A Dentist's Vise and a Distiller's Gauge: Improvised Tools of the Fort Wilkins Workshop
Dr. Wilkins leads a lantern-lit tour of his moonlight-made tools, from a tooth-forceps jig that grips coin dies to a calipered worm gauge for coil tubing, and shows how dentistry, coinwork, and coppersmithing fed one another, along with what he buried beneath the anvil cellar floor when deputies came calling. Wilkes County runner Junior Vance swaps stories of improvised tools, including wrenches sewn into a quilt and a dented church pew. Cletus 'Rabbit' Miller's question about hickory ashes and red oak shavings in the thump keg leads to the true history of New England potash, and Wilkins takes down the blue-flame test myth.
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Full episode transcript
♦ Audible wax cylinder surface crackle, slow drip of clear distillate into a glass jar
♦ Barnaby the black bear grunting and chain clinking outside log cabin window
Wilkins: Barnaby! Settle yourself, you mangy four-hundred-pound sack of grudges. That is the wind in the hemlocks, not a revenue man. If it were a revenue man you would smell the cologne and the cowardice from here to Barnstead.
♦ Bear huffs, chain drags across frozen ground
Wilkins: There. He has lain down on the woodpile like a duchess on a fainting couch.
♪ 1860s parlor banjo and mountain fiddle theme with antique warmth, swells and fades under
Wilkins: Good evening, friends, neighbors, sinners, and the two Methodists I know are listening behind locked doors. This is Radio Moonshine with Alchemist G. G. Wilkins, coming to you from the log fortress of Fort Wilkins on the Suncook Valley Turnpike, Route 28, in Pittsfield, Merrimack County, New Hampshire. I am your host, your dentist, your blacksmith, and, if the sheriff is listening, your innocent bystander. Tonight we take a lantern down into my workshop and tour the tools I made by moonlight, the dentist's vise, the distiller's gauge, and the little iron secrets I keep under the cellar floor.
♪ Theme resolves on a banjo flourish
Announcer: A quick word, friends! Tired of a fire that scorches the pot and spoils the run? The Flame-Flow copper still, United States Patent 10,561,960, spreads its heat even and gentle as a summer Sunday. See it for yourself at moonshinestill.com. That is moonshinestill.com!
♦ Wax crackle, a lantern shutter creaks open
Wilkins: Segment the first. Mind the third step down, it is loose, and I keep it loose on purpose, because a deputy who does not know about it finds out with his tailbone.
♦ Boots on wooden stairs, a creak, a dull thud
Wilkins: Now. In this year of our Lord 1865, a country man does not buy his tools. He makes them, steals them, or marries into them. Down in Baltimore they have had a proper college of dental surgery since 1840, the first such school on God's earth, and I am told the young men there learn from books with pictures in them. Up here in the Suncook Valley a tooth-puller learns by doing, and the patients learn by screaming. Most country forceps were hammered out by the village smith or ordered from a cutler in Boston, and they fit a jaw about as well as a borrowed boot fits a goose. So I made my own.
♦ Iron tools clinking on a wooden bench
Wilkins: Here is the beauty I am proudest of. This began as a pair of lower-molar forceps, curved beaks, good Sheffield steel. I took them off a traveling dentist who owed me eleven dollars and a mule. The mule I never saw. But one night I was trying to counterstamp a run of large cents, and the coins kept skidding under the punch like a drunk deacon on ice. And I looked at those forceps, and those forceps looked at me, and we came to an understanding.
Wilkins: A tooth and a coin die want the same thing from a man: a good grip, a steady hand, and no sermon. So I ground the beaks flat, filed a shallow seat into each jaw, and fitted a thumbscrew through the handles. Now that jig grips a coin as tight as a widow grips a will. I lay it on the anvil, set my hardened steel punch, G. G. WILKINS over PITTSFIELD N.H., and strike.
♦ Steel punch clangs on copper coin
Wilkins: Clean as a Christian's Sunday collar. The punch has to be harder than the coin, mind, or you are only beating two pennies into a quarrel. I made my first vise out of a pair of forceps and my first enemy out of the man I took them from, and only one of the two ever gave me trouble.
