|
Post by dwayner2 on Sept 10, 2020 23:18:38 GMT -5
Just a few things I picked up this past year. The first one is an old cabbage slicer my Sister wanted, think I got it near KC. It needed a lot of work but I was happy the box was still there. Glued the cracks, steamed and straighten the bent wood, sharpened the blades, re-glued the box and then put some stain and varnish on it....works like a dream. Oops, I see the blades are missing. Must have deleted the “finished” picture. This cart I picked up in Pomona (?) Kansas South of Leavenworth. It was used to haul lids for Folgers cans, that’s what the seller told me. They researched it but could never find out much. On both sides there is still print that reads “Folgers” in big letters. Now this one is really impressive. The next two pictures are of a WWI solders personal gear box. The colors on it along with the look of age really caught my attention. Found it on an Austin TX CL posting. I can’t lift it myself so I just wonder how heavy it was when full of gear and maybe ammo. The next two pictures are of an old egg crate I found in St Joseph, MO on my March trip to see Chuckie and Monkey. I found 2 of them for $25 each while trying to track one down for Chuckie’s Niece (well, ex-Niece). I liked it but didn’t know what I was going to do with it until this idea popped up. Store my potatoes and onions in it in a dark corner of my kitchen. Pretty cool I’d say. Theres more to come but thats for later. I’m heading out to our camp early tomorrow and need to get some beauty sleep. 🤪
|
|
|
Post by pooka on Sept 11, 2020 1:23:35 GMT -5
Around here, they call those Kraut Cutters. With the large number of German immigrants who settled here, those are plentiful. You can bet every home had at least one, if not more. When I search, I find some called the "Indianapolis" Kraut Cutter. Patented in 1909. I'm sure they were made all over. That cart looks like a standard factory cart. I've seen them around here. We were a big industrial town going back to the late 1800s. The problem is, they're so big, people don't know what to do with them, so they end up getting tossed. I'll bet there are still some in a few of the old factories here that haven't been torn down yet. They'd be handy to move stuff around a big shop. That military looking crate must have been for some kind of heavy gear or equipment. With the three strap hinges, & all the metal strapping, inside & out, it's built to hold something heavy. That number on the inside is probably a clue, but I don't know how you could look it up. Everything in the military has a number.
Those egg crates are great for all kinds of storage.
Cool finds.
|
|
|
Post by Chuckie on Sept 11, 2020 7:36:41 GMT -5
Around here, they call those Kraut Cutters. With the large number of German immigrants who settled here, those are plentiful. You can bet every home had at least one, if not more. When I search, I find some called the "Indianapolis" Kraut Cutter. Patented in 1909. I'm sure they were made all over. Pooka: That's the one WE have! I THOUGHT I had posted pix of it out here before, but can't find any. Gotta work a "double header" on funerals today, so will post later or tomorrow. I believe it's made out of cherry too, by the colour of the wood... CHEERS! Chuckie
|
|
|
Post by voodoochikin04 on Sept 11, 2020 8:24:13 GMT -5
Those are some neat finds! I like the cabbage cutter!
|
|
|
Post by mach12 on Sept 11, 2020 11:23:30 GMT -5
Those cabbage slicers are the ticket for slicing cabbage when you're doing multiple heads and I can't imagine improving on them. I have no idea how old ours are but we bought them (two different sizes) in Nebraska in about 1972 when we were visiting my wife's family there. Here in WA state they were priced as if they were made of a precious metal and these were just a couple of dollars each in a sale for a charity. They were well used and well maintained. I was pretty excited about getting them. One of the ladies doing the sale was really pleased to see them going to someone excited to get them to use, and gave me a full lesson on using them and caring for them. I should have asked her for a course completion certificate.
|
|
|
Post by pooka on Sept 11, 2020 11:23:39 GMT -5
I'm sure I read somewhere the other night they were made of maple or birch, but surely they were made of various hardwoods. At one time Indiana was covered by 85% hardwood forests, so we were a major furniture maker. John Augustus Reitz, a local lumber baron, in his bio on Wikipedia says Evansville was the largest hardwood market in the country over the period of 1845 through 1885. At the time of the building of our old court house in 1888, we were touted as one of the world's largest hardwood furniture centers, with 41 factories. A Kraut Cutters factory would have been a small consumer of lumber. Hoosier-style cabinets were made by dozens of companies, and most were in the Hoosier State or located nearby, mostly in central Indiana.
|
|
|
Post by nana on Sept 11, 2020 18:43:38 GMT -5
Mach12 I hope you are staying away from the fires! Jeez, every time I think 2020 can’t get any worse it finds a way to surprise me.
