Woodworking Tools 1600-1900.

by Peter C. Welsh.

_This history of woodworking hand tools from the 17th to the 20th century is one of a very gradual evolution of tools through generations of craftsmen. As a result, the sources of changes in design are almost impossible to ascertain. Published sources, moreover, have been concerned primarily with the object shaped by the tool rather than the tool itself. The resulting scarcity of information is somewhat compensated for by collections in museums and restorations._

_In this paper, the author spans three centuries in discussing the specialization, configuration, and change of woodworking tools in the United States._

THE AUTHOR: _Peter C. Welsh is curator, Growth of the United States, in the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution's Museum of History and Technology._

In 1918, PROFESSOR W.M.F. PETRIE concluded a brief article on "History in Tools" with a reminder that the history of this subject "has yet to be studied," and lamented the survival of so few precisely dated specimens. What Petrie found so discouraging in studying the implements of the ancient world has consistently plagued those concerned with tools of more recent vintage. Anonymity is the chief characteristic of hand tools of the last three centuries. The reasons are many: first, the tool is an object of daily use, subjected while in service to hard wear and, in some cases, ultimate destruction; second, a tool's usefulness is apt to continue through many years and through the hands of several generations of craftsmen, with the result that its origins become lost; third, the achievement of an implement of demonstrated proficiency dictated against radical, and therefore easily datable, changes in shape or style; and fourth, dated survivals needed to establish a range of firm control specimens for the better identification of unknowns, particularly the wooden elements of tools--handles, moldings, and plane bodies--are frustratingly few in non-arid archaeological sites. When tracing the provenance of American tools there is the additional problem of heterogeneous origins and shapes--that is, what was the appearance of a given tool prior to its standardization in England and the United States? The answer requires a brief summary of the origin of selected tool shapes, particularly those whose form was common to both the British Isles and the Continent in the 17th century. Beyond this, when did the shape of English tools begin to differ from the shape of tools of the Continent? Finally, what tool forms predominated in American usage and when, if in fact ever, did any of these tools achieve a distinctly American character? In the process of framing answers to these questions, one is confronted by a constantly diminishing literature, coupled with a steadily increasing number of tool types.[1]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Figure 1.--1685: THE PRINc.i.p.aL TOOLS that the carpenter needed to frame a house, as listed by JOHANN AMOS COMENIUS in his _Orbis Sensualium Pictus_ were the felling axe (4), wedge and beetle (7 and 8), chip axe (10), saw (12), trestle (14), and pulley (15). (Charles Hoole transl., London, 1685. _Courtesy of the Folger Shakespeare Library_.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Figure 2.--1685: THE BOXMAKER AND TURNER as pictured by Comenius required planes (3 and 5), workbench (4), auger (6), knife (7), and lathe (14). (From Johann Amos Comenius, _Orbis Sensualium Pictus.

Courtesy of the Folger Shakespeare Library_.)]

The literature of the subject, both new and old, is spa.r.s.e, with interest always centering upon the object shaped by the craftsman's tool rather than upon the tool itself. Henry Mercer's _Ancient Carpenters'

Tools_, first published in 1929, is an exception. It remains a rich source of information based primarily on the marvelous collections preserved by the Bucks County Historical Society. Since 1933, the Early American Industries a.s.sociation, both through collecting and through its _Chronicle_, has called attention to the vanishing trades, their tools and techniques; the magazine _Antiques_ has occasionally dealt with this subject. Historians of economic and industrial development usually neglect the tools of the woodcrafts, and when considering the toolmakers, they have reference only to the inventors and producers of machine tools. The dearth of written material is somewhat compensated for by the collections of hand tools in American museums and restorations, notably those at Williamsburg, Cooperstown, Old Sturbridge Village, Winterthur, the Henry Ford Museum, and Shelburne; at the latter in particular the extensive collection has been bolstered by Frank H.

Wildung's museum pamphlet, "Woodworking Tools at Shelburne Museum."

The most informative recent American work on the subject is Eric Sloane's handsomely ill.u.s.trated _A Museum of Early American Tools_, published in 1964. Going beyond just the tools of the woodworker, Sloane's book also includes agricultural implements. It is a delightful combination of appreciation of early design, nostalgia, and useful fact.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Figure 3.--1703: THE TOOLS OF THE JOINER ill.u.s.trated by Moxon are the workbench (A), fore plane (B. 1), jointer (B. 2), strike-block (B. 3), smoothing plane (B. 4 and B. 7), rabbet plane (B.

