Do you have Hand me down tools?

[twistsol]

But here's a question for you all: Who will appreciate your tools when it is our time to pass on? It's very hard to find any young person these days who is interested. I find the same is true with my library... some things today just seem of little value outside of what we individually feel.

CWS

One of my daughters has always taken an interest in working in the shop with me, and around the house and she covets all my tools. She wants me to help her build a garage so she and her husband can have a shop. The princess twins, on the other hand, had to be bribed, badgered, or coerced into helping on projects.

[leehljp]

Don't I wish!

I have just those two items as well as the small belt knife that Dad had given me when I was fourteen. It was his when he was a boy and it is one of my most prized possessions. I carried it for more than a decade in SAR field operations and countless hiking excursions. Hopefully my grandson will appreciate it one day.

Earlier this year, my wife's cousin gave me a Stanley-style #3 Bailey plane. It has belonged to her and my wife's grandfather. She found it in the basement of her father's house in an old cardboard box. She thought that I would be the only one in the family who could use it and perhaps cherish it, which I certainly will do.
. . .
But here's a question for you all: Who will appreciate your tools when it is our time to pass on? It's very hard to find any young person these days who is interested. I find the same is true with my library... some things today just seem of little value outside of what we individually feel. .

CWS

I hope my son in laws don't get on and read this; or maybe I had better tone this down. I have one son in law that knows how to value tools to some degree - some more than others, and he understands their value more than just tool price. He has a masters in ceramic art and while he is a teacher, he works with his hands in his side profession (ceramic arts) and knows the value of "good tools". I have given him a few of my tools and he does take care of them. My daughter (his wife) has always known my appreciation for well kept tools and she make sure he does that.

My first and oldest son-in-law did not know the value of taking care of tools growing up because he never had any. His youngest son (age 12) is the only one in his family of 4 boys (and one girl) that has any tool sense. He likes all kinds of tools, takes care of them and keeps them in decent shape. His 3 older brothers don't know what tools are or how to use them. They are intrigued about the things I make with them, and they like to watch me make pens, but they have no idea of, or any desire to know which way to turn a screwdriver to tighten or loosen a screw.

My middle daughter, unmarried nearly 40, understands tools and tool usage - she will get my Dewalt scroll saw and a few powered hand tools such as sander and drill. She has some tool sense.

My youngest daughter also has 4 sons and a daughter, the oldest two are 9 and 7 and they have a considerable bit to tool sense. Their dad involves them in making things and they take to literal "hands-on" work well. If my big items are not sold, most will probably go to this family.

[LCHIEN]

Don't I wish!

My Dad had so many tools that I can hardly remember a lot of them today. At one time he was an auto mechanic and in my youth I used a lot of those ratchets, sockets, breaker bars and even tire irons. He taught me how to remove a tire from the rim, replace lifters in his old pickup, adjust the rockers, and even change my own oil and filters. Later he was a sheet metal worker, making his own duct work for the heating business he had. That branched out to baseboard heating too and later plumbing. He had tools for everything and it filled the old 3/4 ton truck as well as our large garage and basement. At one time he taught me how to caulk and pour molten lead for section sewer line...tools for that tool, as well as pipe vises, threading equipment and pipe benders. LIke I said, tools for everything. He once told me it would all be mine.

But years passed since I left the house and got married in 1967 and decades went buy and through it all he added more tools. But near the end of his life at 78 (born in 1918) my two sisters and one brother seemed obsessed in what things were worth and finally after his death I discovered that everything was gone. All I was able to find was one old Milwaukee "Hole shooter" and a sheet-metal scribe shoved away in an old metal box that I had made in high school. So while Dad had Willed all of his tools to me, my siblings had greater need I guess, and my total inheritance was those two items and my quarter of the house. My brother still lived there (it's the only place he has ever lived) and I just let him keep it as it was simply not worth the hassle to do otherwise.

I have just those two items as well as the small belt knife that Dad had given me when I was fourteen. It was his when he was a boy and it is one of my most prized possessions. I carried it for more than a decade in SAR field operations and countless hiking excursions. Hopefully my grandson will appreciate it one day.

Earlier this year, my wife's cousin gave me a Stanley-style #3 Bailey plane. It has belonged to her and my wife's grandfather. She found it in the basement of her father's house in an old cardboard box. She thought that I would be the only one in the family who could use it and perhaps cherish it, which I certainly will do.