|
|
|
Post by mach12 on Sept 11, 2020 19:12:25 GMT -5
Mach12 I hope you are staying away from the fires! Jeez, every time I think 2020 can’t get any worse it finds a way to surprise me. It's really bad! We took a run to Eastern WA to get fruits and vegetables on Monday and had to take alternate routes several times in order to get home. At one point we were turned back through the median to run from a fire that started just minutes earlier when power lines were brought down by winds. It's so dry that the fire just exploded into a wall of flame. The smoke is so bad around here that the street lights are staying on. They're saying it'll clear late Sunday and possibly get a bit of rain. It's just an inconvenience for us, so far anyway, but a lot of people have lost everything, some their lives. Quite a reminder of just how little power we really have.
|
|
|
Post by Chuckie on Sept 11, 2020 22:05:25 GMT -5
I'm sure I read somewhere the other night they were made if maple or birch, but surely they were made of various hardwoods. At one time Indiana was covered by 85% hardwood forests, so we were a major furniture maker. John Augustus Reitz, a local lumber baron, in his bio on Wikipedia says Evansville was the largest hardwood market in the country over the period of 1845 through 1885. At the time of the building of our old court house in 1888, we were touted as one of the world's largest hardwood furniture centers, with 41 factories. A Kraut Cutters factory would have been a small consumer of lumber. Hoosier-style cabinets were made by dozens of companies, and most were in the Hoosier State or located nearby, mostly in central Indiana. OK, here's a few pix of ours, which we use "fairly regularly"--as in, whenever someone GIVES us cabbage! I will digress a bit here though, in that although dwayner's finished product looks good for DISPLAY, I DON'T think they were meant to be "finished"--as in lacquered, due to their use. I will stand corrected if others who have/use theirs say otherwise. This appears to ALWAYS have been "raw wood", as have the others I've seen in antique stores. I paid $12 for this one, and paid a "tinker" that was sitting outside the feed store to sharpen the blades, and he charged me like $16!!!! LOL. Here's the pic of the name on the backside of ours: And here is a pic of the board itself. I attached the "stop" you see @ the back so I could hang it on the wall & the slider box wouldn't "slide off"; replaced original screws that had worn heads w/new stainless steel: I was told this is a VERY rare piece to have, as it often "fell off" in the barn, and discarded as later generations hadn't a CLUE what it was FOR!: Maybe ours is just red OAK, as I'm NOT a wood expert; at any rate, if NOT cherry--it is V-E-R-Y red when wet--which it DOES get when you're using it, hence me thinking it was NOT originally sealed/finished. And some years the metal has a wee bit of surface rust, which I hit gently w/steel wool, then take a "heel" of cabbage and run/discard it over the metal/blades FIRST to remove any rust residue, then rinse w/H20 before we "get down to biz" on the board.
CHEERS! Chuckie
|
|
|
Post by voodoochikin04 on Sept 11, 2020 23:06:07 GMT -5
Oak usually turns black when exposed to moisture.. I'd think it would be black in the places that can't be easily dried. But no wood expert here. Forestry forum guys would know immediately. Those guys are good!
|
|
|
Post by mach12 on Sept 11, 2020 23:19:46 GMT -5
Holy smokes Chuckie, that must have been the DeLuxe model! All the ones I ever see are all wood like mine. That Lady in Nebraska told me to always rub our down with cutting board oil so the wood wouldn't dry out and crack so I've always done that. Last year I used the mineral oil/beeswax mix that I use on our kitchen counters and the knives don't have a spot of rust on them so I'll probably stick with that if it wasn't just a fluke. I wanted to compare my homemade mix with the off the shelf stuff so looked up the MSDS for cutting board oil and it looks like I was paying for a fancy label on a bottle of plain mineral oil.
|
|
|
Post by pooka on Sept 12, 2020 4:35:12 GMT -5
I know birch & beech are common for dough boards, & of course maple for cutting boards. As I said above, one of the links I looked at said the "Indianapolis" Kraut Cutter was made of maple or birch.
