Out of the Clear Blue - from Oregon

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Out of the Clear Blue - From Oregon

   Monday and Tuesday of this week were doctor visits. I have a problem, but the doctors can't seem to find a solution. How come it's not like House or Grey's Anatomy where my medical anomaly gets to be treated by 10 of the world's brightest doctors for 6 weeks, and then I'm cured? Of course, I'm not worried, since I've had this problem for the last 2 years!

   So after Tuesday's doctor visit at 07:30 A.M., I go for coffee, and then go home. I check my e-mails and I have a very interesting e-mail from Mr. John Keiser. He had done a search for Tom Sehloff, and came across my posting about him. Tom and John are friends, and Mr. Tom Sehloff makes fabulous cast iron toys. I had written a post about the toys of Tom Sehloff courtesy of Bertoia Auctions. I tried to do a search for Mr. Sehloff, but didn't find much, so I continued and forgot.  If you click "here" you can  see the post about Tom.

   Anyway, when I read John's e-mail, I thought that I was in toy heaven! John provided me with Tom's e-mail address and telephone number, and said that I should phone him. Thinking fast, I know that I had to ask John if he'd like to be a guest on my blog, and if he would be so kind as to send me some photos. He wrote back right away, and sent me all kinds of photos. So below is the fascinating bio of Mr. John Keiser, as well as his great collection of personal and toy photos.

Mr. John Keiser

A Most-Interesting Guest

That's John in the 1960's. He still has that 1931 Dodge, and is working on restoring it. John's profession is that of an architectural draftsperson. He learned this profession by hand, and has learned to use Autocad.

Here's John today. He worked on restoring that car, another 1931 Dodge,

and he drives it to work every day.

John sent me the 3 newspaper pages above about his restoration of the coupe (the red one).
This is one of the most interesting posts that I have had the pleasure of writing with a guest.
Thanks, John!

Updated (October  10, 2013)

That's John's weathervane, that he calls a  whirlygig, and modestly said that this was his "attempt" at folk art. Did I recently tell you about my attempts at building and repairing things around the house? Now those are attempts, John's weathervane is "art",

What's interesting is that this piece was based on his grandfather's schooner on the Great Lakes. The ship was triple-masted, and it was the last one to haul lumber on the Gear Lakes. The ship was called the "J.T.Wing". John made that ship for his parents.

Here's a "sampling" of some of John's collection. These are mostly more-recent models, although I do see some older models as well.

The top shelf are some of Tom Sehloff's outstanding creations.

On the bottom shelf I see a blue motorcycle with 2 Disney characters. However, I can't tell if that's new or a very old Hubley. The policemen in blue on the red motorcycle looks like a very old 1930's Hubley.

I think these are more of Tom Sehloff's creations. I'll ask John to identify some of the photos, when I ask him to proofread this post.

As you can see from the hand as a  reference, this toy is quite large!

Recently, I've taken photos and placed the toys against a completely white background.  However, I decided to leave just a bit of "detail" in John's photos, and the results are excellent!  Of course, it helped that John took some great photos!

The photos above and those below are Tom's creations.

I removed some green on the left side of the photo, but left the doorbell.  I like the result even better than the complete-white effect. However this will only work well with people's personal photos, rather than the auctioneer photos that present their fine items on a solid colour. The backgrounds help the photo in this case.

Tom Sehloff always signs his "masterpieces".

The 4 photos above are when the castings have been cooled and removed from their moulds.

The castings are from a Chrysler Airflow. IF you do a search on the Net for "chrysler Airflow", you will see a fabulous car. However, the "real" car never made it (was not a success), and sadly was only produced for a few years.

Casting many parts together helps save time and money, since producing high temperatures to melt iron is quite costly.  When the casting is cool, the individual pieces are carefully separated, and then finished to removed excess iron.

The 3 toys above are more of Tom Sehloff's fine cast iron toys. I spoke with tom today, and he has agreed to be a guest on my blog. Of course, he's quite busy. Not only does he create these fabulous  toys, but he works on restoring and making parts for the 1960's-1970's Dodge "muscle cars".

It must be the great state of Oregon or the air there. Both John and Tom are multi-talented people from Oregon. Maybe I should move there?

Thanks for dropping by,

and as always, 

have a great part of the day or night,

wherever you may be,

Stacey

write me anytime: 

toysearcher@gmail.com