My friend David had one of these for years in his work bucket .I think he inherited it from his father .David and I have worked together on and off for the last 30 yrs or so. No matter what we we building or repairing we found ourselves using this little unnamed tool .I remember asking him the name of it .He couldn't remember it's name or where to get one
About a year ago he told me that he had lost it. He had looked high and low for it but to no avail it was gone .He asked the man that used to own the hardware store in town about the tool ."Oh that's a ship scraper .I always had a few at the store"
Well very few people are scraping the bottoms of wooden ships any more and I'm sure that an orbital sander would do the job of this tool from the golden age of shipbuilding in Greenport .I went to the old guys store ( I go there about 4 times per week} and asked the new owner ( he's own the store for about 20 years ) if he had any ship scrapers ."No I don't carry them any more ,no call for them" .Can you get me one ? "No the company went out of business about 20 years ago".
So I went on Google and typed in ship scraper .There were none to be found. I must have looked at 20 web-sites maybe more when I finally stumbled upon a small mention of it.
There was a picture of one but no mention of where to get one .I typed in "pitch scraper ",Boat scraper",one web-site said it was a "racle" ,what every the hell that is .Finally I typed in "ship scraper" as two word not one .I had originally typed in "shipscapper" for some reason .
Wallah there it was .A picture,,a history of the company that went out of business in the 80's and finally a company in Florida that sold them .
I e-mailed David and then tried to order a few for each of us online
The web site was down ,Damn
I saw David a few days later and told him I had no luck ordering them.
He went home and did the "old fashion " thing .He looked up their website and got their phone number and called them .
The photo above is my new "Ship scraper".It may never take barnacles off ship bottoms but I can assure you that it will scape a few shingles straighten out some decking or pry open a window or two
5 comments:
dawg,
the ship scrapper is simply the best tool invented since the hammer.
Here is where to get it:
http://www.imakerope.com/
My goodness you have a lot to write now that you have your color problem figured out. Is this what retired folks do with their spare time?
Hey ,Day It was raining hear this morning . Couldn't work outside so I stayed inside.You job is 24/7X2
Crowbar, Bam mystery solved
You miss the point completely .Its so much more than a crow bar!
Why do you think Mr.Stanley called his version of the tool a" Wonder Bar"
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