In the past, there were traditional uses for many woods based on their characteristics like harness, flexibility. I suppose it's almost a science. Before plastics & other synthetic materials, you had to use natural materials. Over time craftsman learned which wood were appropriate for different applications. One, many of us might know is hickory having long, straight & flexible grain works well for shovels, axes, hammers & the like. Also for chairs. I remember one episode of the PBS show, The Wood Wrights Shop. He was talking about chair making. He said he'd made some out of maple, but it was too hard & brittle. They would break under rough use. Hickory chairs have a lot of spring in the wood. They easily flex. Even if you tip them back on two legs. That's why so many of the old ladder back chairs pioneers & country people had around here made all their chairs out of hickory. It would have been an abundant wood too. When I was looking to get my vintage cast aluminum Magnalite water kettle, I also found a very similar one made by an English company. The line was called Picquot Ware. They also made tea service pieces. Anyway. The description of the Picquot Ware K3 Tea Kettle said the handle was made of sycamore & the lid handle was made of hawthorn. Sounded odd to me, but apparently these woods are typically used for these purposes. One more tid-bit. A show I was watching once on vintage boat building & repair. The guy was talking about the difference between white oak & red oak. He said some try to get away with using the cheaper red oak to do repairs. The problem is in red oak, the fibers are like soda straws the length of the gain. Water will seep through it like a bundle of soda straw. Not so good for a boat. White oak has tight, closed fibers, in addition to being very hard. Ideal for strong boat & ship building. He did a table top demonstration that was very telling. The water was quickly pouring through the red oak. Not a drop went through the white oak. I'm sure there's an expert on wood, or on vintage things that could clue us in. To my eye, that one you're showing Chuckie could be maple or birch. They look similar. Birch might look a bit lighter when freshly cut. But with years of use, it makes it harder to tell. I looked up the two patents on it. One is from 1909 & shows two blades. The other from 1910, & shows four blades. I've seen them with only one. In my brief research, I find the earliest home made ones were a wooden trough with a scythe blade to do the cutting. I think it said they go back to the 1840s with the waves of German immigrant coming to this country. I even saw some on legs, so you could sit it right over a crock to save steps. It kind of looked like a cobblers bench. With a place to sit at one end.
As a child I wasn't a fan of sour kraut. As an adult, I've acquired a taste for it. There's a recipe in the Chambers cook book for spare ribs cooked in sour kraut I've made a few times. There used to be a restaurant called The Tower Light by the zoo that served home made kraut with their bratwurst. It had caraway seeds in it for a little added bite. Wood used around food typically wouldn't be finish, except maybe a cutting board treated with mineral oil & wax. The tannins in wood make it naturally antiseptic. I found a university study done saying that a wooden cutting board are safer than a plastic one. The plastic, once contaminated, stays that way till you sanitize it. A wooden board kills pathogens almost on contact. I looked around at new ones. Some just said they were made of hardwood. But several stated they were made of beech wood. One even said, "Slovenian Beech Wood". So as I said at the beginning, birch, beech & maple are common woods used for this kind of thing. Keep them oiled before each use, & a wash with soapy water, & allow to dry thoroughly. Then a bit of oil on the blade before you store it.
You can just about get a vintage one for the same money it would cost for a new on, except most of the old ones are missing the sliding box, but some never had one. I never notice they have one to four blades on them. I've seen then in antique shops for years, but never really took notice of them, apart from knowing what they are.
|
|
|
Post by nana on Sept 12, 2020 6:49:01 GMT -5
Many of the old houses and barns around here are post and beam, and they are pegged together, no nails or screws or metal. The beams were made from woods that would shrink and contract as they dried, and the pegs were made from different woods that would not, so that as the building aged and settled, the joints would hold tight. As long as no one let the roof leak, they are as straight and solid as ever, and many are 150-200 years old. As you said, Pooka, they knew what they were doing!
Glad you guys are OK, Mach12. Stay safe!
|
|
|
Post by Chuckie on Sept 12, 2020 15:59:18 GMT -5
Holy smokes Chuckie, that must have been the DeLuxe model! All the ones I ever see are all wood like mine. That Lady in Nebraska told me to always rub our down with cutting board oil so the wood wouldn't dry out and crack so I've always done that. Last year I used the mineral oil/beeswax mix that I use on our kitchen counters and the knives don't have a spot of rust on them so I'll probably stick with that if it wasn't just a fluke. I wanted to compare my homemade mix with the off the shelf stuff so looked up the MSDS for cutting board oil and it looks like I was paying for a fancy label on a bottle of plain mineral oil. Again, I dunno WHAT kinda wood it IS, just that it turns BRIGHT red when wet from use/cleanup. I have never put ANYTHING on ours, as it doesn't get USED every year, and I don't wanna mess anything up on it. Like I said, a "light sanding" w/steel wool, run the "butt" of a cabbage head over it after I rinse it, then commence w/the "krauting"! CHEERS! Chuckie
|
|