I have a Stanley Bailey 3 which I bought a few years ago at an old surplus tool shop here for seven dollars. That was not in as bad a shape as this plane, but I'm hopeful I can restore it too. (I just described it earlier this week on the post about block planes. I'll have to take a couple of pictures tomorrow if I get an opportunity.

But here's a question for you all: Who will appreciate your tools when it is our time to pass on? It's very hard to find any young person these days who is interested. I find the same is true with my library... some things today just seem of little value outside of what we individually feel. .

CWS

Well, there's a lesson there. Willing things won't necessarily get it done. If you want to pass things to on person, start doing it while you are alive! THnk about who you want to pass your tools to and be proactive about it when you start slowing down.

[cwsmith]

Well, there's a lesson there. Willing things won't necessarily get it done. If you want to pass things to on person, start doing it while you are alive! THnk about who you want to pass your tools to and be proactive about it when you start slowing down.

I couldn't agree more and that will be our plan as life progresses. I've seen this kind of thing in both sides of the family and personally I find it deplorable. You have good parents with honorable intentions and yet something seems to go terribly wrong between the siblings. My wife and I are both the oldest children in our respective families, and it just seems that those who came after have no sense of honor. I've seen that in other families too.

But I'm faced with a different predicament, as we only have our son and his family. But there is absolutely no interest in tools whatsoever there. And our rather extensive library, while some books might be cherished, the rest will go to the dumpster. Last year my son told me that he admires us for having things from his childhood that he still remembers, but in his house, his wife does an annual purge... yeah, I know. Soon after our grandson was born they wanted all of our son's "Golden Books"... we must have had over a hundred of those. Likewise they wanted all of his Fisher-Price toys, safely stored in our attic, as well as other things. Well, they're his, we thought, so why not. Within a couple of years they were all gone, sold on E-bay or put in the trash, along with recent Christmas and birthday gifts... just no sense of keeping I guess. Made my wife sick of heart.

For me, my son and I made a pinewood derby car when he was in Cub Scouts. I kept it on my shelf in the den. Last year he said, "Gee Dad, that's great you still have that., can I have it?" Absolutely! Last week in our phone conversation he was telling me how they were still looking for stuff in their moving boxes (they move to Iowa this past spring). I said that I hoped he hadn't lost the car, and he said, "I don't know... I think that maybe his wife tossed it because they had too much to pack."

So that is what I'm faced with, no sense of values. (Yet I still have the hunting knife my father gave me when I was 14, and even a couple of books my grandparents bought me when I was much younger than that. For me there is a certain reverence in the heritage that certain things represent. Not so with too many people today I think, as either and object has monetary value with them or its just trash.

Perhaps someday I'll just start packing up stuff and shipping it off the more distant relatives or donating it to recent friends; I just don't know. But what I do know is that it's not time yet, as I'm still enjoying my things that were given to us. One thing for certain is that I'm not leaving much so that others can just toss it.

CWS.

[LCHIEN]

I couldn't agree more and that will be our plan as life progresses. I've seen this kind of thing in both sides of the family and personally I find it deplorable. You have good parents with honorable intentions and yet something seems to go terribly wrong between the siblings. My wife and I are both the oldest children in our respective families, and it just seems that those who came after have no sense of honor. I've seen that in other families too.

But I'm faced with a different predicament, as we only have our son and his family. But there is absolutely no interest in tools whatsoever there. And our rather extensive library, while some books might be cherished, the rest will go to the dumpster. Last year my son told me that he admires us for having things from his childhood that he still remembers, but in his house, his wife does an annual purge... yeah, I know. Soon after our grandson was born they wanted all of our son's "Golden Books"... we must have had over a hundred of those. Likewise they wanted all of his Fisher-Price toys, safely stored in our attic, as well as other things. Well, they're his, we thought, so why not. Within a couple of years they were all gone, sold on E-bay or put in the trash, along with recent Christmas and birthday gifts... just no sense of keeping I guess. Made my wife sick of heart.

For me, my son and I made a pinewood derby car when he was in Cub Scouts. I kept it on my shelf in the den. Last year he said, "Gee Dad, that's great you still have that., can I have it?" Absolutely! Last week in our phone conversation he was telling me how they were still looking for stuff in their moving boxes (they move to Iowa this past spring). I said that I hoped he hadn't lost the car, and he said, "I don't know... I think that maybe his wife tossed it because they had too much to pack."

