Goodbye Beckstoffer's

After 110 years of continuous operation, H. Beckstoffer's and Sons of Richmond's Church Hill have shut their doors. Over their century-plus of hard work they supplied Richmond's builders with countless lineal feet of fine millwork, the highest quality doors, and decorative architectural woodworking of every conceivable kind. Employees were notified of the firm's closure upon their return from the New Year's holiday. It almost makes me feel guilty for complaining about the turkey I received as a Christmas bonus.

My friend Clay and I went over to see the old mill this afternoon. He took a bunch of pictures while we were there, a few of which are included below. More can be seen here.

Elegy to an Old Machine

I started a set of three massive exterior fir brackets this past week. They are 20" tall, 20" long, and 6" wide. Because fir timbers of that size aren't available to me, I assembled a bunch of dressed fir 2-by material and glued it together to make my stock. More about that process in a later post. For now, here's the basic shape of the brackets:



To create perfect glue joints, I used one of my absolute favorite old machines, a Fay and Eagan No. 429 Automatic Glue Jointer and Edge Molder, which we all just call "the tongue and groove machine." Check out the video below to see it in action.



Lastly, here are a couple of old pictures of this amazing machine. You know, this one is so ancient that it doesn't even have ball bearings--just very, very old (but still entirely functional) Babbit bearings.

Hooker Furniture

I drove to Martinsville, VA yesterday to pick up the odds and ends I'd won at an auction of the old Hooker Furniture factory's equipment. Folks have been picking up their goodies for about a month now, so the place was mostly empty. 760,000 square feet of indoor space is a lot of emptiness. I saw many marvels of 20th century manufacturing there including wooden carts with four swiveling feet and a post in the center that ran in a track in the floor like a streetcar. Although I was excited about my loot, it was sobering to think of all the long careers that ended there last March.

The stuff I bought includes a 20 gallon flammable liquids cabinet, a 5,000 lb pallet jack (for moving machines around), an old factory cart with giant iron wheels, an assortment of levels and framing squares, and this beauty:

It's a 72" stainless steel precision straight edge manufactured by Phillipp Zimlich of Aschaffenburg, Germany.  There's a shipping label on the outside of the box indicating that it was supplied to Hooker by Weinig, the leading manufacturers of moulders and other industrial woodworking equipment.  I called Weinig today to get a sense of the replacement cost for this hunk of metal, and...well...I was shocked.  I had kind of an "Antiques Road Show" moment.

Precision straight edges are useful for machine setup in a woodworking shop.  I've found them especially helpful when adjusting jointer outfeed tables.  They can also be used when making full-size shop drawings, but a relatively straight piece of plywood will suffice for that.  For the most part, my interest in this kind of precision measuring and calibration instrument hovers somewhere between the realms of respect for their usefulness and just plain-old fetishism.

Lastly, if anyone reading this ever worked at the Hooker facility in Martinsville, please drop me a note.  I would love to hear your stories.