Wilkins: And it runs the other direction too. Coinwork taught me patience in the wrist, the coppersmithing taught me how metal behaves when it is hot and cold, and all of it went back into my dentistry. A man who knows how a copper cent gives under a punch knows how a rotten molar will give under the beak. I have pulled a molar, stamped a penny, and bent a coil all before breakfast, and my wife says I still cannot fix a squeaky door.
♪ Short fiddle sting
Wilkins: Segment the second, and tonight we talk about the tools that hid, and the night they had to.
♦ Wax crackle, wind against log walls
Wilkins: Picture October, three years back. I am down here with the worm gauge in one hand and a jar of tooth tincture in the other, and I hear Barnaby above me make a sound like a church organ falling down a well. That means boots on the turnpike. Two county deputies, one fat and one fatter, and a warrant soggy as a doughnut.
Wilkins: Now, under my anvil there is a trap. The anvil sits on a stump of white oak, and the stump sits on a plank floor, and three of those planks lift if you know which nail is a liar. Beneath is a dry cellar the size of a coffin, lined with birch bark against the damp. Into it go the stamping punches, because a man in a sheriff's office who sees my name in steel gets ideas about my name on a docket. In goes the coin jig. In go my calipers. My anvil cellar holds more hidden iron than a Concord politician's conscience holds hidden excuses.
♦ Planks scraping, iron clattering into a hollow, planks thumping down
Wilkins: And what do I leave out in plain sight? Every dental instrument I own, laid on a clean towel like a surgeon's altar. Because nothing sends a deputy back out the door faster than a man in a leather apron cheerfully asking, 'Which tooth is troubling you, friend?'
Wilkins: The fatter one went pale. The fat one tried to circle round behind the still-house, and Barnaby, who had been pretending to sleep, rolled up off that woodpile and took hold of the seat of his britches. Barnaby treats a deputy's trousers the way a Baptist treats a dance hall: he will not rest until the thing is gone entirely. There came a ripping like a sail in a gale, and that deputy went up the turnpike toward Barnstead in his long-handles, with one suspender flapping behind him like a flag of surrender. Barnaby sat there chewing a mouthful of county-issue wool, looking as satisfied as a judge at a hanging. Nobody bled, but the deputy's dignity has never been found.
Wilkins: The other deputy asked what the calipers on my bench were for, because I had missed a pair. I told him I was measuring his head for a hat, a coffin, or a jar, whichever the county could afford. He left without his warrant. I used it to start the forge.
♪ Banjo bridge
Wilkins: Now, I have a guest tonight from far down the country, a Carolina man who knows something about hiding tools from the law. He is a runner out of North Wilkesboro, quick of tongue and quicker of wheel. Junior Vance, welcome to Fort Wilkins.
Junior: Thank ye, Doc. I'll say this, your bear looked at me like I was a pork chop wearin' a hat.
Wilkins: He looks at everybody that way, Junior. It is only rude if he salts you. Tonight is tools. Tell me how a Wilkes County man made do.
Junior: Doc, makin' do is the whole religion. My uncle Odell needed a length of pipe bent one Saturday night, and he didn't have a bender, a vise, nor a lick of sense. So he slipped into the Baptist church and bent it round the iron armrest of the third pew from the front.
Wilkins: Sacrilege and craftsmanship at once. I admire the man.
Junior: Well, he bent the pipe fine, but he bent the armrest too. Sunday morning the preacher found it, and he preached forty-five minutes on how the Lord's own hand had smote that pew for the sins of the congregation. Half the church got saved. Uncle Odell sat right in that pew and said amen louder than anybody.
Wilkins: Junior's uncle dented a church pew and the preacher got a whole sermon from it, which is more return on a dent than I ever got out of the Merrimack County treasury.
Junior: Now me, my trouble was noise. Wrenches rattle, Doc, and a rattle in the trunk is a confession on wheels. So I took Mama's old wedding-ring quilt and sewed little pockets all through the backing, one wrench to a pocket, and rolled it up tight.
Wilkins: Quiet as a parson's mistress.
Junior: Quieter. One night I'm at a roadhouse outside Elkin, cold as a well-digger's backside, and a deputy comes in shiverin' and asks to borrow my quilt for a nap by the stove. What was I gonna say? He slept two hours under twenty-two pounds of good steel and woke up sayin' it was the warmest quilt he ever had. Said it had a 'real substantial feel.'