So that is what I'm faced with, no sense of values. (Yet I still have the hunting knife my father gave me when I was 14, and even a couple of books my grandparents bought me when I was much younger than that. For me there is a certain reverence in the heritage that certain things represent. Not so with too many people today I think, as either and object has monetary value with them or its just trash.

Perhaps someday I'll just start packing up stuff and shipping it off the more distant relatives or donating it to recent friends; I just don't know. But what I do know is that it's not time yet, as I'm still enjoying my things that were given to us. One thing for certain is that I'm not leaving much so that others can just toss it.

CWS.

Yeah, I know what you mean. I'm sentimental and keep way too much crap. I have some stuff simply because it was my mom's and I remember it when we grew up.
My kids on the other hand seem to be much less sentimental. Maybe its the generations. I picked up a lot of my habits from my mom who was a child in the Depression Years.Somewhere along the line everything became disposable.

[atgcpaul]

We immigrated to the US when my dad was about 33. I think my parents literally had 4 suitcases and me and my sister with them. They weren't reunited with their wedding picture until about their 20th anniversary, but for some reason, they brought a wok as well as a slice of padauk burl my Dad had commissioned into a small table by another forester friend. They still use the wok, and my parents gave me the table when they moved from MD to DE in their own inventory purge. When I was a little kid, I remember falling asleep under that table while I traced my fingers along its craggy edge. There's some crayon scrawling on the underside, too.

My Dad bought the tools that he needed to do stuff around the house and that's where I get my DIY mentality from. I wouldn't say any of his tools are "heirloom" quality and I've replicated everything he has (and then some) in my own collection so there isn't really anything of his I want or need to incorporate into my stuff. Most of the tools he used when I was a kid, he's already replaced. I've actually been adding to his collection because I got tired of bringing my tools to his house to help him with something, I'm just like "Keep it". For example, I can't ever remember my Dad ever having any clamps. I always sat on his boards he was cutting or held this or that for him so he probably didn't need them. Now I just give him the F-style clamps or Quikgrips when we finish working on a project.

My FIL is still kicking around, too, and when he retired overseas, he shipped my wife a whole bunch of tools he wasn't going to use. Again, nothing heirloom quality either, but these were tools I needed to replace or didn't have so I use them now--small Stanley 12' tape which I keep in the car in case I forget mine when I head to Home Depot, a hammer, some random pliers which have come in handy, and a horsehair bench brush.

My kids are still young so who's to say where their interests will lie when the time comes. I do try to have them help me if I think they can handle it. I'm still relatively young too so who's to say I will still be into woodworking when that time comes.

Anyway, I am a fairly sentimental guy when it comes to "stuff". Packrat sentimental. We are moving overseas in a couple of months. We are allowed to ship up to 7K pounds overseas and store up to 11K pounds--18K pounds total. Anything over that and we have to pay out of pocket for storage. Putting a monetary value simply by weight has been a great motivator to declutter. Last weekend I came across a Mickey Mouse coin sorting bank I've had for 35 years. The lock was broken when my parents got it from a yard sale for me for 25cents, but the sorting mechanism worked. I can't remember the last time I used it. I let my kids play with it until they got bored with it, then I looked at it, smiled, and tossed it in the trash. It was never going to be on Antiques Roadshow.

It is funny what different people have sentimental value over. My kids, for example, cherish every little scrap of paper they draw on. They cry bloody murder if any of it gets into the recycling bin. Daddy can only take so many rainbows. My wife has to purge stuff, too, for this move. She can't seem to get rid of her 20 year old college textbooks. Many of which are outdated or can be found online. (She had no problem tossing mine, though).

I spent several hours tossing out old CDs of games I copied and 3.5" floppies of rescue disks I kept for PCs I owned and recycled years ago. I had bundles of cables for devices and peripherals that were no longer compatible with current technology. Once you start purging, it gets a lot easier, but it's still not easy. I have moved stuff from one pile to another. Usually on the 2nd inspection, that stuff goes in the trash.

The packing estimator is coming in a month and I want to have my shop as close to pack out ready as I can. I've got a lot of work to do.

