Dollar estate sale find. About an hour and a half of wet sanding with wd40 and progressive grades of sand paper. Sharpened with a light stone and finished off with a 5/8 in round x 18 in long ceramic rod that I got years ago. I could never figure out what the ceramic was used for but sure works nice for sharpening.
We have been on this farm officially since 1746 so I have found a few items on the old rock walls here. Mostly its been implement parts of all kinds, but every once and awhile I will find a hand scythe or sickle. Sharpened they really work well and for fence lines beat a weed wacker; not as noisy, faster and really cut the grass. The key is in using your hips and legs and not your back like most people do. There is a company here in Maine that sells high end hand scythes, but I forget the name. A few years back we were mowing a field with a 16 foot haybine at 8 mph or so and baking in the sun and my Uncle says, "I have got to get that AC fixed", and I was like, our forefather's would kill us for even thinking that. Here we are knocking down 16 acres an hour and complaining because we are hot as we sit on our rumps. Back in the old days a farmer would not hire a hired man who could not get at least 3 acres per day, and a really good scythe man could get 5 acres per day. As for estate sales, my wife does this. She buys stuff at estate sales, modifies it a bit and sells it at a handsome profit. If you figure in the labor it is not worth it, she can't get the prices for it if she includes her labor, but everyone gets 24 hours a day in their life so no matter if you are watching TV or converting junk into something saleable, time marches on. Her career is to stay home and take care of the kids and sheep, and anything extra is just extra money. Just more cash flow for the farm and enjoyable creations for her.
Hmm this stuff sells eh? My old boss has a 150 year old farm and there is tons of that kind stuff just laying around half decent condition I might need to go poke around.
It is the opposite of what you would think. The stuff labeled as "collectable" that every one collects and therefore ruins its value as an antique, but its the every day stuff that later commands a high price because everyone throws it away thinking it is just junk. The thing of it is, what is collectable is not the item, but the memories associated with the item. Its not just having an old hand scythe hanging on a wall that people want, its the memory of their grandfather cutting grass out back of the barn where he did not dar drive his tractor and bush hog, or under the back forty fence line. It is funny because you would think old treadle sewing machines would fetch a high price, yet everyone has one so they are worth $150 bucks tops. I got two of them myself!
you have to have an "eye" for it. when you first see it, you can imagine it as a finished or restored item. I've seen a man make some of the most creative birdhouses using what surly was destined for the recycle bin. As for tools, restored hand tools are the most sort after market. The were made in the USA and will last for many generations.
My brother and I deal in rustic barn boards and barn beams that we salvage from old barns. On a hobby level, he usually turns the beams and boards into bench's and harvest tables I turn the smaller stuff into coat racks and cutting boards. I have an eye for the wood side never thought of the old tools.
Interesting, we do a lot of old barn board stuff ourselves. Ours kind of came with the farm, some older buildings, but mostly thousands of board feet of lumber that aged simply because the old rotary sawmill blew a motor and wood just lingered. Protected from teh elements, but aged and now it has that old rotary, rough sawn look to it.
