers, but it works well & looks a bit better than before, so I could probably get my $45 back, but nothing like what it owes me at even a modest hourly rate......

Cheers,

I'm definitely not advocating refurbishing anything for the collector market. If you get lucky and run into an almost unused infill plane in a box (from a widow or something), by all means, flip it, but collectors are generally good at cutting out middlemen for all but the rarest of things.

It's the user market that's pretty unprofitable around here, and an issue of opportunism more than anything else. In my area (an area that's old for the states - about 250 years old), there are a lot of old tools, but you have to get to them on the ground before they get to the internet. There are also a lot of people who do that and then make them internet prices or more hoping for a cold sale on foot. My only "honey hole" is a dealer near my parents. There is about a one in five chance when I go into the antique shop where he sets up that he will have stocked the shop and it hasn't been looted (his typical thing might be a good shape stanley 7 that needs a couple of hours of work for $25 - needs a bit of cleaning and setup, but is complete with no need to buy anything else). Phone apps and things of the like have pretty much ruined everything else - people can stand at a flea market and look at the sold prices on ebay and nothing lasts.

The collector market involves knowing too much, though - the things that differentiate a $100 plane from a $500 plane can be pretty subtle, and internet truths (#1s are worth $1500 or whatever) can leave you with a $800 plane with non-original parts, thinking you're going to make a quick couple of hundred and finding no collector interested (they want to buy a plane like that for $50 locally instead, anyway).

Long story short, the easy money (or consistent) is in finding $10 planes on the ground and selling them for $50 after you clean them up. When all is said and done with time spent, you'll likely make very little, but you'll probably learn a lot about the tools.

We do have yardsale raiders here in the states, the type of folks who spend 4 hours at yard sales each week to get a stanley 5 once every other week and boast about finding it for $5. I guess that kind of stuff is still possible - but I'd generally put making money flipping tools up out of my head as a beginner. You'll be lucky to break even or only lose a few dollars, and you'll deal with a lot of aggravation along the way (unexpected broken parts that cost more than the profit you'd make on a plane, etc).

Starting as a beginner and making tools, that's entirely different. It's possible to learn to make decent tools and sell them without too much issue. Not in two weeks, but perhaps within a year or so.

Aforementioned spiers smoother. Picture the sides with pitting.

(I need to clean off the metal parts, there's a bit of shellac on them from refreshing the infills). I've noticed that just from using this plane a little bit, the infills have developed a haze. I guess they take on hand moisture.

If I wasn't going to use, it could be blinged up further (more coats of shellac, etc, until no semblance of wood grain is seen anywhere), but such blingy-blingy is transient once tools meet use, and as it sits, it's not quite as obviously refurbished with the draw file finish on the metal and a bit of dirt.

At any rate, the $127 that this plane sold for is about what a good shape ward parallel double iron will bring (since they are original to old norris planes). I've never been able to win one separate from a plane (which is only important insofar as I'd like to put them in my own scratch-made planes. Lipstick on a pig kind of thing).

https://s18.postimg.org/q67qnl2zt/20180402_223258.jpg

Originally Posted by IanW

I hesitated for quite a while, but thought I could see some potential in it, so I brought it home and put a 'bit' of work into it: CS 29.jpg

It ain't no Spiers, but it works well & looks a bit better than before, so I could probably get my $45 back, but nothing like what it owes me at even a modest hourly rate......

Cheers,

That's quite a nice recovery!

In terms of my tool making comment above, if someone could faithfully reproduce norris and spiers patterns entirely by hand, they could probably make $20 an hour for their time for a hand-finished plane ($20 US). I just have no interest in doing any such thing, because I want the planes myself.

Ian my friend... That's a beautiful infill you rebuilt there. I can tell a lot of work and thought went into it. It's certainly worth significantly more than you gave for it..

I suppose I am trying to help get some thoughts into our OP friend here a bit before he dives in head first and pays a hefty "learning tax" for the privalege of buying some seller's cast off's... I have paid my share of learning taxes... No doubt you have too.. It's one thing when you at least have some idea of what you are getting into - another when you don't...

Originally Posted by truckjohn

........I suppose I am trying to help get some thoughts into our OP friend here a bit before he dives in head first and pays a hefty "learning tax" for the privalege of buying some seller's cast off's... I have paid my share of learning taxes... No doubt you have too.. It's one thing when you at least have some idea of what you are getting into - another when you don't...

