An architect friend once suggested I make some simple, dovetailed, pine toolboxes and hand them out to my contractor friends, with the caveat that after a few years I could get them back and replace them with fresh ones. The idea was that the old, original toolboxes, having been used in “the trades” for the intervening years, would have developed a lovely worn-look and a rich patina…that she assured me would have value. Those returned toolboxes, she said, could be sold, not as actual antiques, but as what they actually were: hand-crafted work, worn with use and carrying a beauty that only can develop over time. I knew she was right. I have as soft spot for old, handmade toolage that has been worn by use; it moves me deeply somehow. My shop is filled with such things, some still in fine working order, some well beyond their useful life, but those, more beautiful still. The maker’s mark is clear upon the best of them, so is the tale of the user. The maker– The user. Sometimes I am the former, sometimes the latter…Sometimes, I am both.

I never truly followed my architect friend’s sales advice, but I did make several pine toolboxes for myself once, well over twenty years ago. Over time I have filled those boxes with tools, tossed them around heedlessly, sat on them and stood on them. They have been left behind at job-sites, forgotten, then found again, and now, after all this, they look…old. And, the story these toolboxes tell, it is my story.

Just this week, I took one of those worn boxes, dumped out the contents and rubbed it down with a coat of linseed oil and turpentine to see what it would look like. 

Whoa!

Then, on Christmas day, I got my tools out and I carved my six-year-old grandson’s name right into the side of that old toolbox, and I gave it to him for Christmas. To him, it is an antique.