Metal art repair

2026-02-21 - 14:34

Within one year of my purchasing a new washing machine (and the extended warranty), it started acting up. The crazy appliance, with a mind of its own, decided to walk its way into the doorway of the laundry room. After nine unsuccessful visits from the serviceman — thank goodness I had the protection plan — I finally got a replacement. But whom do you call when the broken item is artwork and the artist is long deceased? Naturally, you contact a dentist, or at least a retired one. That’s what I did. My father was a machinist who, in his free time, re-machined scrap metal into his interpretations of recognizable miniature objects, which he gave to family and friends over a period of 30 years. Abraham had made for me and my family members hundreds, no exaggeration, of objects. We cherish them all, but in this case, the patient is a horse-drawn wagon that resembles a buckboard, along with its accompanying keg, both made of solid brass — heavy and durable enough to last decades. Yet in its 45th year and after having been publicly exhibited numerous times in the past decade, the wagon’s yoke, which could have connected to a horse, separated from the body of the wagon. Coincidentally, around the same time I discovered the wagon’s ailment, I attended a lunchtime art presentation. I sat beside a couple and engaged in the usual chit-chat with strangers. I learned that Carl Manikian and his wife, Doree, were both retired — he from his dental practice and she as a psychiatrist. He mentioned that he was handy and liked to work with metal in his home workshop. Seizing an opportunity, I asked Carl if he could help me. He invited me to bring the wagon to his 250-year-old house in southern New Hampshire. We met on a blistery cold day with inches of snow on the ground. Doree could not have been more hospitable, offering me her homemade soup. Soon thereafter, Carl and I went off to the workshop in the 50-year-old replacement barn beside the woodstove-heated house. Carl wheeled over the oxyacetylene tank and torch and prepped the area of the wagon where he would apply the solder. Because the torch’s heat can reach several thousand degrees, Carl set the flame as low as possible — so low, in fact, that it kept going out. Unfortunately, but not to his complete surprise, the heat de-soldered yet another adjacent connection of the yoke. At that point, we had two areas to solder anew, and Carl realized he had to call in big-gun help. Carl took a photo of the surgical area and texted it to Joe Fitzpatrick, his master plumber friend who, on the side, creates his own ornamental metal art. Almost immediately, Joe called back and offered to assist, offering his old-fashioned, bronze-tipped soldering iron heated by a propane torch. The iron would not reach the extreme temperatures of Carl’s torch. Carl and I agreed that I would leave the wagon so he could work on it. A couple of days later, Carl contacted me: mission accomplished. I returned excitedly to the Manikians’ house, eager to see my revived little brass friend. I brought tahini cookies my wife, Becky, had made as a thank-you gift. Lesson learned: Sometimes the best way to solve a problem is to connect with people who know the right people — those who simply know what to do. Of course, it helps to connect with friendly folks who are willing to help. In this case we created an outstanding combination of a machinist’s skill, a psychiatrist’s hospitality, a dentist’s ingenuity, a plumber’s hands-on knowledge, a baker’s cookies, a son’s willingness to trust the experts and then document the entire process. And, voila, we were able to repair a treasured heirloom.