Did you know York Peppermint Patties came from York, Pennsylvania? I didn’t!
Andrea from Lancaster and I made plans to meet at the Lancaster Central Market for lunch.
I stopped in to the Tourism Office at the market when I arrived, and I found out about the Peppermint Patties. I also found out that they are now made in Mexico.
I tried to get the woman at the information desk to give me an idea of what to do on a day in York. I hate to say that she seemed baffled by the question, but I guess York isn’t the tourism mecca that Lancaster is. She gave me a brochure and suggested that I might like to take a tour of a company in the county.
I thanked her, got a free mug full of swag for signing up for a newsletter and set out to wait for Andrea.
The York Central Market is more of a food court these days than the Market in Lancaster.
While I was waiting, I picked out a tour that I fought would be interesting and I called to see if they were giving tours today. I was in luck. Bluett Brothers Violins had a tour at 3:00 that afternoon.
Andrea got through the traffic and we finally made got together. We had a wonderful lunch of African food and chatted away like old friends. All too soon, though, our time together came to an end. I hope I make it back that way again sometime.
I had a little time to kill, so I decided to look around.
I imagine that these came from an Italian restaurant.
And dig that cool web inside!
Who knew that York was Muscletown USA? Bob Hoffman founded York Barbell Corporation in 1932. He is hailed as the father or weightlifting and helped to popularize the bodybuilding movement.
The time for the tour rolled around and I showed up at the company.
Mark Bluett, Master Luthier, met me at the door with a big smile.
He began the tour by telling us that he worked on any sort of stringed instrument. In addition to building new instruments, he also repaired them.
He has two full-time apprentices and a couple part time ones that pay to learn. The one part time apprentice there was working on building his own mandolin.
Mark told us that he has a supply of wood drying that he bought in 1967. He says that he has enough stored to make more than four times the violins he can make in his lifetime.
Maple is on the back of the violins, violas and cellos and they are scraped to five different thicknesses.
The wood on the sides and tops is spruce.
Mandolins have a lot more pressure on them than violins. There is 137 pounds of pressure on a mandolin as opposed to 67 pounds on a violin.
He used to make bows, but found them boring. Now he will repair them, and keeps a stock of horse hair on hand for when he needs it.
The horse hair he uses comes from Siberia. It is from a line of horses that have been specially bred for the last 300 years for making violin bows.
Repair is a large part of his business, too.
He told us that each one of those ridges is a separate gore and that there is a band of rosewood between each gore. What incredibly detailed work!
He finished off the tour by showing us some of his recent instruments.
He told us that this is built on a scale of one one centimeter to one inch. It’s playable, if your fingers are small enough.
If the case is worth $1200, I can’t imagine what the instruments are worth.
And then it was time to head back to Flo.
I think there’s also a Harley-Davidson plant in York, PA.
Likewise there’s a really big train collectors’ show there once a year.
There are loads of factory tours there. Maybe I’ll get on the Harley tour next time.