Hi there,

I've been meaning to write this for a while, so here we go.

My name is Mark, and I'm a guy in Seattle with a tiny woodworking shop, a soft spot for old tools, and a growing inability to walk past something rusty at an estate sale without picking it up.

TheToddMark started as a way to document what I was already doing - rescuing vintage hand tools, figuring out what they are, where they came from, and what it takes to make them useful again. Not museum pieces. Not wall art. Tools that work.

The site is at thetoddmark.com, and there's a YouTube channel (@thetoddmark) where the same projects live on video.

What I've been working on lately

A couple of months ago I picked up a set of vintage "Perfect Handle" screwdrivers. The Perfect Handle is one of the most elegant screwdriver designs ever made - full-length metal side bolsters running the length of the handle, an oval cross-section that fits the hand perfectly, and two steel pins through the wood to hold everything together. They look like something a watchmaker and a blacksmith designed together.

The set I found had the bones but needed everything: dried-out wood, oxidized metal, tips that had seen better days. The restoration is done now, and the write-up is on the site if you want to see how they turned out.

→ https://thetoddmark.com/restoration-german-perfect-handle

Coming up

I'm deep into something a little unusual - converting a vintage antique radio cabinet into a NAS (network attached storage) server for my home. The radio is beautiful and dead. The NAS is functional and invisible. The idea is to make something that looks like it belongs in a 1940s living room but is quietly doing modern work inside. More on that soon.

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That's issue one. I'll keep these short and infrequent - just when there's something worth sharing.

Thanks for being here at the very beginning.

Mark

thetoddmark.com