December 2012 – Page 2

From the tool chest of Mr.S Harrington, cabinet maker.

You never quite know what you’ll find, when you open up an old tool box.

I purchased a tool chest recently, from a family member of a ‘Mr.S Harrington’. A lot of Mr.Harrington’s tools were stamped with his name, but one of the most interesting finds was buried right at the bottom of the chest, covered in dust. I love that Mr. Harrington kept receipts for such a number of the tools he purchased during his career. Here are some of the receipts, they make for interesting reading, in that beautiful copperplate writing of the age. What must it have been like to be served in such an establishment as ‘Frost & Barrett’, or ‘H.Griffiths & Son’, quite different to the service one receives these days, I expect.

MrSHarrington_9 — Oo-er, looks like a visit from Mr.Frost is on the cards!

MrSHarrington_11 — ‘Iron for 2″ Stanley Shave with Hole’. Interesting that this receipt is from another location, ‘H.Griffiths & Co’. I also have a lot of moulding planes from Griffiths of Norwich, which were in Mr Harrington’s tool chest.

MrSHarrington_12 — I would love to know which one of these chaps might be Mr S.Harrington, if indeed he is one of them.

If anyone can tell me which church this work was done for, I’d be really interested to know. Thank you.

Feels like time is fast running out to get this little cabinet up and on it’s legs, but hopefully it will be standing by next week.

I did quite a bit on the connecting rails this week, to join one side panel to the other, but spent the rest of the time smoothing the panels with a nice ‘Millers Falls No.18‘ bench plane.

This plane came in a job lot of tools I bought from a gentleman in Romford last week. A fascinating chap, who used to be a pattern maker for the Ford Motor Company in Dagenham. We spent a good couple of hours chatting and he did me a great deal on a bunch of nice tools.

I ended up selling the plane to a colleague on the course who likes Millers Falls, as I already have a large Stanley jointer, and a Stanley 4 1/2. During the course of the day, Alex sharpened up the iron on the Tormek and got the plane cleaned up. I was lucky enough to have a go with it on my cabinet, and I have to say, it was one of the nicest planes I’ve used. It had a really good heft to it, and with the razor sharp blade, was taking fantastic shavings.

Think I’ll end up looking for another one of these at some point. Millers Falls have been on my radar for a long time, but being US-made, whenever I see one for sale, I usually get put off by shipping charges. Quite how this one ended up being used by a craftsman in Romford, I don’t know. I should have asked!