c. 1858 Baseball Stiching Bench

[bgar3]

The article I am referring to was in the March 19, 1870 Oliver Optic magazine.

[Hankphenom]

Originally Posted by bgar3

The article I am referring to was in the March 19, 1870 Oliver Optic magazine.

Great stuff, thanks! That's the kind of info I was hoping to elicit. I'm wondering if the HOF might also have some.

[steve B]

The leather worker I shared a shop with a few years ago has a really nice one. I told him about the Harwood one bringing decent money and he thought it was really funny. It's a fairly common design for shoe stitching, and he had more than just the one in our shop. Apparently nearly every small maker or repair shop in the late 1800s had one, and many were still in companies storage into the early 2000s.

The pieces make a foot pedal, press the pedal it clamps, release it it releases. This one looks like it's got a ratchet, so it can probably stay clamped.

[Hankphenom]

Originally Posted by steve B

The leather worker I shared a shop with a few years ago has a really nice one. I told him about the Harwood one bringing decent money and he thought it was really funny. It's a fairly common design for shoe stitching, and he had more than just the one in our shop. Apparently nearly every small maker or repair shop in the late 1800s had one, and many were still in companies storage into the early 2000s. The pieces make a foot pedal, press the pedal it clamps, release it it releases. This one looks like it's got a ratchet, so it can probably stay clamped.

Thanks,Steve, you have nailed it, as I could have with a bit more online research. When I took "baseball" out of my search description, many of these popped up as generic stitching tools from the 19th century with no particular connection to baseball other than the REA listing, which, as Doug pointed out, was rather sketchy in its assumptions, and this elaborate write-up without sourcing from Keyman Collectibles, a usually reliable website. It seems entirely possible that these were indeed used to stitch baseballs along with other leather products, but without proof of that or any connection to Harwood, and given its condition, I'm now looking upon mine as more a piece of junk than anything else. It will be heading for the dump one of these days.
https://keymancollectibles.com/balls...lampsaddle.htm