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John Sindelar's Tool Collection
Issue: August 2007
Posted Date: 8/1/2007
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John Sindelar Shows Off - Even More of - His Tool Collection
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Museum Quality
More Where That Came From
In the August 2007 issue of Woodworker's Journal, we featured John Sindelar of Edwardsburg, Michigan, who is working on creating a museum to house the tools he's collected over the past 30-plus years.
We showed some of his tools in the print magazine, but didn't have room for everything - and, even though we're showing you more here, we still don't! You'll have to keep up with his plans for that museum - which you can do by getting in touch with Sindelar Fine Woodworking at 269-663-8841.
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| What is this? It's a Chinese wheelbarrow full of plow planes. Why is this? "It's a place to drive other tool collectors crazy," says John Sindelar. "Most of them only have one or two plow planes, and I've got a whole wheelbarrow full of them." |
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The tool collection includes a black
powder tester from the 16th or 17th
centuries. Powder would be inserted
into the cylinder, and a fuse lit in
the back. Markings on the wheel
gauged the strength of the powder.
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| Some of John's miter planes are from the present day, while others were manufactured as long as 500 years ago. Plane makers represented in his collection include Moon, Buck and Holtzapffel. (The carving goes with a collection of Oriental tools, not seen in the picture, that find their home above this shadowbox.) |
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| John stores many of his antique tools in other antiques, like this tool chest made by a turn-of-the-20th-century Boston pool table maker, who put his initials in the parquetry on the lid. |
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Only half a dozen of these French plane irons with the profile of Napoleon Bonaparte stamped into them are known to exist, says John Sindelar. "Nobody knows the significance of it." |
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| The mermaid brace, carved by David Brookshaw of Spain, is meant to evoke something a ship's carpenter might use - which also explains the whales and ships on the handle. In the foreground is a boxwood ebony plane from the turn of the 20th century. |
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| The Davis levels in John's collection, dating from about 1840 to 1880, are rare tools. "Most didn't survive," he said. They're so finely cast that, "when they fell off a bench, they'd break" |
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Many of the tools John has collected are miniatures, like these planes and the working
scroll saws created by contemporary miniature maker Paul Hamler of Georgia. |
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© 2007 Woodworker's Journal
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