By Lisa Hix — When you talk to Eric Bradley, he sounds like absolutely the last person you’d expect to put out a swaggering book titled . Bradley, the Public Relations Director at Heritage Auctions in Dallas, comes across not at all like a dude-bro, but more like a character from “Fargo,” soft-spoken and unfailingly thoughtful and polite. A portmanteau of “man” and “antiques,” mantiques are not just for people with a Y chromosome, Bradley insists, even though the tagline of his book is “fueled by...

Bloodletting, Bone Brushes, and Tooth Keys: White-Knuckle Adventures in Early Dentistry

By Hunter Oatman-Stanford — With all those gleaming, stainless-steel tools readied for painful prodding, few people look forward to visiting the dentist. But modern dentistry is a walk in the park compared with archaic methods of treating oral maladies: Be glad you’re not seeking treatment for mysterious “tooth worms” or using dentures filled with the syphilitic teeth of dead soldiers. "“Dentistry, as we understand it today, didn’t emerge as a licensed profession until the end of the 19th century, although...

The Government-Surplus Machines That Power a Cutting-Edge Science Museum

By Ben Marks — Machines fill the floor of the Exploratorium, San Francisco’s beloved interactive science museum. Over there is a contraption called Bicycle Legs, in which visitors manipulate air pumps to replicate muscles we use when pedaling (it’s trickier than it sounds). A few hundred feet away is a perennial favorite, the Wave Machine, which demonstrates transverse waves with the turn of a crank (even I can manage that one). "I told her she can give them to us if she wants, but we won’t take care of...

Blood, Sweat, and Steel: My Afternoon with the Ace of Swords

By Ben Marks — “When I got this sword, it was completely covered in blood rust.” Sword maker Francis Boyd is showing me yet another weapon pulled from yet another safe in the heavily fortified workshop behind his northern California home. “You can tell it’s blood,” he says matter-of-factly, “because ordinary rust turns the grinding water brown. If it's blood rust it bleeds, it looks like blood in the water. Even 2,000 years old, it bleeds. And it smells like a steak cooking, like cooked meat. I've...

Barbed Wire, From Cowboy Scourge to Prized Relic of the Old West

By Ben Marks — Why would anyone pay $500 for a rusty piece of barbed wire? Well, if the 18-inch long specimen, or cut, is the only known example of the Thomas J. Barnes patent of 1907 (shown above), some folks might pay even more than that. In fact, for collectors of barbed wire, or barbwire as it's also called, the past few years have been a veritable rust rush, as choice examples of rare wire that have been squirreled away for decades are entering the market. This isn't the stuff you see today by the...