[cwsmith]

I'm glad that I'm not the only "sentimental pack rat" here. Reading your post brought back some fond memories (like sitting on the board to hold it in place, for example). I have these little snippets of time long ago, helping Dad do this or that. Memories are all that are left in the end I think, and even though we may toss or loose an item here and there, memories will, I hope stay with us.

I'm perhaps of an age and a time where I experienced things that can't be had today. Things that I can only pass on with stories at the dinner table or in idle conversations with my grandson. Dimitri, my grandson, affectionately calls them "Grandpa stories", and I at first was set back by that. (Am I really that old?... I guess so!) My maternal grandparents lived in a small town in North Carollna and were almost indescribably poor, at least by northern standards. Living right in town on a sandy street with only three rooms and an out house. I remember signs in some local stores that said "Whites Only"... even when I was a very little boy I knew just how pathetically wrong all that was. Up north, my paternal grandparents lived on a fair sized farm in north-central Pennsylvania, in a huge farm house. Chicken coups, open fields, apple orchard, and a marvelous old barn with fields of hay and stands of berry bushes. When I was little it had no electricity, and the pump outside the back entrance was a delight from which we fetched our water.

Looking back and telling my grandson stories of those places is a lot like looking back more than a century, perhaps to my grandparents childhood or earlier. But that was the "gift" that my youth experienced and I'm very grateful for it all. So perhaps that is where my thoughts and values of heritage were kindled. Just don't know, but even today I find old things attractive and worth knowing and honoring. It's hard to throw away books or tools that I find that were cared for by others, especially when branded with their signatures. I think that is a large part of the reasoning for keeping many of the books that I have.

I once had a kerosene lantern from the farm, my grandfather gave to me when I was about 10 or 12 and I used to use it when camping with my young friends in the forested hills around where I grew up. I left that with my parents when I got married, there's not a lot you can take with you when you get married and move to a small apartment with your new bride. That lantern too, disappeared somewhere in time. Guess when you move on with your life, a lot of "junk" gets left in your wake. You really can't take it all with you. Some things get tossed because you are no longer there, and somethings need to get tossed simply because it's time. But later.... later you perhaps realize that maybe you shouldn't have been so hasty, maybe you should have made room.... but it is what it is, and very few of us have the wisdom of such forethought. If only I could have seen then, what I might later hold in value.

CWS

.

[radhak]

I think we can all relate - and these stories are building up to about more than just tools. Moving houses is a great point when stuff gets discarded, and moving countries is even better at culling stuff.

When we moved to this country 22 years ago my wife left a box full of memories at my parents' home: because she wanted those pictures and albums to be safe, and those were really precious. My mom added those to her own albums and kept it in a steel trunk. Guess what - when that Tsunami hit and streets and houses were flooded and lives were at risk, all that 'precious' stuff was just stuff. All of it got destroyed in water, and once we recovered from the shock of almost losing loved ones, the loss of pictures that could never be replicated was heartbreaking. My wife mourned that she could not hold on to memories of her parents she had lost as a child, while my mom mourned the memories she had built of her children as kids that she could not share with grandkids. So today, I have tried my best to inure myself to too much attachment to things. I feel it, but I push it down and try to do something about it.

My daughters are teenagers now, and I know that they will not want to have anything to do with my tools. In my entire extended family there is nobody who will. Nobody knows a router from a jigsaw, and nobody wants to. My garage is full of quality tools - most purchased used like my Unisaw, the router table, the bandsaw, the lathe, the miter-saw; others bought new because nobody sells them: the Dowelmax, the LV shoulder plane, the Kreg kit for pocket screws. And there's tons of furniture I have built. I don't see my daughters wanting any of that - not even the furniture, because they are ambitious and have career plans that span jobs in big cities and small apartments.And shockingly, they are very happy with store bought furniture, even IKEA!

It does not make them bad persons - it's just something I need to be aware of. So when the time comes I will try to just sell some of my tools off. Some, I will keep even if I move back to my own country (yes, I keep yearning to do that): I am thinking I'll keep the 'hand' tools, and maybe the lathe to make small stuff like pens etc. Maybe I will come across a young person (boy or girl) I could mentor and hand over to. I can only wish.