5), plow (B. 6), forming chisels (C. 1 and C. 3), paring chisel (C. 2), skew former (C. 4), mortising chisel (sec. C. 5), gouge (C. 6), square (D), bevel (F), gauge (G), brace and bit (H), gimlet (I), auger (K), hatchet (L), pit saw (M), whipsaw (N), frame saw (O), saw set (Q), handsaw (unmarked), and compa.s.s saw (E). (Joseph Moxon, _Mechanick Exercises_ ..., 3rd ed., London, 1703. Library of Congress.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Figure 4.--1703: ONLY THE PRINc.i.p.aL TOOLS used in carpentry are listed by Moxon: the axe (A), adz (B), socket chisel (C), ripping chisel (D), drawknife (E), hookpin (F), bevel (G), plumb line (H), hammer (I), commander (K), crow (L), and jack (M). (Moxon, _Mechanick Exercises_ ..., 1703. Library of Congress.)]

Charles Hummel's forthcoming _With Hammer in Hand: The Dominy Craftsmen of East Hampton_--to be published by the Yale University Press--will be a major contribution to the literature dealing with Anglo-American woodworking tools. Hummel's book will place in perspective Winterthur Museum's uniquely doc.u.mented Dominy Woodshop Collection. This extensive collection of tools--over a thousand in number--is rich in attributed and dated examples which range from the early 18th through the mid-19th century. The literature of the subject has been greatly enhanced by the English writer, W.L. Goodman. Extending a series of articles that first appeared in the _Journal of The Inst.i.tute of Handicraft Teachers_, Goodman has put together a well-researched _History of Woodworking Tools_ (London, 1964), one particularly useful for its wealth of ill.u.s.tration from antiquity and the Middle Ages.

Specialization

Given the limitations of precise dating, uncertain provenance, and an uneven literature, what can be learned about woodworking tools after 1600? In some instances, design change can be noted and doc.u.mented to provide at least a general criteria for dating. Frequently, the original appearance of tools can be doc.u.mented. For some hand tools, characteristics can be established that denote a national origin. Not infrequently a tool's style, decorative motif, or similarity to other objects that coexisted at a given time can suggest, even in relatively modern times, the values of the society that produced it. The source of such information derived from the hand tool is generally visual, recorded in the tool itself or in pictures of it and supported by ma.n.u.script and printed material.

Survey the princ.i.p.al printed sources of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. The first thing that is apparent is a remarkable proliferation of tool types without any significant change in the definition and description of the carpenter's or joiner's task. Begin in 1685 with Charles Hoole's translation of Johann Amos Comenius' _Orbis Sensualium Pictus_ for use as a Latin grammar. Among the occupations chosen to ill.u.s.trate vocabulary and usage were the carpenter (fig. 1), the boxmaker (cabinetmaker), and the turner (fig. 2). "The Carpenter,"

according to Hoole's text, "squareth Timber with a Chip ax ... and saweth it with a Saw" while the more specialized "Box-maker, smootheth hewen-Boards with a Plain upon a Work-board, he maketh them very smooth with a little plain, he boarth them thorow with an Augre, carveth them with a Knife, fasteneth them together with Glew, and Cramp-irons, and maketh Tables, Boards, Chests &c." Hoole repeated Comenius' plates with the result that the craftsman's tools and his work have the same characteristic medieval flavor as the text.[2]

Joseph Moxon in his well-quoted work on the mechanic arts defined joinery as "an Art Manual, whereby several Pieces of Wood are so fitted and join'd together by Straight-line, Squares, Miters or any Bevel, that they shall seem one intire Piece." Including the workbench, Moxon described and ill.u.s.trated 30 tools (fig. 3) needed by the joiner. The carpenter's tools were less favored by ill.u.s.tration; only 13 were pictured (fig. 4). The tools that the carpenter used were the same as those of the joiner except that the carpenter's tools were structurally stronger. The axe serves as a good example of the difference. The joiner's axe was light and short handled with the left side of the cutting edge bezeled to accommodate one-handed use. The carpenter's axe, on the other hand, was intended "to hew great Stuff" and was made deeper and heavier to facilitate the squaring and beveling of timbers.[3] By mid-18th century the craft of joiner and carpenter had been completely rationalized in Diderot's _Encyclopedie_ and by Andre Roubo in his _L'Art du menuisier_, a part of Duhamel's _Descriptions des arts et metiers_. Diderot, for example, ill.u.s.trates 14 bench planes alone, generally used by the joiner (fig. 5), while Roubo suggests the steady sophistication of the art in a plate showing the special planes and irons required for fine molding and paneling (fig. 6).

