This is the home page for PAST Tool Collectors (formerly Preserving Arts and Skills of the Trades).
We now provide password-protected login capability to allow members to update their address and
contact information. You can also download current and some older issues of the ToolTalk
newsletter in PDF (Portable Document Format) form. IF YOU ARE A
MEMBER and you wish to obtain a user/login name, send a message to
tool.room (note the "dot") at the domain pasttools.org
requesting site access. Please specify what you want to use as
your user name - do NOT provide a password. A temporary password is
created by the system and sent to you via email. You can change it
later.
We also have two mailing lists: General Announcements and Tool Experts. The first will allow us to send you information about tool shows, board elections, membership renewals, etc. This will help us keep postage costs under control. The Experts list will allow us to forward questions we receive about tools (this happens quite a bit) to a group of people who would like to answer "whatsit" questions. Both are completely voluntary, of course. You can change these preferences once you are logged in.
The purpose of PAST is to encourage the study and better understanding of the early American industries (at home, shop, farm, and sea); also to discover, identify, classify, preserve, and exhibit obsolete tools, implements, and mechanical devices for educational purposes and to share this knowledge with others. PAST was organized in June of 1968 in Los Angeles, CA. PAST is the successor to the Early American Industries Association-WEST which was under the abbreviation EAIA-WEST. In July of 1987, the name of the organization was changed to PAST. PAST is a non-profit, tax-exempt, educational organization.
Any person or organization may become a PAST member upon completion of a membership application and payment of dues. Spouses, significant others, or partners are automatically covered without any additional dues required. If a spouse, significant other, or partner wishes to have his/her own membership, the payment of separate dues shall be necessary. There may be specific meeting fees, over and above dues. Members are entitled to attend all meetings, receive PAST publications, and vote for elected officers and directors. The primary meetings of PAST members occur in the Winter and Summer. Regional meetings are held in the Spring and the Fall.
Become a part of the PAST! Click here for membership information.
Thanks for visiting!
Ken Greenberg, webmaster
Visitors:
Upcoming PAST Events
(Please scroll down to the bottom for non-PAST events)
- Please Note: You must be a member of PAST to attend PAST events.
2024 Fall Tool Show
We are having a tool show in Ripon, CA on Saturday, November 23rd, 2024. You can download directions to the show here.
2025 Spring Tool Show
The date for the next Spreckels, CA show is Saturday, April 26, 2025.
Non-PAST Tool Events
PAST Officers & Directors
President: Bill Tennant
bill@pasttools.orgTreasurer: Bob Weaver
Secretary: Jim Claussen
Directors: Gerald King, Ken Greenberg, Tom Bacon, Tim Daniels, Steve Carlson, West Whittaker
APPOINTED POSITIONS
TOOLTALK editor: Bob Young
Membership: Ken Greenberg
PAST Yearly Dues are $25
For more information, please contact Ken Greenberg at ken@pasttools.org.
Webmaster: Ken Greenberg
This is the Official web site of the PAST Tool Collectors. PAST is an educational organization. Meetings and their attendant activities are an important part of the educational mission of the Association; it is critical that they be governed in a way that is consistent with our stated purpose and is in compliance with tax laws.
All rights reserved.
The PAST official publication is TOOLTALK. For information on advertising in TOOLTALK, please contact Bill Tennant at the above-listed email address.
Some History of the PAST Organization
The club was originally formed as EAIA-West, the western branch of the Early American
Industries Association (see the Links page) in 1968. Arnold Gordon and Matt Matheson
invited potential members from a list compiled by John Fryberg of Los Angeles, as well as
from EAIA sources. The first meeting was held June 2nd, 1968, at Arnold Gordon's home.
Others who could not attend either phoned or wrote in of their interest in forming a West
Coast branch.
Before the discussion began, Arnold showed the group his elaborate collection of old hand tools, which he displayed in his garage and den. He then opened the discussion by giving an account of how he became interested in the collection of old tools and how he felt that others with a similar interest could get together and enjoy this interest in common.
All in attendance agreed to the formation of just such a group to be called EAIA-West. Permission to form the organization was given over the phone by EAIA president Joe Link. Arnold Gordon was unanimously elected the first president of the newly-formed organization.
In 1987, EAIA-West declared its independence from the parent organization. Members were still encouraged to join EAIA but now it was an option rather than a requirement.
There are a number of other web pages that contain photographs from the early years of the organization. To view these, choose a year from the drop-down list below and click on the view button. A photo gallery for that year will open in a new tab or browser. You may close it when done.
Links to other web sites
On this page, we list links to web pages provided by others. Some of these are home pages of PAST members. Others are home pages of other tool collecting organizations. And finally, there is a section of useful resources put together by individuals that should be of general use to PAST members. These sites include such things as tool company history, on-line versions of old tool catalogs, type studies, and so on.
