Road Trip Report from the Old Sled Works, Duncannon, Pa.

This large sign in the shape a sled leans against the Old Sled Works Antique Mall, a remnant from when the town could take pride in producing the Lightning Guider sled for decades.

I made the drive north through Maryland to south central Pennsylvania this morning to attend Sled Fest, a two-day celebration of the Old Sled Works antique mall's 20th anniversary in business.  I shot more than 100 photos today, but I'll try to pare those down to a manageable number.  This post will cover what I bought, and I'll follow with a post to show a little more about the Sled Fest.

I've been to Sled Works many times in the past, in fact, it's where I bought some of my first mid century collectibles, including some wrought iron and brass items I still have.  I have never left there without some kind of a great find at a good price, and today was no exception.

I made the drive early, left home at 6 a.m. and was sitting in front of the antique mall at 8:05 a.m., earlier than I expected.  Luckily there were some flea market vendors setting up outside so I did a little pre-shopping shopping.  Bought a baggie full of post cards for a buck, and got two more tiki masks for our screened porch wall for $5 each, 

And I also picked up this 50-cent cookbook...

 and got this Presto percolator coffee maker along with a few old paper/ephemera items I'll cover in a different blog post.  I plan to give the drip coffeemaker a rest and perk some joe in the morning with this baby.

So when I finally made it inside the building, I did a sweep through all the booths and found a few LPs for a buck each, including this Pajama Game with some cool cover art,

 some paper collectibles such as this 1963 Girl Scouts calendar for $3.75 (I'll probably hang it in the camper),

 and a decent deal on about a dozen miscellaneous Viewmaster 3D reels, including this Tom Corbett Space Cadet set.

Here's a rundown of the other stuff I picked up inside the mall:

$4 for this melamine server plate

$4 also for this bamboo Hawaii souvenir tray - I don't think it's real old, but it looks good anyway and we can use it in our bar

an aluminum sugar container for $2

On my second pass through, I spotted this small bookshelf - with the discount it was only $18.75 - score!  

I have to find a home for this bookshelf, right now it's in the dining room, but it will probably move to either the hallway or basement.  I love the look of this thing, but it really is pretty small, only about 24 inches tall.  Maybe I'll put some of my Whitman TV books on it.

And to wrap up this post, when I saw it I knew I had to grab this brass-framed, 3D, light up version of the Last Supper!  Once I polish the frame it will hang next to the similarly framed fat Elvis I picked up last summer.  

At the rate I'm going, I have the makings of quite a low brow art gallery, with the paint by numbers paintings and these lighted brass-framed babies.  I think the gallery will probably have to be in the man cave, i.e., the unfinished basement - She Who Must Be Obeyed does have her limits.

I'll be back with more photos from the Sled Fest, and some bonus pics and a couple more scores from another antique mall I hit on the way home.

Reviving Elvis

Hey all,I know  it's been a while since I was rappin at ya. I'll try to make up for that with some more posts soon. I've been trying to finish my other vintage cooler re-do, but I screwed it up and need to do some more work on that.

Anyway, SWMBO's Mom wanted me to drive out to see her since she was helping to prepare and serve food for her Ruritan club while they hosted an auction.  I haven't been to an auction in a long time, so I said sure.  On the way, I stopped at a perpetual yard sale.  This is a busy country road, and these folks have the plywood on 2x4 arrangement and tons of stuff in their yard.  I didn't find any must haves, but decided to rescue this poor fat Elvis.   Since I didn't buy anything at the auction (I'll do a second post on that in a few minutes), I'll fill you in on what I just did to give Elvis a few more years.

 I've seen a few of these metal frames lately, they have a light that you plug in.  This one was pretty badly tarnished, but I took a chance that I could clean this guy up and make him a little better.  I think the last one I saw had a picture of The Last Supper in the frame.

So I got this guy home and flipped the frame over.  The frame is brass or something close to brass.  And it had some metal tabs holding the picture in place.  I carefully bent those back and slide everything out.  It didn't have glass in front, instead there was a piece of badly yellowed acetate or some kind of thin plastic.  The image is very bright and printed on poster paper.  No wrinkles or problems with the poster.  Setting that stuff aside, I grabbed some cotton rags and a bottle of Brasso brass cleaner and went to work.  I spent about 45 minutes rubbing out as much tarnish as I could. I even grabbed an old toothbrush and wrapped it with some cotton and tried more Brasso in the tight areas. There's still tarnish some in the creases, but overall it cleaned up pretty nicely. The light cover is held onto the frame with a couple of metal tabs, so I bent those back and took it off to clean the brass and clean the frame under where the light cover fits. I checked the light and it works, so I just cleaned the dust off everything and put the light cover back on.  I left the plastic out and slide everything back together.

And here's the result.  

It's amazing what some polishing can do to bring back an awful piece of metal.  Elvis looks sleek and refreshed, and now he's hanging in a place of honor above the downstairs computer desk (in a room we really don't use much right now).  Now I'm going to have to keep an eye out for more of these frames.