The guys at Sander rolled their eyes.

It was for the Canal View Inn, as it turned out, and it launched one of the hottest restaurant revivals in the city.

Lew Goettner swung his light beam down the equipment-stacked canyons in the basement.

He was taking calls in his ear bud from his sons, Dan and Jeff, manning the fort upstairs: "A safety pilot? Sure I have them."

This was his "mixer graveyard," he said, the haunt of bulky, robotlike machines. Their dough hooks, paddles and wire whisks hung from rafters.

Some dated back to the 1920s. There was a vanilla-colored Fortuna dough divider, the shape of a snowman; and brooding by itself, an elephantine, four-ton dough mixer from a defunct Einstein Bagel factory on Castor Avenue.

They were reminders that Sander Supply (a conflating of the name of the original owner, Sam Alexander) started out as a bakery supplier.

Back when open-mouthed jelly pumps were needed to fill the jelly doughnuts, and bundt-like kugelhopf was the rage; back before - one by one - the nearby corner bakeries succumbed, first Laidge's, then Schmidt's, then Schenk's, and finally, Fink's.

The stairwells are shaggy with peeling paint, opening onto floors serving the various needs of the trade.

There are metal shelves, steam tables, and pan racks. Refrigeration units nestled under a ceiling dripping with icicle-like stalactites. Stock pots, coffee urns, and molds for Boston brown bread.

There are vintage soda fountains, some procured for studio sets. Artists have bought whisk attachments - 50 at a clip - to make into lamps.

It is on these upper floors that Goettner points out the hints (sawdust vents, for one) of the building's founding purpose - to make Planet Jr. brand farm implements, and by the dawn of the 1900s, a patented steerable sled called the Flexible Flyer.

The sled (or "coaster") employed novel bendable runners and a signature crossbow-like steering piece.

But for its Quaker inventor, Samuel Leeds Allen, it served another role: It gave his farm-tool workers jobs in the summer, and kept things humming at Fifth and Glenwood.

Not a sled was left when Goettner moved Sander Supply in from Fishtown.

The one on his office wall?

It was one of the last built in North Philadelphia in the 1960s.

He got it, used, on eBay.