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WANTED Old tools for artistic front porch enclosure and railing (Rochester)
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We all have some in our basements and in the backs of old toolboxes. Grandpa used them. You keep them because maybe they’re worth something if you can find a market for them, but it’s usually never going to happen . It’s a small and fleeting market, despite the tables of unsold items at flea markets.
Specifically, I need old steel and iron tools. Some wood is ok, no plastic, no chromed tools.
Your old tools will be preserved in my front railing. I have a junky old railing from a box store now, and it needs to be replaced. I’m an artist, so I can’t make anything easy on myself. If you’re looking at real museum pieces, what you have is better than what I need. I’m looking for the ones that only stubbornness has kept you from handing to goodwill, an emotional attachment you don’t even have, as your only memory of them is as placeholders in old tool boxes, or because a relative once used them. They can be rusty. They shouldn’t be beautiful. Old blued steel hand tools are ideal. The metal welds well and they hold a rust neutralizing finish very well.
Here’s my plan:
I need to collect old tools that folks don’t mind giving away free. They don’t need to be valuable or functional, just old. There can’t be any chrome, as it wrecks welds, and there can’t be plastic handles, because I don’t want to look at plastic handles. Wrenches, saws, pry bars, saw blades, screwdrivers, any old hand tool, really. They will not be scrapped or destroyed; they’ll be turned I to functional art. I will be welding them together to make the railing and gate/fence that encloses my front porch and leads down my front stairs to the sidewalk. They’ll essentially be preserved forever for posterity, on display for everyone who walks past, or for as long as they last, which should be until long after we’re all dead.
I’ll create the gate/railing, have it sand blasted and then coat it in rust neutralizer and black enamel to protect the metal from corrosion. Any wood handles and such that I can keep intact will get a nice deep penetrating oil waterproofing treatment to stick out among the black steel tool amalgam. It should be pretty neat when it’s done, truly one of a kind.
If you donate a tool or tools, I will give you the address and take your name and number to let you know when it’s done, should you want to come see what your tools went toward. I could send a pic alternately. You can bring your great grandchildren by in 30 years and point at the wrench grandpa once used to drive a nail.
Feel free to email, text or call. I may not answer calls right away, so leave me a voice mail or text first if you want to bypass my secretary, (me) who doesn’t answer calls that come from unknown numbers as a rule of thumb. I check email less frequently, but don’t let that dissuade you from email, either. They’re all valid forms of getting hold of me. I expect this collection stage to take some time, which I have.
I’ll come get the tools from you, or we can meet at your local police station or grocery store or fire house; whatever’s best for you. You don’t have to drive to me, or if you prefer to drop them off here, I’m flexible with that as well. Whatever’s easiest for you and puts more old tools into the plan faster.
Thank you in advance! I look forward to begin building!