Specialties
The Jonesport Wood Company (Liberty Tool Co.) maintains three locations in coastal Maine in Liberty, Searsport, and Hulls Cove for the sale of old tools, antiques, antiquarian books, paintings, and prints. Our primary mission is the search for and recovery of usable woodworking tools for reuse as well as for the collections of the Davistown Museum.
History
Established in 1976.
The Liberty Tool Company was purchased in 1976 after a tool-picking trip to Liberty, Maine, in search of hand tools rumored to be available in large quantities at the Liberty Salvage Company, located just below what is now the Liberty Tool Company on the edge of the George's River. Owner David McLaughlin was reluctant to part with any tools, but purchased several hundred dollars worth of merchandise from the Jonesport Wood tool truck. The Liberty Tool Company was at that time an empty building with a small selection of leftover antiques from a retired antique dealer as well as a large quantity of rubbish on the second floor. The Liberty Tool Company was purchased the day after the visit to David's Liberty Salvage, and was opened for business within a few weeks. The first year of operation was devoted to cleaning out the rubbish on the upper floors and painting the building, famed for its hackmatack ship's knees in the cellar and chestnut clapboards on the exterior. The rest is history.
Meet the Business Owner: Skip B.
Skip holds a B.A. from the University of Massachusetts and an M.A. from the University of Colorado and taught English at the University of the Pacific. A native of Newton, MA, he now lives in Hulls Cove, with his wife, Judith Bradshaw Brown, and makes weekly trips to Liberty Tool Company and the museum, where they maintain an apartment, and he tends the Davistown Museum most Saturdays and some Sundays. He enjoys traveling extensively in the United States and Europe, visiting tool museums and historical sites to research his interests. When not scouring New England for tools and other treasures or "slinging tools" in the Hulls Cove workshop, Brack enjoys collecting, curating, and hanging the museum exhibits; creating assemblages of "accidental durable remnants" for the Liberty Museum and Hulls Cove Sculpture Garden; reading volumes about tools, history, and ferrous metallurgy and writing about what he learns; and weed whacking the gardens.