Palmer Johnson selling tools at auction

It is not very often that a ninety-eight year old builder closes down, but when it does, the tools that go up for sale might be the dream of a woodworker.  Now, from 30th March, thousands of tools will be up for auction of the Palmer Johnson Yachts plant’s production assets in Sturgeon Bay.

Palmer Johnson, last fall, declared that they were leaving the Sturgeon Bay and moving to the Netherlands, cutting around hundred jobs. The firm, founded in 1918 in the northeast Wisconsin, had made many yachts costing tens and millions of dollars.

Palmer Johnson hired Prairie Farm’s Hansen & Young Inc. to auction the production instrumentation, including around four thousand five hundred lots of metalworking and woodworking tools. Few of the lots has multiple tools. The condition and the age of the tools varies.

Hansen & Young’s auctioneer and vice president Bryce Hansen told that few of the old woodworking tools are as solid or better built than some of the new stuff. The inventory includes drills, band saws, sanders, CNC machines, grinders, dust-collecting machines, sewing machines, vacuums as well as much more. It also adds materials as well as supplies.

Al the bidding will take place on the internet. Hansen stated that this is an eBay-style auction, except that this is on their website. A lot of the items are at Palmer Johnson’s former plant at 128 Kentucky St., Sturgeon Bay. They would be there for viewing on 28th March from 10 am to 3 pm.