[leehljp]

I forgot to mention that my dad had a Unisaw when he passed away. He was using it in his "past retirement age" work of making customized pallets (for non standard sized) in the greater Memphis area. The unisaw had been greatly used and was probably 30 years old when he passed away. Having used it myself, I knew some of its idiosyncrasies, including a fine vibration that was not the belt or motor. Every day it had to be checked. It was great for making pallets but not for cabinet grade precision work. Since dad was using it in a rented building, I didn't want to store it nor keep it. Because of its fine vibrations that caused things to gradually loosen or move, I let mom sell it and keep the money. She knew I was into woodworking but I told her I wasn't interested in that.

Some people would call me crazy but for me at that time, it was more about something very functional that I didn't have to fiddle with over and over.

We do have some old lamps, churns, stove top irons and things that I remembered as a kid. I think my most prized possession though is the Starrett combination square.

[dbhost]

My family history is a little more, convuluted than I would like, but... My moms dad was gone before I had any memory of him, and my Dads father passed away by my 10th birthday. My Dad inherited his tools.

Growing up, I remember watching my Dad, helping him out by bringing him tools, or this, that or the other piece of wood, various hardware bits etc... He built most of our furniture for the house we had through grade school, he finished out and divided the attic to convert a little 2br house to 4 bedrooms.

My Dads line came from old order Amish from Central Ohio, my Great Grandfather left the church to get married and I believe work as a Sheriff in the 1890s I believe it was. The DIY tendencies I am sure come from that. This is actually where my workshop name and logo for "The Amish Heritage Workshop" came from.

My parents split when I was starting Jr. High, and my mom took us cross country to Oregon. Dad followed up to where we were by my senior year in high school, by then he had liquidated his shop, mostly. So I have very few tools from him. EXCEPT...

When Dad moved out to Oregon where we were, he liked taking me on road trips through the Willamette Valley and even up to the high desert, small towns, and he would stop at just about any yard sale, craft show, garage sale, or swap meet he would see.

While my Dad did not share my passion for all things camping, his idea of camping is RVing, that's fine, but he supported by Camping habits, and tried to encourage me in woodworking in any way he could given he no longer had a shop, and I was a young guy trying to find my own way, in my own apartment at 18. No room for much in a studio apartment you know!

I stumbled across several of those items recently that had been locked away in a tool box or a tote for better part of 20 years. Most notably...

A Yankee drill, It must have been made some time in the early 1980s for us to have sourced it on the used market by the late 80s. Plastic handle and all... It has a small assortment of bits in the handle.

A Swiss Army knife. "Camper" model. That was a Christmas present that was given to me new. Unfortunately over the decades the tip of the main blade broke off. This is something like a $20.00 knife these days, but I would like to have it fixed if possible...

A Camp Hatchet. No clue who made it. Looks like an Estwing, but it has a molded handle with holes / dimples for grip. I have been working on cleaning decades of crud off of it, and sharpened it recently. This is a great kindling maker.

A couple of misc smaller lock back folding knives. and a whetstone. I started carving with a pocket knife on found bits of wood when I was a boy, he kept encouraging that.

A couple of pages out of, I don't recall the magazine, but they include the plans, cutlist, etc... for the cobblers bench Dad built and we had as our coffee table growing up. The plans called for Poplar, but I distinctly remember Dads version was made with pine. It got damagedin the truck when he moved to Oregon and got rid of it. The load shifted, and broke two of the legs, he opted to not fix it....

A Century MFG single burner bottle top propane camp stove, with an American Camper 5pc cook set. It had a 1qt pot, a 2qt pot with lid, the lid for the 1qt pot doubled up as a small skillet, and it had one of those funky little 1 cup plastic drinking cups that doubled up as a measuring cup that has since gone missing. I haven't used the stove since the late 90s, almost afraid to now as I suspect it would leak propane, and Century appears to have not survived the 2008 downturn so parts are going to be tough. The cook kit gets used quite a bit, I need to sew up a new stuff sack though, the original one is geting thread bare.

It should be noted, the last time I used the old Century stove, we were camping on the Oregon coast. Dad and Step Mom were in their Class C, I had my old VW Westfalia camper van, the 60s model, so no built in appliances on those like the 70s and up models.... Anyway I remember popping the windows in the pop top open, and putting a pot of coffee on, then crawling back in my sleeping bag to watch the percolator do its thing....

[LCHIEN]

...
...


A Yankee drill, It must have been made some time in the early 1980s for us to have sourced it on the used market by the late 80s. Plastic handle and all... It has a small assortment of bits in the handle.

