Pop's Tops

Memory is a funny thing. It's rarely 100% accurate although you'd swear on your life that it was. My vivid memory of my dad's first batch of tops took place in December of 2012 because it was for that holiday season. When combing through the photos, I discovered that it was late August that they arrived. What I do remember clearly is being blown away and calling him immediately. The tops had been a suggestion at my previous visit (remember that I live over two hours away) but I wasn't sure how fast he would knock them out so wasn't expecting him to ship them. I have such a clear memory of opening them and knowing that we found the "thing" that would catapult the brand. When showing them around, I got many laughs and doubtful replies. "Who would spend $100 on a top?". I had zero doubts. 

That first batch was nine solid brass, one of a kind tops. They sold out in less than an hour and nobody was as surprised as my dad. Surprised and, dare I say, proud. A month later a fairly new online store called Fab.com reached out to me and wanted some tops for the website. This was huge and I knew my dad wouldn't be up for machining tops all day so it was my introduction to machining. I don't think I've talked about this detail before...memory and all that...but it was pivotal. At that point, I still didn't have much interest in learning the trade but, if I wanted to seize this opportunity there wasn't much choice. That first batch of tops I made for them was embarrassing, to say the least, and they were all one of a kind because I had no clue how to replicate something. I was quite literally sculpting on the lathe rather than machining. I like to think that I do a hybrid of both now. I miss the simplicity of driving out to my dad's, machining side by side for 2-3 days and driving home with a bounty of products to sell. Don't get me wrong, I couldn't be happier with the growth and evolution of this company but that was a life changing time for me and I'll never forget it...I think...or maybe my memory is morphing the reality. In any case, I have those fond memories and will hang onto them as is.

For all of these reasons, I thought it would be fun to replicate one of my dad's original nine. I did my best but my dad made his own tooling for jobs so I have no idea what he used. All I have is the original photo and did my best to copy it.

Pop's Top

As always, thank you.

Anthony

p.s. I'd love to know who has this top.