Wilkins: Ha! I have been searched by men who could not find their own feet, but that is the first I have heard of a deputy napping on the evidence. Did you ever measure things proper, or was it all by eye?
Junior: All by eye till Granny caught me. Only measurin' tool in her house was a knittin' gauge, a little tin plate full of holes, each one sized for a needle. I used it to size up fittings and such, and I wasn't careful puttin' it back. She knit my cousin a sweater that winter, and one sleeve came out a whole inch wider than the other. She held it up and looked at me, and I ain't never been looked at like that by any sheriff in two states.
Wilkins: A grandmother's glare. No bear ever made can match it. Any other hiding places?
Junior: One more. I hollowed out a big ol' mail-order catalog, cut a nest in the pages with a razor, and laid a socket set in there neat as eggs. Put it back on the shelf. Then my Aunt Pearlie went to order herself an Easter hat, opened it up, and found a half-inch drive where the bonnets oughta be. She didn't say a word. Just closed it, and that Easter she wore the same hat as the year before and stared at me through the whole service.
Wilkins: Junior Vance, between the pew, the quilt, the knitting plate, and the catalog, you have convinced me that the women and the clergy of Wilkes County are the true law of the land.
Junior: Doc, the sheriff only wanted to arrest me. Granny wanted me to understand.
Wilkins: Stay put, Junior. We have more to come.
♪ Fiddle sting
Wilkins: Segment the third. The gauge.
♦ Wax crackle, a brass instrument set on wood
Wilkins: This here is my worm gauge, and I am prouder of it than of my own children, who are less accurate. It is a pair of outside calipers I forged from a broken buggy spring, with a little brass scale I scratched on a strip of old sheathing. Every smith and machinist in this country uses calipers to check a diameter or a wall without a finished rule. I made mine for one job: checking copper tubing before it becomes a coil.
Wilkins: Why do I care? Because tubing that is thick in one spot and thin in another is a liar, and a liar fails at the worst hour. A thin spot cracks, a crack leaks, and a leak of spirit vapor near a fire is how a still-house becomes a funeral pyre. So I walk that calipers down the whole length of the tube and feel for any place where the jaws pinch or slack. If the wall is not even, the tube goes back to the scrap pile and never sees my workshop again.
Wilkins: Now, copper has a temper like a deacon. Beat on it long enough and it goes stiff and cracks, so you warm it up and it is agreeable again. Smiths call that annealing. Hammering hardens the metal, heat softens it, and a smith who forgets it will split his work and blame the Lord. My dental hand helps here. Same light wrist I use on a stubborn tooth, I use on soft copper, coaxing it, never forcing it.
Wilkins: And the metal itself must be honest. Pure copper, joined proper with silver solder or sound mechanical unions, never lead, because lead is poison. I would sooner pull my own teeth with a fence pliers than put lead in a still.
Wilkins: One more word on the craft, because a fool somewhere is listening. Every run is divided into cuts: the foreshots, the heads, the hearts, and the tails. The foreshots and heads carry methanol and other nasty volatiles, and a careful man throws them away. He does not drink them, rub them on a gum, or sell them to a deputy, however much the deputy deserves it. And I will tell you plain, as I tell every listener: making spirits to drink without a federal permit is against the law of the United States, and this program is for history and education only. Barnaby is not licensed either, and look how he turned out.
♦ Bear grunt outside the window
Wilkins: He agrees.
♪ Patent-medicine calliope flourish
Announcer: Step right up, step right up, ladies and gentlemen, farmers and philosophers! Have you ever stood at your stove and wondered how the old masters did it? How vapor rises and turns to drops, how the true distiller makes his cuts, how American spirits wove themselves into the very cloth of this nation? Then hear me now! The Alchemist G. G. Wilkins Master Distilling Course, from Fort Wilkins Academy, is a full eight-week academy of history and technique. Over thirty hours of detailed modules! Blueprints drawn plain! Live question-and-answer sessions with master distillers, coppersmiths, and historians who know the craft down to the rivet! You will learn the thermodynamics of vapor, the honest art of the cuts, and why heavy-gauge pure electrolytic copper is the alchemist's metal of choice. Come see the copper with your own eyes at our showroom at Fort Wilkins on Route 28 in Pittsfield, New Hampshire, or read more at moonshinestill.com/course. All this, friends, for just one hundred ninety-nine dollars! Seats are limited, and the wise man reserves his place before his neighbor does. Enroll today at fortwilkins.com/course. Once more, so it sticks like pitch on a pine: fortwilkins.com/course!