A Swiss Army knife. "Camper" model. That was a Christmas present that was given to me new. Unfortunately over the decades the tip of the main blade broke off. This is something like a $20.00 knife these days, but I would like to have it fixed if possible...

....

My Yankee drill I think dates from the mid-late 50's. Actually, I think I have a Yankee push drill and a Yankee "automatic" screwdriver.

If you have a genuine Victorinox Swiss army knife (on the main blade base) it will say "OFFICIER SUISSE" on one side and VICTORINOX SWITZERLAND STAINLESS ROSTFREI on the other side.

Look on the Victorinox website (US, I think) and they have a pretty good guarantee/repair policy, I broke the tip on my SUPER TINKER and I think I sent $5 handling fee and spent postage of $6 a couple of years ago and they repaired it with a new blade, cleaned it, and replaced the side plastic pieces with new (have to break the old ones off, I think you get them back) I think they also replace any broken or damaged tools. So I essentially got a brand new knife for around $11 cost to me, The Camper and Tinker models new are not cheap, about 30-40 bucks and the design is pretty much unchanged.
I think Wenger is now owned by Victorinox so Wenger is also covered. The form mentions additional cost, but they did not charge me anything other than the base handling fee to replace the main blade.

Here's the page:

https://service.swissarmy.com/ProductEdit.aspx

[Jim Frye]

Today, I used some hand me down saws to begin work on the third living room table. A Craftsman hand saw that dates to the late '40s from my late Father-In-Law and a back saw from a Niece's Father. The back saw is one of two rusty old nameless saws that weren't wanted that I restored and had professionally sharpened and set. I especially enjoy using the old Craftsman saw, knowing the fine work my Dad-In-Law did with it.

[capncarl]

It is sad that so many passed down mementos get delayed until someone finally cleans out a closet or tool shed. This not only goes for tools but for fishing tackle, guns, cameras, books and all manner of keepsakes. In a more perfect world these items would be passed down before they die. My grandmother knew this firsthand and made it a point to talk to everyone individually and gave them what they would eventually inherit. If the item wouldn’t be taken immediately there was a note taped somewhere on the piece explaining who the new owner would be. My wife and I have carried on with this tradition the best we can. Unfortunately most of my wife’s furniture that once belong to her parents, grand and great grands do not have a future home. Everyone has their own stuff and don’t want old stuff. I am steadily giving away guns, fishing tackle and tools that I have duplicates or seldom use. We would like someone to enjoy these items before we die. Like my grandmother, wanted items have an envelope with information and inheritee name is attached somewhere on it….. and is also noted in our wills. None of the crap like you see on American Pickers is going to happen in my house!

[LCHIEN]

Seems to be a little awkward to live in a house with a life expectancy of another 10 years or so and yet have post it notes on virtually every item in the house telling who gets it when you kick off. Even to the point of being morbid and being reminded every day of your mortality that you have had to make these plans.

I suppose if we knew the exact moment of our demise and could remain lucid up to that point the night before we could go around and put the post it notes on everything. When they break into your apartment and find you dead, its going to look like the equivalent of a suicide note. And your sanity will be called into question on the will.

Not to mention the legality of such an action would be contested for valuable items people didn't get... is a post it a legalliy binding document as a signed will? Does every post it need to be notarized and signed and start out with being of sound mind and body I hereby bequeath this lamp to Mary.

[Jim Frye]

The area we live in has numerous "retirement" subdivisions or communities and the seemingly endless number of estate sales I see is unsettling as I get older. I have stated to my children that anything they don't want should be donated to the local Restore shop that helps fund the area Habitat for Humanity organization.

[capncarl]

Estate Sales can be unsettling. We use to catch a couple of estate sales a month, but it quickly became evident that it was just a sale of dead people’s stuff. Out of the multitude of estate sales that I went to I did not see a single one that I thought that the heirs were active in their parents lives and probably lived on the other side of the country. It’s hard to judge someone but I would bet all they wanted is for someone to send them a check.

[capncarl]

Explanation Is due. My Grandmother, who outlived my grandfather by 28 years and lived in a small town, think Andy of Mayberry with her grandson being Andy. 3 of her grown sons and their families lived within 10 minutes with probably half of them spending some time every day with her…… boy what a good life! Few of the the pre-inherited items were taken early. Legality? Nobody contested a 98 year old lady’s will!