AWA – A Tool Museum In The Making

As an added bonus to the Atlantic Woodworkers Association’s visit to the Window & Door Co. we also had the good fortune to visit a tool museum in the making! As luck would have it Troy’s brother Kevin lives just up the road a bit and he is in the beginning stages of building a working tool museum.

Tool Museum

Kevin is a member of the Atlantic Tool Collectors Association and has been collecting tools for many years. He recently bought a farm here in Port Williams that has several large barns that will be used exclusively for this endeavor. His goal is that over the next five years he will be able to get his tools organized and displayed into the different areas of specialties like livery, cooper and wheelwright. There’s even plans to hold workshops in the use of these tools and the making of their specific wares!

The highlight of the tour was the collection of pedal operated tools from the W.F. & John Barnes Company of Rockford, Illinois that were built in the 1870’s. Here are a few photos of these fantastic tools:


Here’s a scroll saw:

pedal powered scroll saw

Here’s a lathe:

pedal powered lathe

Here we see the Wood brothers in a bit of a pedal competition with Kevin demonstrating the router:

pedal powered router

Here is the finished routed wood:

routed wood

Here’s a some more photos that show only a small sample of the many tools in this museum to be:

Here’s an old horse cart:

old horse cart

Some spare wagon wheels:

wagon wheels

A table saw:

antique table saw

A collection of fiddle making tools:

tools for making a fiddle

A collection of chisels:

antique chisels

Barrel making tools:

tools for making barrels

Large jointer plane:

antique jointer plane

Saw blades and augers:

lumberjack saws

Here’s one of the barns:

barn

And here’s another barn:

storage barn

It was certainly nice to see Kevin’s vast collection of tools and easy to see why he needs a couple of barns to store them in. There are so many! We’re really looking forward to see how this very noble project progresses. Let us know if you need a hand!

This truly was a bonus to an already exceptional day! Thanks to both Kevin and Troy!

Back to the shop…

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