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Antique Tools
Watervliet firm sells the special, the rare and the still usable Robert M. Weir
J
im Gehring talks tools. Old tools. Some are rare and valuable. Others, not so much. Gehring is the owner of two related businesses in Watervliet: Brown Tool Auctions and The Fine Tool Journal. He and his staff of Managing Editor Audrey Schilling, Acquisitions/inventory Manager Katyn Adams and secretary Teresa Rendell take antique hand tools on consignment and sell them in eight auctions a year. Approximately 4,000 items pass through their hands annually. Most are common tools: saws, hammers, chisels, braces, axes, adjustable wrenches and vintage product signs. Others are unique: a hand-held drill operated by laterally pulling a chain, a double-throated chairmaker’s jointer, a hand-cranked phonograph, surgical drills, a foot-treadle lathe, a log caliper with walking wheel and an octant (an instrument that was used in astronomy and navigation) made of ebony. Some are extremely old: a brace and a woodworking plane from the 1600s. Others are exceedingly rare: a three-arm plow plane made of ivory and ebony that sold at auction for a world-record price of $114,400, another plow plane made of solid ivory that sold for $41,000 and a pencil sharpener made of rosewood that sold for $17,000. Most of the tools come from collectors who wish to downsize their inventory or from
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Top: Purveyor of antique tools, Jim Gehring collects antiques levels himself. Bottom and opposite page: Among the tools his firms have sold are, from left, a try square with a level made of ebony, a plow plane made of ivory, a plane from the 1600s, and a Stanley No. 1 Odd Jobs tool.
20 | Encore FEBRUARY 2017