Well I've got today off work but my wife has to go in. She leaves for work and I figure today is a good day to start putting ShopSmith #3 together. So I can show her a new one won't just sit as parts.
I just start to pull out the pieces and she calls me on the phone. Seems she saw a garage sale/tool sale in town (she called me and told me instead of telling me to breath and keep on driving! I grab my "tool fund", hop in the Jeep and head towards town. I don't have very high hopes since it is 2 p.m. and around here the tools are gone fast. I pull in and there is no one else there shopping. I walk into the garage and see one of the best tool sales I've hit in a long time.
First we have a Porter Cable biscuit jointer in perfect shape and a Porter Cable 3 x 21 belt sander. They are the old PC's with metal housings.
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Next we have a whole crap load of taps and dies.
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Scraper, brand new pipe cutter, Old hand drill, etc
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A pile of clamps various sizes, a little rusty from sitting but just a little cleanup and I'm in business.
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I spent $40 on everything. I missed out on the hand planes seems someone stopped in early and grabbed every one. All of these tools are high quality and it seems everything he bought was high quality, (i.e Porter cable hand tools). I talked with the guy for a while, seems Grandpa went in the Hospital and isn't coming out and it's time to clean out the stuff from him and Great Grandpa. They are still going thru the stuff and I will be stopping back in. I asked him if they had any more clamps. He says yeah a couple I haven't gone thru yet, one of them was a ShopSmith brand. The next question was of course - "do you have any ShopSmith stuff?" He tells me that they found an ER in the corner of the basement covered with a tarp that looked brand new. He was going to throw it in the scrap pile because they didn't know what it was. The son told him it looked new so they shouldn't scrap it. They called a friend at church who was into woodworking and he told them what it was. They proceded to give it to him - free. They want the stuff to go to someone who will use them when they can, to honor Grandpa. I tell them if you find anything else ShopSmith put it aside and I'll pick it up. He says no problem. Seems Grandpa made custom staircases one of his bragging points was he built the staircase in Aretha Franklins house in Detroit. I will be going back to look for more goodies.
