Lions and Tigers and Bolts, oh my!

You might have noticed that we are having some inventory reduction sales. You might also have noticed that some of the things on sale are not things that you would ordinarily think of the Cutlery as carrying.

These would be keen observations.

Meat grinder plates make sense, but Dremel tool accessories and files/rifflers make a little less sense. Bolts... yeah, those seem like a mystery.

The rifflers/files and Dremel accessories make sense if you know my grandfather. He's very into making things with his hands. Lots of woodwork and he did scrimshaw for a while. The bolts have a different story.

These bolts are leftover stock from the Heimerdinger company when it was still a hardware store in downtown Louisville. As you might know, our family business dates back to 1861, and over time has included things like manufacturing of scissors, shears, and knives. This went on until the mid 50's (and we still have several pounds of leftover blanks for shears if someone is doing a historical project). Anyway, from the 1920's to the mid 60's, the store was primarily a hardware store. These bolts and things have been in storage since Heimerdinger Cutlery moved to Shelbyville Road in 1983.

Because of their age, the bolts aren't the sort you'll find at the hardware store today. (Or so I have been told. I don't go hang out at Home Depot, or anything).
These bolts are mostly black iron (aka, not galvanized, not stainless, etc.) and mostly they are carriage bolts, machine bolts, and stove bolts. A lot of them have rolled threads (meaning the hot metal was rolled on something to give it threads, instead of having them cut into the metal).
They might be of interest to people doing restoration, or reenactment, who are very into authenticity. Maybe some SCA people out there?

Nancy (the employee in charge of the website) will keep adding more bolts and things as time allows. I'll be posting a mostly complete list at some point. However, feel free to contact us if you want to ask about specific sizes.


Probably the most fun I had while I was working at the store during highschool was rummaging through the old hardware store stuff in the shop. It was a blast, I found all sorts of fun things: glass bubble things for levels, a manual hair clipper, old key-making machines, and just tons of things. Oh, and did I mention the barrel filled with nails?

Don't forget to vote!

That's it. Whole message in title.

It's beginning to look a lot like....

Shopping season!

I'll be keeping an eye out for things that other people recommend and suggesting other things. My first suggestion is one that I will always always always have: The Kentucky Spring salad tongs.

Kentucky Spring salad tongs were recently spotted in the June 2008 issue of Gourmet magazine. They would have been spotted sooner, but that issue was hiding from me for a couple of months.

You might remember me raving about them last year, when they were written up in The Best of Everything column in the (Louisville) Courier-Journal. I got a pair for Christmas and I use them all the time. Simple design, but very effective (except with some cherry tomatoes, but who likes those anyway. bleah).

They're inexpensive, which makes them good for gift-givers on a budget who still want to give quality gifts. They flip open and closed, which helps save valuable drawer space. They're more stylish than metal cafeteria tongs, and just as easy to keep clean. They're handmade locally, making them good gifts for out-of-town relatives.

Speaking of gifts and the holiday season, it's time to start thinking about Turkey Day. If you don't have a good knife, it's time to start thinking about getting one. If you already have one, you might want to consider whether it needs sharpening. If you're bringing it to US to get sharpened, please do so ASAP. It's a very busy time of year for us, and we don't want to get too much of a sharpening backlog or someone might not get their knife back in time.

And on that note, here's a scene from West Wing, Season 2, episode 8.
For those who aren't wing-nuts, this is the episode where the President is having his intern, Charlie, run all over trying to find a good carving knife. At first he starts out looking for a good american made knife, but he ends up going with the best: a good german knife. I believe it was actually a Wustof knife, but I can't find the clip.

Fall News

Here's a news update for those of you who aren't on our emailing list. (Want to sign up? Send me a message.)

Celebration!
First up, from October 25th through the 31st, Heimerdinger Cutlery will be celebrating our 147th anniversary with a special open house.

