Taking care of my warehouse manager

S

stevewest

Joined
Nov 25, 2006
Messages
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I am an outside salesman for a large construction material supply company. My warehouse manager is one truly nice guy and does anything he can to take care of me and my customers. He lives outside of town on around 40 acres. Has three kids, an old tractor, takes his kids to the 4H archery club twice a week, takes everybody down to the river to go canoeing, heads to church every Sunday, just a really good guy. I had an old Plumb Rockaway that I got off the bay for 20.00 back when you could still do that. Original haft that was a little beat up. The edge had some dings in it and someone tried to sharpen it with a dremel tool - it had tracks all over the bit and was pretty rusty - really dingy looking. Got it all cleaned up - sanded down the haft to where there was still some of the Plumb red showing and got 6-7 coats of linseed oil on it with a couple of coats of tung oil to finish it off. Filed all of the dremel tracks out, got most of the dings out of the edge and straightened It up alittle to take the excessive curve out and thinned the bit down a little. Polished the edge down to 1500 grit - alittle excessive, but it does make it look nice. Re-wedged w/some walnut. Coat of wax on the whole thing - it looked pretty good! Dropped it off a couple of weeks ago. He was truly grateful - I think things have been alittle tough for him and you could tell he really appreciated it. Showed me a pic the other day of the woodpile he is now working on. Anybody else gifted an axe?
 
Stevewest, that was a very nice gesture, especially in the knowledge that it's going to be useful, appreciated and well cared for. There are lots of us tool nutz that can't help but bring home foundling, orphaned, gifted or garage sale heads to ensure they don't wind up in recycle bins and scrap piles. For many of us these excuses provide wonderful practice pieces and projects, but truth of the matter is, once they've been refurbished, most of them languish. How many functional axes do you/me/us really need, especially ones with little or no collector nor historical value?
Speaking of 'gifting to the needy' I was taken entirely by surprise to find a Plumb rafting head in my mailbox 2 years ago. The sender's Washington State address happened to coincide with Square_peg's. It sure made my day! And prompted getting off my duff to re-shape, slim and octagon-ize a 'club-like' maul handle to fit it on to. The ability to smack the poll of a stuck axe with a BFH or a sledge (without actually marring the implement) culminated a half century long dream, for me.
 
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