[AT] Was Serious Restoration Now philosophy

Larry D. Goss rlgoss at evansville.net
Wed Jan 19 08:48:51 PST 2005


>From a historic preservation standpoint, one important factor is to 
document what you've done, so someone in the furture can tell what's 
original, what isn't, so that there isn't a creep throughout history of 
what actually happened. 

>There's some bad parts being produced these days, and some good parts. 
Maybe the best way is to keep your receipts, show what's been done with 
the tractor, and pass it along to new owners. Have a display board that 
you show with.

---------

Guy and Spencer -

A number of years ago, I "restored" a melodeon for a local museum.  This
is a compact reed organ musical instrument.  I completely disassembled
the mechanism, glued the case back together (with modern glue), replaced
the bellows with modern rubber bellows cloth, and replaced a number of
broken and missing wooden pieces so that the instrument was playable
again.  The modern pieces didn't show without taking the instrument
apart again.  My daughter (a trained historic preservationist) was
absolutely shocked and aghast at what I did.  In her words, "Daddy, the
idea behind a museum is to PRESERVE the object, not to RESTORE it."

One of the important items that collectors and appraisers in the
antiques and collectibles industry look for is a provenance.  That's the
history of ownership, modification, and repair.  Keeping a paper trail
of receipts and stepwise photos of our tractor restorations is one way
of doing that documentation.  I fully expect that a provenance will
become more commonplace among us as old iron comes to maturity as a
hobby and avocation.  Watch a few episodes of "Antiques Road Show" to
see what they're doing with the provenance.

On the good part/bad part issue, not every replacement part that is
available today is identical to the original parts that were on a
tractor when it was new.  There can be a number of reasons for this
including a change in vendors, a change in manufacturing techniques, the
redesign of a part to correct original flaws, and a whole host of other
reasons.  There's always a possibility that a replacement part which has
its number changed from when the tractor was new has had a modification
to it that makes it "less than satisfactory" in an old tractor.  That's
one of the reasons why NOS parts are so nice to find.

Just my two cents.

Larry   




More information about the AT mailing list