Re: ShopTalk: Accummulated shafts

[Bernie Baymiller]

Corey, >If you do any gardening, use them as stakes, they'll last for years.   Sometimes old shafts make memories that last for years, too. My dad worked his way through Ohio State selling vegetables he grew on the farm near Toledo and never could get the "farmer" out of his soul. He had a vegetable garden at home everywhere he moved until he died at 91.   When he was at Spalding in the 1930s, Spalding ended their use of hickory shafts, so there was apparently piles of them lying around for the taking. Dad used hickory iron shafts for tomato cages. They were beautiful shafts as I remember them...fully completed and sanded taper tips shaped to fit the outside of the hosel. He'd drive 4 shafts in the ground in a box-shape and nail 1x1s to the butt end. They last several years in the Northeast, where there are no problems with termites. (Here in Tennessee, untreated wooden stakes wouldn't last a summer.)   When we moved to Lancaster, PA in 1941, he'd paint the ones remaining with green paint every couple of years and used them at least another 10 years. I remember those shafts so well because it was always my job to weed and water the tomatoes, among other gardening jobs. Mom would use them for plant stakes, too.   After dad died in 1999 and mom went to assisted living, my sister, brother and I got together to inventory everything and get rid of the junk. In rummaging through the garage, I found about 5 of those painted shafts in an old bucket back in the corner. Should have kept them.   Bernie Writeto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]