Never Buy These 7 Tools New — The Amish Get Them at Auction for $5

My name is Isaac Miller. I am Amish, and I have run a blacksmith shop on my family's land in Lancaster County for thirty-one years. You buy the starter set. Plastic handles, cast heads, two hundred and forty dollars, warrantied three years. In four years the claw splits and you go back and buy it again. You did nothing wrong. The tool was built to come back through that door. People see rust and think ruined. A hand tool is not a machine. It has no bearings to wear and no motor to burn out. Rust on old steel is a coat of dirt on a healthy animal. It washes off. When you buy new, you are gambling the tool is good. When you buy a tool somebody's grandfather wore smooth, the gamble is already settled. The reason is forging. Quality tools made before the 1970s were drop-forged — the hot steel hammered into shape under pressure, which packs and aligns the grain the way kneading strengthens bread dough. Cheap tools today are cast, melted and poured into a mold, which leaves the grain loose and the steel brittle. A forged head bends before it breaks. A cast one just breaks. Waking the steel takes one weekend. Vinegar soak, brass brush, baking soda rinse, linseed oil, an oilstone. Five dollars in materials on top of the five dollars I bid. Twenty dollars once, against sixty or eighty dollars a year for life. In this video I show you the seven tools you should never buy new, the file test that tells you at the auction whether the temper is good, the vinegar soak, the brass brush and baking soda rinse, the linseed oil wipe, sharpening on a twelve-dollar stone, fitting a new hickory handle, and the paste wax that keeps rust from ever getting a foothold. I also tell you where it falls short. Some Saturdays you drive home with nothing, and a saw plate pitted deep with rust craters will not cut true no matter what you do. WHAT YOU WILL NEED Plain white vinegar, one gallon, about four dollars Brass wire brush, five dollars Baking soda, a spoonful for the rinse Boiled linseed oil, eight dollars a quart Combination oilstone, twelve dollars Hickory replacement handle, six or seven dollars Paste wax, about nine dollars a can A WORD OF CAUTION Wear glasses when you are wire-brushing off that vinegar rust. Brass bristles let go and fly, and I have picked them out of my forearm often enough to warn you. Never buy a vise or any cast iron with a visible crack. Cracked cast iron cannot be trusted under load and mostly cannot be fixed. If the file digs in soft when you test the steel, walk away. Subscribe and I will keep putting up the old ways of working with your hands, the plain way they were taught to me. #amish #handtools #toolrestoration #farmauction #blacksmith #lancastercounty #oldtools #frugalliving