NEWS!!!

DEALER SELLS VINTAGE HAND TOOLS

When Mill Property Antiques dealer Charlie Williamson started collecting wooden planes more than 25 years ago he never dreamed his vintage tool collection would draw as much attention as it does today. Trades people and collectors travel impressive distances to shop in his well stocked section of the Morgantown multi dealer shop.

 “I met one customer who came from Canada and he was sent by another collector in New Hampshire ,” says Williamson who rates getting to know his customers as the best part of his work. Rick Linn of Athens , Ohio stops at the Mill Property to shop for tools whenever he visits his parents who live nearby. “The nice thing about Charlie’s tools is that everything is in working order,” says Linn who uses hand tools to make reproduction furniture.

Williamson is retired from 33 years at the Johnstown division of Bethlehem Steel in the payroll accounting department. It’s easy to see how a background requiring attention to detail has enhanced his gift for merchandising hand tools. His polished wooden planes are labeled and shelved in neat rows and hand tools hang organized on hooks and in marked bins. The dealer spends hours in his home workshop preparing tools he buys at auctions. “The best case is when you find something you can dust off and put a price on it, but this rarely happens” he says. Asked if he includes his time in the price of his tools, he laughs, “A friend in this business told me you can’t count that part. It’s therapy.”

Sculptors, woodworkers, masons, and carpenters find their way to his tools to use them in their crafts and trades. Others collect them merely for an appreciation of their beauty and historic value. Where else could you find a clapboard chisel that looks like a giant cast spatula? If you thought a gimlet was a cocktail served with lime, you’re right, but it’s also a hand tool that looks like a corkscrew for tiny wine bottles and is used to start screw holes in wood.

Williamson began his personal collection with Pennsylvania plane makers such as Bell from Philadelphia and E.W. Carpenter in Lancaster . Each plane was hand crafted to make a specific detail in the elaborate molding styles found in antique furniture and architectural trim. The more auctions he went to the more difficult it became to resist buying more and as he says, “Pretty soon there were planes all over the house and I realized I had to do something.” The Mill Property Antiques is his first and only sales location since he began selling almost 20 years ago. He shares the space with his wife Joan who sells vintage domestics and collectibles.