[Ill.u.s.tration: Figure 5.--1769: THE BENCH PLANES OF THE JOINER increased in number, but in appearance they remained much the same as those ill.u.s.trated by Moxon. (Denis Diderot, _Recueil de planches sur les science et les arts liberaux_, Paris, 1769, vol. 7, "Menuiserie."

Smithsonian photo 56630.)]

Despite such thoroughness, without the addition of the several plates it would be almost impossible to visualize, through the descriptive text alone, the work of the carpenter and joiner except, of course, in modern terms. This is particularly true of the numerous texts on building, such as Batty Langley's _The Builder's Complete a.s.sistant_ (1738) and Francis Price's _The British Carpenter_ (1765), where building techniques are well described but ill.u.s.tration of tools is omitted. This inadequacy grows. In two 19th-century American editions of British works, _The Book of Trades_, printed at Philadelphia in 1807, and Hazen's _Panorama of the Professions and Trades_ (1838), the descriptions of the carpenter's trade are extremely elementary.

Thomas Martin's _Circle of the Mechanical Arts_ (1813), although far more thorough than many texts, still defined carpentry "as the art of cutting out, framing, and joining large pieces of wood, to be used in building" and joinery as "small work" or what "is called by the French, _menuiserie_." Martin enumerated 16 tools most useful to the carpenter and 21 commonly used by the joiner; in summary, he noted, as had Moxon, that "both these arts are subservient to architecture, being employed in raising, roofing, flooring and ornamenting buildings of all kinds" (fig.

7).[4]

In Peter Nicholson's _The Mechanic's Companion_ (figs. 8, 9, and 10), the all-too-familiar definition of carpentry as "the art of employing timber in the construction of buildings" suggests very little of the carpenter's actual work or the improvement in tool design that had occurred since Moxon's _Exercises_. From Nicholson's list of the tools required by the carpenter--"a ripping saw, a hand saw, an axe, an adze, a socket chisel, a firmer chisel, a ripping chisel, an auguer, a gimlet, a hammer, a mallet, a pair of pincers, and sometimes planes"--there would seem at first glance slight advance since the 1600's. The enumeration of the joiner's tools, however, indicates a considerable proliferation, particularly when compared to earlier writers. By the early 19th century, the more refined work of joinery required over 50 tools.

The bench planes [instructed Nicholson] are, the jack plane, the fore plane, the trying plane, the long plane, the jointer, and the smoothing plane; the cylindric plane, the compa.s.s and forkstaff planes; the straight block, for straightening short edges. Rebating planes are the moving fillister, the sash fillister, the common rebating plane, the side rebating plane. Grooving planes are the plough and dado grooving planes. Moulding planes are sinking snipebills, side snipebills, beads, hollows and rounds, ovolos and ogees. Boring tools are: gimlets, bradawls, stock, and bits.

Instruments for dividing the wood, are princ.i.p.ally the ripping saw, the half ripper, the hand saw, the panel saw, the tenon saw, the carcase saw, the sash saw, the compa.s.s saw, the keyhole saw, and turning saw. Tools used for forming the angles of two adjoining surfaces, are squares and bevels. Tools used for drawing parallel lines are gauges. Edge tools are the firmer chisel, the mortise chisel, the socket chisel, the gouge, the hatchet, the adze, the drawing knife. Tools for knocking upon wood and iron are, the mallet and hammer. Implements for sharpening tools are the grinding stone, the rub stone, and the oil or whet stone.[5]

Reflecting what the text writers listed, toolmakers by the end of the 18th century gave buyers a wide choice. The catalogue of Sheffield's Castle Hill Works offered 20 combinations of ready-stocked tool chests; the simplest contained 12 carpenter's tools and the most complex, 39, plus, if desired, an additional a.s.sortment of gardening implements (fig.

11). In 1857, the Arrowmammett Works of Middletown, Connecticut, producers of bench and molding planes, published an ill.u.s.trated catalogue that offered 34 distinct types that included everything from hollows and rounds to double jointers and hand-rail planes (fig.

