Synopsis: When he’s not making furniture, Garrett Hack is scouring flea markets and auctions and writing books on antique tools. In this article, he describes his experience at the International Tool Auction in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where you can find the best of the best. Seasoned collectors and beginning woodworkers can both find reliable and complete tools here. Hack describes the history of the auction, introducing the reader to the originator of the sale, what it’s like to handle or take apart tools there on the spot, and how you can take something home for a realistically affordable price. You can also shop the dealers, visit with friends, and witness dramatic, high-dollar drama in the auction room.

Twenty-five years ago, I didn’t know a Bedrock from a Bailey, a Sargent from a Stanley or a Collins from a Keen Kutter, but older tools were cheap, and I bought plenty. I was a carpenter, I needed tools, and these used tools were far better than anything I could buy new. Every detail, from shapely rosewood handles to sturdy parts, spoke of quality, of tools designed to work day in and day out. I was hooked. These days, when I’m not making furniture, I scour flea markets and auctions and write books on antique tools.

I recently headed off to the granddad of tool auctions, the 15th International Tool Auction in Harrisburg, Pa., where you can find the rare, the unusual, the pristine— sometimes in the original box. In short, the best of the best are on the block at this two-day sale in late October. But it’s not just a place for studied collectors. It’s a good place for the beginning hand-tooler to find reliable and complete tools. You’d do well to mark your calendar for the 1999 auction, scheduled for Oct. 22 and 23.

Imagine a huge hotel ballroom filled with dealer tables. Some are piled high with usable tools of every sort—planes, handsaws, braces, sets of chisels—with more filling shelves and boxes on the floor. Spread over other tables are levels and boxwood rules, old tool catalogs, rare Stanley planes, British tools including many gleaming Norrises and Spiers, hammers and axes. Four 50-ft.-long tables are spread with more than 1,000 tools to be auctioned off, with the most valuable and smallest guarded in glass cases. Add in buyers two or three deep filling every aisle. Such was the scene for Friday’s dealer show and preview of Saturday’s auction, but the action continued late into the night—over dinner, in hotel rooms transformed into tool shops, anywhere two tool lovers chanced to meet.

Bud Brown started this auction 15 years ago. Clarence Blanchard, a down-home Mainer with a long history of Stanley collecting, has run it for the past two years. It takes an entire year to put the auction together. Among 1998’s gems was a Thomas Falconer coach maker’s plow plane, which sold for $22,500. Also up for sale were almost three dozen Scottish planes—unusual and beautiful examples of a plane maker’s highest art—from Ken Roberts, an early collector. Among the 762 lots—a tool or batch of tools up for bid—were plow planes, Stanley tools, molding planes and unique tools from many trades.

Blanchard gathers a cross section of tools that appeals to a wide variety of collectors and users and then writes a catalog that entices these collectors and users to bid.

From Fine Woodworking #135

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