Brettuns Village Trunks & Leather

Old Trunks, New Leather.  All from Maine.

July 16, 2000

Don’t go and have a hairy
cow – I know, I know – two newsletters from

Brettuns Village in less
than six months, it’s got to be a new record or

something.  Alert the
media.

I just remembered a couple
more things that I had wanted to mention last

time around.  That’s
all, no big deal – if our letters are too much for

you to digest then just
go ahead and hit that delete button up there;

we’ll never know you did
it.  The again, you’ll never know just what these

important items were that
I had forgotten last time around.

So now that I’ve got you
on the edge of your seat, take another look at

our For Sale page, we added
a couple more trunks in the last few days, and

we have two more that’ll
show up on the page on Tuesday.  If the camera

works, anyway.

Next – we get a lot of questions
from folks who’ve been beating their

trunk around the garage
in an effort to feel that they’re spending their

time in a useful and productive
way (trust me, we gave that fantasy up

years ago); they generally
ask the same sorts of questions, falling into 3

standard categories:

1)  The “Can I Retire
Yet?” Category

These questions go like this: 
“I went to a yard sale today and found this

really, really cool antique
trunk, it has drawers in it, and some old

hangers, and I’ve never
seen anything like this before in my life and I

think it must be very rare
and worth a lot.   How much is it worth (to the

penny)?”

2)  The “Have You Ever
Heard of Such a Thing? If you Have, I Want Some

Documentation to Prove it”
Category

“When Grandma kicked over
she left us 12 shares of AT&T, a Ford Tractor,

and an old trunk that has
leather handles on each end.  The outside of it

looks like it’s covered
with some sort of material, almost like canvas,

but I know that sounds crazy. 
Have you ever heard of such a thing?  Oh,

and if you have, how much
is it worth (to the penny)?  One more thing – do

you have any books about
these old trunks that I can buy or borrow?”

3)  “I’m Hard At it
on a Trunk Project, but I Need Some Help” Category

” Thanks for sending those
Brettuns Village trunk handles so fast

(shameless plug alert),
can you tell me how to get the old nails out and

where you got those nifty
tools you show on your website?  The handles are

the last thing left to do
in my project to redo the old trunk I found at a

flea market in the next
town over.  Remember?  I wrote you about it last

September – it was painted
red and had a lid that opened.  Remember?  Hey,

by the way, how much is
this trunk worth anyway (to the penny)?”

You get the basic idea. We
tell everybody the same thing about trunk value

– it’s worth a lot if you
plan to keep it, not so much if you plan to sell

it, but it’s priceless if
it belonged to one of your ancestors.

The third category involves
tools – and we found out that we could become

an Amazon Affiliate and
offer the proper tools right through the site.  So

we did.  We now have
a page where you can look at some trunk-working tools

and order your own. 
While you’re at it, you can also order from Amazon’s

exhaustive library on old
trunks and suitcases – that’s right, that one

book by Schiffer is on there. 
There’s also a set of woodworking plans for

those who want to build
their own trunk from scratch, and even an old

Sears catalog that has quite
a few pages showing old trunks and bags from

1910.  Just click your
way through from our site to Amazon’s ordering page

and buy like you would anyway. 
We get a cut on the deal, so we can get

these girls properly educated
at Bates College in the future.  If you

don’t order anything that’s
OK too, we’ll just homeschool the girls and

then have them spend their
days sanding the inside of trunks, just like

dear old Dad.  Their
hair will fall out, just like mine did, but don’t let

that keep you up at night.

Another thing – we now offer
trunk nails (soft steel) in two lengths –

longer ones are great for
attaching handles or other parts through thicker

boards, or where you just
need more holding power.  They’re over there on

our Parts page.  Holler
if you need a link.

On an interesting note –
we sold a pile of trunks to a custom woodworker

who is using them to build
a kiosk in some desert-themed shopping mall out

in Viva Las Vegas. 
You know what a kiosk is, one of those stores that

sits in the middle of the
mall just so you can squeeze by it while some

overweight gal with a tattoo
on her forehead can ram her baby carriage

into your knees.  This
particular kiosk will look like a pile of trunks

sitting at a desert train
station – and I must say I’m just wild about the

idea, and I hope they decide
to build these at the thousands of malls that

exist in all those places
where a whole lot of folks cram together in a

town, just to be close to
one another, apparently.  Anyway, if you get out

to Vegas, be sure to look
for our trunks when you get rammed by Madame

Tattoo.

So check the site in a day
or two, we’ve got a great old Civil War trunk

that’s a nice size and has
a perfectly flat top just right for a coffee

table, and another standard
box trunk that’s been completely redone just

in time for summer. 
Which is over now, by the way.

Thanks, sorry to bug you
so much here lately.  We’ll go back into

hibernation shortly, so
don’t worry.

Best Regards;

Churchill Barton

Brettuns Village