12).[6]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Figure 6.--1774: ANDRe ROUBO'S _L'Art du menuisier_ contains detailed plates and descriptions of the most specialized of woodworking planes: those used to cut panel moldings. The conformation of these tools was still distinctly in keeping with the Moxon type and suggests that, at least in Europe, no remarkable change had yet occurred in the shape of planes. (Andre-Jacob Roubo, _L'Art du menuisier_: Troisieme partie, troisieme section, l'art du menuisier ebeniste [Paris, 1774]. Smithsonian photo 49790-D.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Figure 7.--1813: THOMAS MARTIN ILl.u.s.tRATED ON ONE PLATE the tools of the carpenter and joiner dividing them as follows: the tools most useful to the carpenter, the axe (7), adz (6), saw (24), socket chisel (13), firmer chisel (5), auger (1), gimlet (3), gauge (16), square (9), compa.s.s (36), hammer (21), mallet (22), hookpin (11), crow (12), plumb rule (18), and level (19); and the tools most often a.s.sociated with joinery, the jack plane (30), trying plane (31), smoothing plane (34), tenon saw (25), compa.s.s saw (26), keyhole saw (27), square (8), bevel (23), gauge (17), mortise chisel (4), gouge (14), turnscrew (15), plow plane (29), molding plane (35), pincers (37), bradawl (10), stock and bit (2), sidehook (20), workbench (28), and rule (38). The planes are of particular interest since they show clearly a change in form from those previously ill.u.s.trated. (Thomas Martin, _The Circle of the Mechanical Arts_, London, 1813.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Figure 8.--1832: PETER NICHOLSON ILl.u.s.tRATED an interesting mixture of old and new forms. An updating of Moxon, Nicholson's carpenter required an axe (1), adz (2), socket chisel (3), mortise and tenon gauge (4), square (5), plumb rule (6), level (7), auger (8), hookpin (9), and crow (10). (Peter Nicholson, _The Mechanic's Companion_. 1st American ed., Philadelphia, 1832. Smithsonian photo 56633.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Figure 9.--1832: THE WORKBENCH DELINEATED BY NICHOLSON was little improved over Moxon's, although the planes--jack (1), trying plane (2), smoothing plane (3), sash fillister (7), and plow (8)--followed the form seen in Martin (fig. 7). The inception of this shape occurred in the shops of Sheffield toolmakers in the last half of the 18th century, and it persisted until replaced by metallic versions patented by American innovators during the last quarter of the 19th century. (Nicholson, _The Mechanic's Companion_. Smithsonian photo 56631.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Figure 10.--1832: THE BRACE AND BIT, GIMLET, CHISELS, AND SAWS, having achieved a standard form distinctly different than those of Moxon's vintage, were, like the plane, slow to change. The metallic version of the brace did not replace the standard Sheffield type (1) in the United States until after 1850. For all intent and purpose the saw still retains the characteristics ill.u.s.trated in Nicholson. Of interest is Nicholson's comment regarding the saws; namely, that the double handle was peculiar to the hand (6) and tenon saws (7), while the compa.s.s (9) and the sash saws (8) had the single handle. In addition the tenon saw was generally backed in iron and the sash saw in bra.s.s.

(Nicholson, _The Mechanic's Companion_. Smithsonian photo 56632.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Figure 11.--EARLY 19TH CENTURY: THE ADVERTIs.e.m.e.nTS OF TOOLMAKERS indicated the diversity of production. The Castle Hill Works at Sheffield offered to gentlemen 20 choices of tool chests designed to appeal to a wide variety of users and purses. The chest was available in either oak or mahogany, depending on the gentleman's tastes (fig. 49).

(Book 87, Cutler and Company, Castle Hill Works, Sheffield. _Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum_.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Figure 12.--1857: THE DIVERSITY OF TOOLS available to buyers made necessary the ill.u.s.trated trade catalogue. Although few in number in the United States before 1850, tool catalogues became voluminous in the last half of the century as printing costs dropped.

(Smithsonian Inst.i.tution Library. Smithsonian photo 49790.)]

American inventories reflect the great increase suggested by the early technical writers and trade catalogues cited above. Compare the content of two American carpenters' shops--one of 1709, in York County, Virginia, and the other of 1827, in Middleborough, Ma.s.sachusetts. John Crost, a Virginian, owned, in addition to sundry shoemaking and agricultural implements, a dozen gimlets, chalklines, bung augers, a dozen turning tools and mortising chisels, several dozen planes (ogees, hollows and rounds, and plows), several augers, a pair of 2-foot rules, a spoke shave, lathing hammers, a lock saw, three files, compa.s.ses, paring chisels, a jointer's hammer, three handsaws, filling axes, a broad axe, and two adzes. Nearly 120 years later Amasa Thompson listed his tools and their value. Thompson's list is a splendid comparison of the tools needed in actual practice, as opposed to the tools suggested by Nicholson in his treatise on carpentry or those shown in the catalogues of the toolmakers.[7] Thompson listed the following:

1 set bench planes $6.00

1 Broad Axe 3.00

1 Adze 2.25

1 Panel saw 1.50

1 Panel saw 1.58

1 fine do-- 1.58

1 Drawing knife .46

1 Trying square .93

1 Shingling hatchet .50

1 Hammer .50

1 Rabbit plane .83

1 Halving do .50