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We thought about making dust pans in our shop for a long time. If someone has a broom, naturally they might need a dust pan to go along with it. They had to be cool -- and we wanted to make them right here in our American Broom Shop. We wanted some wood in the design, since we think wood is beautiful. No plastic allowed, of course. Plastic is not what we're about. We did want to reuse something that would otherwise be waste. The design needed to be simple, yet delightfully functional.

In the broom shop, there is a whole lot of cutting going on. One guy building brooms can make a mess in a hurry. We trim handfuls of broomcorn as we add layers to the brooms, and the scraps fall to the floor. Since broomcorn is so tough, it is difficult to cut without a very sharp knife. This is my favorite knife. It is specially designed for broom making -- called a corn knife. It has a real thin blade, which we sharpen with a rough file to hone aggressive teeth into the cutting edge. So it's more like a saw than a knife. The handle is round, so it fits in the palm really nice. There is a leather guard to protect the hand. This knife was made by Dexter Russell, who makes specialty knives of all types.

Every broom we make is stitched by hand on our antique Shaker broom press. Using care not to damage the broom corn bristles, we bind the brooms flat using needle and twine. Every broom is built to last many years, and given our personal guarantee of quality.

The year is 1797. Levi Dickenson gets credit for crafting America's first corn broom. A farmer from Hadley, Massachusetts, Levi simply grabbed a bundle of sorghum tassels to make a broom for his wife. It worked so well, and the news spread. In the early 1800's the Shakers revolutionized broom making with clever tools, and machines to help speed up the process. For nearly 200 years, corn brooms sold like hotcakes. New broom shops, and great crops of broomcorn popped up everywhere. The average annual harvest of broomcorn was 41,000 tons, with record crop in 1923 which totaled 81,200 tons. In 1965 U.S. broom makers produced 35 Million household corn brooms right here in this country. By 1967, imported plastic brooms found their way onto the store shelves. Corn broom sales sharply declined, as folks began cleaning their floors with plastic bristles. So goes the story of broomcorn.

Patented Sept. 10, 1878, our "new" broom press. It is old and grumpy, but still going strong for over 125 years.

Invented in 1810, the broom maker's treadle machine revolutionized everything. Called a "kicker winder", it is a fancy way to wrap broom corn around a stick. They were built to last. Our beloved kicker was found in a barn out in Missouri. We are happy that it found it's way out west, into our broom shop. I took it apart. Lubricated and adjusted, it still works like a charm! We look forward to making many new brooms on this old, old machine!