My wife and I just returned from a five-day excursion on the The World’s Longest Yard Sale down US 127. The yard sale runs every year during the first weekend of August from Michigan down to Alabama. Last Wednesday, my wife Anita rented a Ford F-250 cargo van and we headed down to Chattanooga TN to spend the night. We picked up 127 around the Kentucky Tennessee border stopping at multiple yard sales running all the way to our hotel in Chattanooga. The next day we started heading up 127 back home.
Anita was looking for old furniture to fix up as well as things she could sell in her booth. I was looking for antique tools. We traveled over 1200 miles in five days traveling from Chattanooga, TN to Castine, OH and had an absolute blast. Nothing more fun than the thrill of the hunt. We ran into a little trouble at the top of Tennessee though. It was around 7:00 pm and we didn’t have a hotel booked. We drove all the way to Danville, KY hoping that a hotel on US 127 would have a room but they were all booked. We ended up driving all the way to Lexington, KY to find a room. The next day we got up and had a nice breakfast in neat little restaurant and headed back to Danville, KY to continue up US 127.
I picked up mostly a bunch of planes, some of them needing major cleaning, with a few miter boxes near the end of the trip. What’s amazing about my finds is that most of the planes I had bought had corrugated bottoms. I wasn’t specifically looking for corrugated planes but when I turned over a plane I was interested in, its bottom was corrugated. Twelve of the fifteen planes were that way. Amazing since corrugated planes are not as common as flat bottom planes in the market.
This is the shot of the bottoms of the planes with nearly all of them being corrugated. It’ll take a while but every one of these planes will be cleaned up and ready to be put back to use.
Near Danville, KY I ran into a guy selling a trailer full of cherry hardwood. I couldn’t buy the whole trailer but I did manage to pick up one of his slabs. This piece is 2″ x 16″ x 100″ and the offer was too good for me to pass up. Does anybody want to guess what I paid for this slab of cherry? Post a comment and I’ll let you know.
MVFlaim Furnituremaker 
I am going to say $150
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If I guess right, do I get the slab? No? Drat.
$90
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Hi Fitz,
Thanks for stopping by. If you need someone to write an article for you next year “Hunting for Tools on The World’s Longest Yard Sale” I’d be happy to volunteer. ; )
BTW the city wide yard sale you blogged about last week was part of the WLYS.
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Interesting
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I’ll be the unfailing optimist and guess $75 for the slab.
Chris
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60 bucks!
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50 dollars
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$80
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Ken is the closest…..I paid $30.00 for the slab or roughly $1.35/BD FT. Congrats Ken.
I know I’ll probably regret not buying more but I don’t know what I’ll do with the board I bought and there wasn’t much more room in the van.
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Great buy!! I just blogged today about the WLYS! I’d love for you to stop by and see my pictures and read about my misadventures at http://www.thewritesteph.com!
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Nice blog. I can see you had fun even if you didn’t sell much. You can see what my wife bought on her facebook page https://www.facebook.com/bellachicdecor
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Thanks so much for stopping by! BTW Readers, I highly recommend you checking out this Bella Chic Décor FB pg!
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I just liked her page. I mean, I really do like the things that she has. I’m really into diy, but I tend to start projects and then leave them unfinished. Maybe now that school starts I’ll be able to work on some of them.
I’d love it if you guys could “follow” my blog. 😉 Thx, Stephanie
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$30 for that lovely piece of wood! My goodness. I was just shopping over the weekend … paying retail … and I bought hard maple, purpleheart and walnut. All were over $10/board foot in Los Angeles. I am jealous of what you can do back east!
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At $10/bd ft, I would probably have to quit woodworking. Over here I can buy poplar for $2.00/bd ft, soft maple for $2.50 bd/ft, and cherry for $5.00/bd ft. If I can find some on Craigslist it can get even cheaper. Lately I’ve been using 2 x 10 southern yellow pine I buy at Lowe’s and use it for my projects. I’ve built at least six pieces over the past couple of years doing this and they come out really nice.
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You know, I saw some yellow pine the other day at Menards, and I too thoutht about buying some 2 x 10 and having some fun! Nice slab of cherry.
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I make a lot of furniture out of 2 x 10s. Best kept secret in town.
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Lynn and Mike,
Check out these amazing sculptures by artist Morgan Herrin. He uses construction-grade 2x4s.
Chris
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WOW!!!
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