Please feel free to let us know about other web sites that you think would be helpful to your fellow PAST members. There are only two restrictions:
1) Sites that offer tools for sale must be owned by a member of PAST.
2) We only link to sites that are related to tools.
PAST Member sites
| Clarence Blanchard / Fine Tool Journal | www.finetoolj.com |
| Jim Bode / Jim Bode Tools | www.jimbodetools.com |
| Martin J Donnelly Auctions, Antique Tools & Books | www.mjdtools.com |
| Ken Greenberg's Woodworking Home Page | www.calast.com/personal/ken/wood.htm |
| Don Ketman / Woodshop Mercantile | WoodshopMercantile.com |
| Wiktor Kuc / wkFineTools | wkfinetools.com |
Other organizations
Collectors of Rare And Familiar Tools Society (CRAFTS of New Jersey)
CRAFTS is a non-profit organization with the purpose of encouraging interest in early trades and industries and fostering the identification, study, preservation and exhibition of early tools and implements.
Early American Industries Association (EAIA)
The purpose of the Early American Industries Association, Inc. is to encourage the study and better understanding of early American industries in the home, in the shop, on the farm, and on the sea; also to discover, identify, classify, preserve and exhibit obsolete tools, implements, and mechanical devices which were used in early America.
Midwest Tool Collectors Association (MWTCA)
The Mid-West Tool Collectors Association is a non-profit international organization whose purpose is the study, preservation and understanding of the early tools, implements and devices used by our ancestors in their homes, shops, on the farms and on the seas.
Pacific Northwest Tool Collectors (PNTC)
Hosted by PAST member Steve Johnson on his site (see above). Club home page includes links for meeting schedules, history, membership form, etc.
Rocky Mountain Tool Collectors (RMTC)
RMTC is a regoinal club whose purpose is to promote the collection, restoration, study, and understanding of the tools of early trades and crafts and to share this understanding with interested people and institutions.
Southwest Tool Collectors Association (SWTCA)
SWTCA is an organization whose purpose is (1) To promote the collection and exchange of tools, implements and devices used by our forefathers; (2) To study and share knowledge concerning these objects and the crafts in which they were used; and (3) To provide a spirit of fun and fellowship among members having these interests.
Tools on the Web
A brief history of Elliot Storke and the Auburn Metallic Plane Company, text by Dan Weinstock from the catalog which accompanied his exhibit entitled "Yankee Ingenuity: Patented Planes of New York State".
This website is for those who use, study, collect, deal in, or just love, wooden clamps and related woodworking tools. The emphasis is on factory made, rather than individually made, tools. However, noteworthy individuals are often identified. This is Milt's new site.
This non-commercial website is intended to be a resource for people interested in Disston handsaws: whether you're a beginning collector, an online auction seller who wants know more about the saws you're trying to pitch, or someone who wants to restore and actually use a handsaw.
The Hand Saws of Harvey W. Peace
Joshua Clark's site covers the handsaws of Harvey Peace and Vulcan Tool Works, including company history, saw models, patents, the saw industry in Brooklyn during the 19th century, and references to resources used in collecting information for the site.
Russ Allen has added a good introduction to patent searching to this page on the M-WTCA web site. It covers the USPTO site, DATAMP, Google patent searches, etc.
Randy Roeder's Millers Falls home page
This page serves as directory central for a study of the tools and history of the Millers Falls Company during the time that it was located in Massachusetts. The most comprehensive information about Millers Falls available on the web or anywhere else.
This site is dedicated to the thousands of early toolmakers and tradesmen, without whose labor and skills Rhode Island's beloved gentry and capitals of industry, would have had no ships to transport their goods in, no houses to live in, no carriages to ride in, and no chairs to sit in.
Stanley Plane Features Timeline MegaChart
J. W. Popp's web-based chart for identifying the type of Stanley planes by features is built on the work of Roger K Smith and many others. Presented as a spreadsheet with a web interface, although the spreadsheet data can be downloaded for offline use.
Gary Roberts of Dedham, MA has an extensive collection of tool related ephemera - catalogs, billheads, etc. He has scanned many of these in and made them available to the general public.
This page contains links to on-line versions of articles published in ToolTalk or by members of PAST in other places.
This is an ongoing project to make tool-related articles available to PAST members. To view any article, click on the icon in the last column in the table below. The type of icon used indicates what kind of document it is.
- The document icon indicates that it is a web page on the PAST web site. These were scanned in using optical character recognition for the text, then corrected by hand to match the original article.
- The external icon - a page with a right arrow - indicates it is a web page on some other web site.
- The scanner icon indicates it is a web page that consists of images of the article, not text. Think of this as taking a picture of the page, which is easier if an article contains many pictures.