♪ Calliope fades out
Wilkins: Segment the fourth, and we have a voice off the call-in line. Play it, if the cylinder will oblige.
♦ Heavy wax cylinder crackle, a tinny recorded voice
Caller: Alchemist, my uncle swears old-timers used to throw hickory ashes or red oak shavings into the thump keg to clean out bad heads. Is there any truth to that, or was he just making swamp medicine?
♦ Cylinder clicks off
Wilkins: Cletus 'Rabbit' Miller, of Wilkesboro, North Carolina! A Rabbit on my line, and Barnaby has his ears up. Rabbit, your uncle is half right, and he has the right half in the wrong bucket.
Wilkins: Here is what is true. Up here in New England, every farmer saved his hardwood ashes like gold dust. He poured water through them in a leach barrel, ran off the lye, and boiled it down to potash. Refine it further and you had pearlash. Potash was one of New England's chief cash crops, shipped off for soap, glass, and even to raise a cake before saleratus came along. My own grandmother made soap that would strip the bark off a birch. So ashes are a mighty useful thing. They are useful at the soap kettle, not in the doubler. Rabbit, your uncle's ash bucket belongs at the soap kettle, and a soap kettle is the only place on God's earth where a Wilkes County man will willingly get clean.
Wilkins: Now the red oak. Oak surely does work on spirit, but it works slow, in a charred barrel over months and years, giving color and flavor. Shavings tossed into a thump keg for the length of one run do about as much as a sermon does for a mule. And mark me: no ash, no shaving, no prayer will take methanol out of a bad run. The only way to rid yourself of bad heads is to cut them off and throw them away.
♦ Steel punch clangs on copper coin
Wilkins: That is a stamped cent for your uncle, Rabbit, for good intentions. Now another myth, and a dangerous one. The blue flame test. Some fellow pours a spoonful into a tin, sets a match to it, and declares that a pretty blue flame proves the whiskey is safe. Hogwash in a hat.
♦ Steel punch clangs on copper coin
Wilkins: Wood alcohol and grain alcohol both burn with that same pale, near-invisible blue. The flame cannot tell the difference, and a man who trusts it can lose his eyesight or worse. A man who judges his whiskey by the color of its flame is the same man who judges a horse by the color of its tail and walks home every Sunday. The flame tells you only that something burns. Honest cuts are the only test worth a damn.
♦ Steel punch clangs on copper coin
Wilkins: Three coins struck, three myths buried. Rabbit Miller, of Wilkesboro, North Carolina, you are a gentleman and a scholar, and your uncle is a gentleman. Tell him Fort Wilkins says hello, and to put the ashes back by the soap kettle where they belong.
Junior: Doc, I know Rabbit's people. His uncle once tried to clean a carburetor with buttermilk.
Wilkins: Then the man is consistent, Junior, and in this world that counts for something. Junior Vance, thank you for coming all this way north.
Junior: My pleasure, Doc. Tell Barnaby I'll mail him a ham.
Wilkins: Mail it to me. He will get what is left.
♪ Theme returns softly under
Announcer: A quick word before we part! Even heat, clean runs, and copper worth handing down to your grandson: that is the Flame-Flow still, United States Patent 10,561,960. Visit moonshinestill.com today. Moonshinestill.com!
Wilkins: Friends, that is our tour. The forceps that became a vise, the buggy spring that became a gauge, the cellar under the anvil that keeps my secrets better than a priest. If you would like to learn the craft and the history from men who know it, the Alchemist G. G. Wilkins Master Distilling Course is waiting for you at fortwilkins.com/course. Eight weeks, and you will understand more about copper than every deputy in Merrimack County put together, which is a low fence, but a pretty fence.
Wilkins: Keep your copper clean, your cuts honest, and your fire low. Goodnight from Fort Wilkins.
♦ Bear grunt and final drip into jar
♪ Banjo and fiddle theme closes on a warm final chord
♦ Wax cylinder crackle fades to silence