The Blog

     As I look out the front door of the old hardware store, it looks like I’m trapped inside one of those snow shaker balls. The weatherman said we were supposed to get less than one inch today, but we have gotten about 6 so far, and it’s only noon. Is it just me

      Since we were talking last week about fixing frozen pipes, I thought that it would be good to cover the household plumbing system in general (probably should have covered that first). When it comes to their water some people have only the vaguest notion of where it comes from before it spatters out

     Last week we covered “How to keep your pipes from freezing”, so this week we’ll talk about what to do if your pipes freeze anyway. So, how do you know if you’ve got frozen pipes? The first symptom is the most obvious, you turn on the tap and you have no water. You

       I was just outside and it is a balmy (for an Ohio January) 40 degrees, not too bad. But when I got up this morning it was only 5 degrees, that’s pipe freezing weather. One thing we haven’t talked about are tricks to prevent you pipes from freezing during bitter Winter weather. Last

       As I was unpacking a customer’s order of keyed-alike padlocks, it occurred to me that we hadn’t covered a very common item around the home and farm, padlocks. A wise man once said, “Locks are for keeping honest people honest.” This can be true as real crooks aren’t deterred much by many locks.

  I was just playing “White Christmas” here at the store on our vintage Musette player piano. I’d play some more, but it’s the only Christmas carol that I have a piano roll for. We have some snow on the ground now in Burton, but we’ll need some more before “the day”. Of course, snow

  Ready or not, it’s almost that time of year. We have been getting ready for Christmas at our home and at my mother’s. Putting her tree up with the old steel 1959 tree stand and getting out the old blown glass ornaments and C7 incandescent lights from the attic puts me in mind of

  Well, now that the weather has moderated a little bit, I figured that we can get back to tools. This week we’re going to talk about one one of the oldest tools of all – the knife. Who knows how many thousands of years ago the first caveman found a natural stone with a