PROFITS FROM AMERICA'S PAST

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This article began at a Treasures and Trash barn in upstate New York, where I noticed a tourist poking at an old butter churn. "Say, this thing isn't worth lugging out to the car,". he grumbled to his wife. "Why don't they make good copies of tools like they do 'with antiques? I'd pay for something really attractive."

The tourist's comments set me to thinking as I drove home. "Many early American farm and home implements, known to antique collectors as `primitives', are masterpieces of design as well as colorful period pieces," I mused. "Although such articles are often reproduced commercially for mass sale, good handmade copies are much less common. But I don't believe it would be that hard to turn out a limited number of yesteryear's tools by hand. Why, I'll bet I could do it myself!".

And that's how our family comes to be making such decorative items as six inch tall salt and pepper sets, miniature rakes, and ox yokes of all sizes (some of which bring up to S100). Interest in Americana is running high as the Bicentennial approaches, and it seems that my idea was well timed. Perhaps some of the procedures we follow may help other craftsmen to profit from this revived appreciation for our nation's past.

My first step toward the founding of my new business was a trip to the Farmers' Museum in Cooperstown, New York, where I studied the old-time artifacts on the walls and in the display groups (and shot a roll and a half of film). I then called at the bookstore for a copy of Frontier Living by Edwin Tunis see the bibliography with this article and a list of outstanding craftsmen in upper New York State. (I'd also suggest an investment in some further useful references:

[1] a facsimile copy of an early Sears or Montgomery Ward catalog we use the 1895 Ward and the 1925 Sears,

[2] How to Start and Organize a Small Business by Ralph Metcalf, and

[3] How to Make Money with Your Crafts by Leta W. Clarke.)

Next came materials. Since I'd decided to make my reproductions entirely from old wood, I began to collect solid chunks of the material salvaged from old bedsteads and tables picked up at rummage sales. Sheds that were being torn down provided a good source of boards and small timbers.

The use of such materials does present some problems which made my new trade more difficult to learn. I'd already ruined two yoke blocks, for instance, before a friend taught me to bore the necessary holes before I started to dress the piece. He also showed me how to sand inside corners and get at interior curves. "When wood ages, the grain changes," my instructor explained. "But the old stock is best for your purposes."

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