I’ve been working with wood since the age of eleven. In 1984 my family moved to Cincinnati from Greenwich, CT. Being a shy kid, I didn’t make many friends so most of my free time I spent tinkering around my dad’s shop. My dad wasn’t a woodworker but he did have some modest tools like a bench top drill press and a band saw, so I started making small little toys. I continued working with wood taking shop class throughout my junior high and high school years. After school and during the summer I built several Toys and Joys cars and trucks. Below is a sample of things I made between the ages of twelve and sixteen.
Around the age of thirteen, I started collecting antique tools. When visiting my grandparents in Detroit, MI, I would always hang out in my grandpa’s garage. He was a mechanic who restored old cars like Model T’s and had a 1919 Maxwell in his garage that I thought was the coolest thing on earth. My grandfather seeing that I had an interest in woodworking, gave me a few his tools he never used. The first tool he gave me was an old hand cranked drill press that I still own today. While staying with my grandparents for a few weeks during the summer, they would take me to area flea markets to find some bargains for themselves. Extremely bored, I decided to look around for some old tools to add to my budding collection of hand tools. After a few purchases of hand planes, I became an antique tool collector. When I attended a couple of The Ohio Tool Collectors Association meetings in 1989, I noticed I was the youngest antique tool collector in the room. Over twenty five years later, I’m still one of the youngest tool buyers at antique tool auctions.
This is my tool cabinet full of antique tools that I use on a daily basis. I update it every couple of years and replace some of the old tools with new tools I recently purchased. As it stands, it holds about 200 tools, most of them being antique.
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Thanks,
Mike Flaim
MVFlaim Furnituremaker 
Super nice tool cabinet. Any chance you would send me some close up shots of how the bench planes are held in place? I hung mine from strings knowing that one day I would “upgrade” to something like you have there. I’m glad you found my blog.
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The planes sit in wooden holders on the top and bottom I customized for each size of plane. They lay still in the cabinet with a simple wooden lever with a screw drilled through it. I simply turn the lever to the side to release the plane. Some smaller planes, like the block planes, are held to the cabinet with rare earth magnets. I need to update the cabinet with new tools so look for a blog about it in the coming weeks.
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Cars and trucks ….nice work for that age…..And an interesting point…I was a IA Major ,thats how I got my start in furniture making,about 55 years ago and I am still at it.
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To this day I still regret not being a shop teacher, but I’d doubt I’d be employed with all schools shutting down classes.
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Hello, i came across your site from looking at Stanley Wood planes on eBay. I’m your next-door neighbor in Loveland Ohio. I’ve always appreciated Woodworking and metalworking since I was young. I’m now retired and hoping to do more oh those. I recently purchased 3 planes from an auction in Illinois which my brother attended for me. The reason I am writing you just because there is so much confusing information on the internet regarding the Stanley number 5 plane. The one I purchased is missing the cap and I would like to replace it with the proper one however reading information online it sounds like there is so many different sizes and specs I’m afraid I will purchase the wrong one. It is a Bailey model with a corrugated so but there were no patent numbers on the lever or anything else to provide more detail. Do you have a retail shop that is open to the public to visit? I have pictures of this plan but I will not have it in my possession until after Christmas. I’d like to see if I could further identify exactly what type and age This Plane might be. If you don’t mind I would like to come to your shop if you allow that. I appreciate good old school craftsmanship and found your website very impressive.
Thank you. Brent
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Hi Brent, it really doesn’t matter what lever cap you buy as any of them will work. From the sounds of your plane, a 2″ lever cap with nothing inscribed on the front will more likely be the right time period cap. Even one that says Stanley on the front will do.
I’m a member of the Cincinnati Woodworking Club so maybe we can meet up sometime at one of their meetings.
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You already are a shop teacher, your blog is your school and your visitors are your students. Regret what you haven’t achieved, but from what I have seen on your blog, there’s nothing to regret.
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Thanks Salko, I wish I would have been proactive with my photos on Photobucket so my posts wouldn’t have been ruined. I got a lot of work to do.
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Just upload them on WordPress server but optimise them before you do
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