Couldn't agree more! And yes, I've paid my dues - still paying to some extent; you only stop making mistakes when you stop learning. The hope is, the mistakes are fewer and less damaging as you get along a bit, and you know enough to spot the genuine gold amongst the dross. I guess we are all trying to help the OP avoid major pitfalls, but in the end, there's only one way to learn, and making mistakes will be part of it. The enthusiasm of a beginner is a huge asset - knowing too much tends to make us timid!

And D.w., funny you should mention hourly rates, I was thinking about that whilst making a few fabricated planes recently. If I wanted to make $20 per hour, I would have to ask Holtey prices! I imagine the blokes at Norris or Spiers were doing just one task like hammering D/Ts endlessly, & became mighty slick at it. Making a few planes, I got a lot better, but still very far from quick. Fortunately, I'm not trying to earn my living at it, but it does make be wonder how much people like Konrad Sauer & the like actually make per hour!

Cheers,

I think konrad may sub out some of the rough work on his planes. I recall him making a titanium plane at one point, and he got a bunch of questions on his blog about how he machined it and he mentioned that someone else did the machine work, but it was otherwise a pain to work with putting it together and peining (i'm sure it was!).

The one thing that surprises me about the spiers, et al is just how good the dovetails are. It's easy to make dovetails that look good at the surface and have no pinholes, but when I filed a fair bit off of that plane above, no pinholes appeared. The dovetails are tight at a greater depth.

I don't have a mill, and some of that neatness is due to accurate machine work, but they're done really well in general - and in this case on something considered to be a factory good.

D.W., we've wandered way off topic, but since fabricating plane bodies is a subject I'm rather interested in atm, I thought it better to start a new thread so we can go on discussing this topic there if you wish...

Cheers

So... To circle this thread back around to where it started.... I would like to offer our OP this challenge/idea to give yourself an idea of how the whole thing goes for you in real life:

Hunt the boot sales and purchase 1 old chisel that looks good to you. Brand of your choice.

Purchase 1 brand new Stanley Sheffield, England made wood chisel - a Dynagrip or Fat Max... Make sure it's actually coming from Sheffield, though... It will make the comparison better if you buy the same size new chisel as the old one...

Clean them up, de-rust, clean off the lacquer on the blade, prep the back, sharpen, and use them to do the same tasks.... How much time and effort did each one require? Did you have to spend money on supplies and additional tools to prep either one? What is your opinion of their use, feel in hand... How does the edge hold up in use? How easy is it to sharpen and maintain the edge?

I think the problem with that suggestion truckjohn is a chisel is a Hog of a thing to resurrect and get running well if its been mistreated in the past . Most second hand chisels need work and they normally wont match the stone you have if the flat side is curved from bad honing on a curved stone. And that's the Hog part of it.
I love My second hand tools but My second hand chisels tend to stay in a box to be re purposed for other uses like knocking out tacks from Upholstered seating needing to be re upholstered. Ive collected nice sets of Bergs and some Titan but for my clean woodwork I go to a new set that I showed here a while back which I fitted Ebony handles. The nice sets collected I will probably sell on .

If the OP wants to have a good time with cleaning and running with a second hand tool then Planes are the go . You would probably agree.

Maybe what we should do is point out the planes to go for . My basic way of going for a good Stanley is if its got a large front knob not small and the brass wheel is large not small . Then its a good one to go for if its got its two original BRW Handles.
The large knob and wheel BRW are the best to use compared to earlier low knob small wheel . I don't get into all the "Types " of changes Stanley went through to much .

Rob

I'll add my 2c.

Regardless of whether the OP is wanting to restore and sell on User or Collector tools, there is going to be a period of learning what's what. He needs to be prepared for the fact that each and everyone of us has paid our dues in Dollars and Time. There is no escaping these. Mistakes will be made, and will cost. And all the research and education takes time. Fortunately that part is monetarily free. As long as these issues are accepted, then it is a fun activity - not necessarily one that will be especially profitable - but I am assuming that is not the main aim here.

Regards from Auckland (for a week)

Derek

WHS

Cheers Matt


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Originally Posted by D.W.

If you get lucky and run into an almost unused infill plane in a box (from a widow or something), by all means, flip it

Woops, I stupidly hit 'edit' instead of 'reply with quote' & had deleted most of your message before I realised it, Colin. My apologies, I'll see if I can get it restored...
IW