This third group of articles has been scanned in from printed copies of ToolTalk. These are presented as JPEG format images on web pages, which may be viewed in your browser. Click on the picture of a scanner in the table below to open these. If you wish, you may also save these images to your hard drive and print them or view them with other software. The exact method for saving images varies depending on your computer type and which browser you are using. For the most common combination (Internet Explorer on Windows), you would right click in the image and choose "Save Picture As...", then use the dialog box to specify a location to which you would like the image saved. (In Firefox, this is "Save Image As...".) You may also choose "Print Picture..." to direct the image of the page to your printer. For those with dial-up connections, please be aware that a scanned page is about 500 Kilobytes, and might take a few minutes to download.
The documents indicated as HTML format are much faster to load, and are viewed in your web browser like any other web page.
Please also note that contact information (phone number, email, the URL of a web site) may no longer be up to date in a scan of an article that is several years old.
| Title | Author | Where Published | Format | Web |
| American Machinist's Tools | Martin J. Donnelly | ToolTalk (1996) | HTML |
 |
| As Tough as Nails | Stan Hutchinson | ToolTalk (2003) | HTML |
|
| Authentic Scrimshaw Materials | Rod Cardoza | ToolTalk (2000) | HTML |
|
| Basmaison Ever-Sharp Plane Bit | Larry Brundage | ToolTalk (1997) | HTML |
|
| Boardman Combination Tool | Onie Sims | ToolTalk (1997) | HTML |
|
| California Inventors and Their Patents | Larry Brundage | ToolTalk (1995) | HTML |
|
| California Level Patents | Don Rosebrook | ToolTalk (1997) | HTML |
|
| California Tool Works | Larry Brundage | ToolTalk (1995) | HTML |
|
| Christopher Gabriel | Jerold L. Billings | ToolTalk (1994) | HTML |
|
| Collecting Levels | Don Rosebrook | ToolTalk (1994) | HTML |
|
| Combination Tools | Onie Sims | ToolTalk (1997) | HTML |
|
| The Curta Calculator | Al Bennett | ToolTalk (1997) | HTML |
|
| Deering Pattern Wrench | Onie Sims | ToolTalk (1998) | HTML |
|
| Differences Between the Stanley 23 and 23S Levels | Don Rosebrook | ToolTalk (1994) | HTML |
|
| Grinders | Tom Thornton | ToolTalk (1998) | HTML |
|
| A Handy Needlework Tool | Carole Meeker | ToolTalk (1999) | HTML |
|
| Leonard Bailey's 1877 Patent Model | Philip Whitby | ToolTalk (1998) | HTML |
|
| Looking for Clues in All the Right Places | Kurt Lautenschlager | ToolTalk (1999) | JPEG |
 |
| The Lufkin Numbering System of Boxwood Rules | Lee Sell | ToolTalk (2000) | HTML |
|
| The Mechanical Pencil Sharpener | Howard Levin | ToolTalk (1997) | HTML |
|
| The Mechanical Pencil Sharpener, Part 2 | Howard Levin | ToolTalk (1997) | HTML |
|
| Newly Identified Stanley Levels | Don Rosebrook | ToolTalk (1994) | HTML |
|
| Notes on Tool Restoration | Rick Rubin | ToolTalk (1984) | HTML |
|
| Pacific Saw Company | Larry Brundage | ToolTalk (1996) | HTML |
|
| The Rare & Early Planes of the Bailey Tool Company | Harold Unruh | ToolTalk (1995) | HTML |
|
| Restoration of Tools | Al Bennett | ToolTalk (1987) | HTML |
|
| Sizing Hollows and Rounds | Ken Greenberg | ToolTalk | HTML |  |
| Small Into Large (Paul Hamler) | Bill LaHay | ToolTalk (1995) | HTML |
|
| Some Thoughts of a Rule Collector | Henry Aldinger | ToolTalk (1986) | HTML |
|
| The Stanley #1 Fake | unknown | ToolTalk (1988) | HTML | |
| Stanley Bed Rock Planes | Alvin Sellens | ToolTalk (1986) | HTML |
|
| The Stanley No. 239 1/2 | John Wells | ToolTalk (1997) | HTML |
|
| Tool Cleaning notes | Dick Nevins | ToolTalk (1969) | HTML |
|
| Wooden Clamps | Milt Boyd | ToolTalk (1999) | HTML |
|
| Working Ivory | unknown | ToolTalk (1992) | HTML | |
Spreckels show presentation videos!
George Anderson gave an excellent presentation (and had a fine display) about infill plane makers at the 2024 Spreckels show. Yang Ji filmed the presentation and it has been made available through his company, Fusion Woodworking. The three videos are really well done and highlight the breadth and depth of the quality tools that our members were selling that day.
You can view the videos here: