On a recent visit, she offered to show me the garage. Back in 1995 right after they purchased the home, Lewis moved his entire machine shop into their 3-car garage. I’m not sure what I expected, but when we walked into the garage, I was floored. Lewis was a hoarder, and I mean that in the clinical sense. The garage was packed with stuff, so much so that you could not open the garage doors. Elizabeth, knowing she would one day have to sell the home, presented me with a proposition. She said if I cleaned out the garage, I could throw out what was junk, keep whatever I wanted for myself, try and sell the rest, and split the proceeds with her 50/50. We shook on it, and I was off and running.
It took me four 12-hour days just to remove the junk. Lewis saved EVERYTHING, every scrap of wood and metal, every broken TV set, electric razor, and AM radio that no longer worked, etc. I filled a 40 cubic yard roll-away dumpster with trash. Yes, that’s 40 cubic yards! When I was finally able to open the garage doors, I brought Elizabeth out to show her. She couldn’t believe it. She told me it had been 25 years since those doors had been opened.
But amongst the hoard were some real treasures, including family historic ephemera. Elizabeth had already sold Lewis’ lathes, but all the lathe attachments/tools/dies/jigs were still there. Boxes of reel-making tooling and reel parts, lots of gunsmithing parts/tools/gauges, including cases of unfinished walnut gun stock blanks, finished gun stocks from various mystery firearms, and a variety of gun barrels. Large vintage lathe attachments, such as an indexing machine, lathe turrets, and giant “as big as your head” Cushman lathe chucks. Every imaginable boring and cutting tool, collets, assorted shop equipment, boxes and boxes of every imaginable bearing, gage sets, and drawers full of every variety screw and fastener made. Lewis had 4 Hermes engraving machines, a giant vintage Delta surface grinder, and a vintage bench-mounted T.O. & Son “Knock-Out” surface grinder. Much of this equipment, and many of the hand tools date back to Arthur’s first auto repair shop. It was amazing and humbling to go through Lewis’ shop, looking at all the different machinery and tools, knowing that he knew how to use every piece!
I rented a 10x20 storage unit close to home, and have been slowly moving anything of value into it to sell. For those of you who lamented the fact that the contents of Oscar’s shop were auctioned off without any notice to the reel collecting community, here is your chance to purchase a piece or two of Kovalovsky history. If you are into collecting vintage hand tools, machinery, gunsmithing parts/tools, etc., please PM me, and let me know what you are looking for. Within the next couple weeks, I am going to start marketing the contents on various gun, machinist, and vintage machinery websites, but would love to see some of this stuff go to ORCA members. Remember, half the proceeds go back to Elizabeth to help her in her retirement.
Cheers,
John
Here is a Lewis Kov' special for you. It is bigger than a 16/0 Kov', but not quite as big as an 18/0, features an extendable crank handle and a handle grasp made out of Vesconite. The fit and finish is as good as any Kov' reel I have ever spun the crank on.