We will be having special drawings everyday, plus one person will win a hundred dollar Heimerdinger Cutlery gift card. On the 25th, there will be free gifts for the first 25 customers who sign up for the e-newsletter, or who bring a friend to sign up for it if they are already on our list (both of you will get a gift!).

A special feature of our event will be our fall trunk show for Jon Hart Design products. Monogramming is available for items bought at the trunk show, and any orders placed during the trunk show will receive the monogramming for free (a $7.00 value).

New Items
You might remember my earlier post about Caswell-Massey and how awesome their products for men are. Now the ladies in the audience can get in on the fun as well, since we have started carrying a wider selection on C-M's products.
These include the Almond Cold Cream hand soap, cuticle cream, the new Pomegranate Orchard Soap (already available online), Dr. Hunter's Rosewater & Glycerine Hand Cream, and Dr. Hunter's Comfort Foot Cream. These make an excellent companion to our manicure sets, and smell really great.


Sales and Specials
Just in time for our event, our fall assortment of our ever-popular Wusthof-Trident knives has arrived. Come check out our specials for the holiday season.

We're also having an in-store special for a limited time. I won't tell you what it is, you'll have to go in and see for yourself! I will mention that it involves our lovely new Thorpe Furniture knife blocks...

More to come, soon.

Embroideries

We learned a lot of things at the Embroiderers' Guild's shindig. Here's a quick summary, that some of you might have received in our most recent newsletter.

Apparently Hardanger embroidery is making a comeback. For those who have to look it up, including me, it's also called Whitework embroidery. It's traditionally done on white cloth with white thread, but any colors can be used.
We have several suggestions for good scissors to use, including the ones pictured above. They might not be the best choice, unless you're traveling, in which case they are awesome. These folding scissors are remarkable, because the points are still nice and sharp. I admit to bias because I took the picture!
For non-traveling people, we have some forged Dovo embroidery scissors, and then we have a pair (shown on the right) that are technically Silhouette scissors. This last pair is wonderful for any sort of delicate work; they were originally designed to cut out paper silhouettes, a popular form of imagery in Victorian times. Veeeery intricate, sort of like this Hardanger stuff. Wow, to those of you who are trying to do this. Me, I'll stick with simple counted cross stitch on canvas.

The other hot-button topic from the shindig was cutting metallic thread. Serrated scissors really are needed if you are using metallic thread, but those are hard to find. However, did you know that we can customize your scissors for that purpose? Any scissor can be serrated so just bring it in and we will be glad to fix it up for you. Carl is also checking into ordering scissors that come with the serration, so that you all won't have to leave your scissors with us for a couple weeks. We'd love to be able to do it while you wait, but serrations take some time and precision.

Since the winter holidays are approaching and our best scissors come from Germany, you might want to stop in or order soon. If we have to special order something, we want to be able to get it to you on time!

Embroidererererer's are awesome!

Here's a picture of Carl and Glenna in our booth at the EGA's National Seminar. Apparently they had a blast, and our new scissors were a hit. A longer report will be forthcoming, so keep your eyes on this space.

On Screen

Question answering time! Want to know what type of knife is used in the opening of the TV show Dexter? In the season one opening, Dexter is fixing breakfast and he uses a knife to cut up various things, but the one we get the best view of is one he's slicing an orange with. It's a tomato knife, shockingly enough. Unfortunately, my TV isn't good enough for me to make out what the two itty-bitty lines of text on the back of the blade say, even when I pause the DVD.

So I can't tell you what it is, but I can tell you what it isn't. If you watch closely, you can see that the knife has a substantial bolster, and that the metal continues unusually far back into the handle. This leads me to suspect that the knife has an all-metal handle. Wustof's Culinar line is all-metal, but the knife has a subtly different shape and no writing on the reverse.

Anybody with a better TV than me know what it says?


If anyone is interested in hearing about knifes in other TV shows/movies, drop me a line. Or better yet, mail me the movie at the Cutlery.
(What? It could happen.)