Old Tools

Usually when I go into a museum, one of the rooms I like to visit is where they display the tools of yesterday. Tools used a hundred or more years ago had to be made by hand. The maker, one can see, took great pride in his work. All show a craft that is no longer found today. I once saw a comment, credited to Henry Ward Beecher, who said that 'a tool is but an extension of a man's hand'.

Most common tools have changed but little over the centuries, particularly the method in which they were supposed to be used. The Civil War is credited with being the turning point of many tool designs. Prior to that time a tool was meant to do one job at a time. This period saw tools which could be used on mass production.

Tools of various kinds have been used for thousands of years. The museum in Athens, Greece, contains hundreds of tools which were found in escavations in that country and surrounding islands. One, particularly, is an old saw in a relatively good state of preservation, considering the fact that it was used hundreds of years BC.

The colonists brought the knowledge of the use of the saw with them to this new land. The earliest planks, when they were not split, were made by an open plank saw. This tool was used on a straight up and down movement. Thus, one can quickly identify the planks made by this method by the teeth marks, which are in a vertical position. Later, the open pit saw was used. The tooth marks on the boards were now slanted. To cut these boards, it was necessary to place the log on a high trestle. One man stood on the log and pulled the blade up. A man was stationed under the log. His job was to pull the blade down. The 'under' man usually wore a very wide rimmed hat to keep the sawdust out of his face and off his clothing. Later framed pit saws came into use. They were similar to our coping saws today.

Another important tool brought to America was the ax. There is an old saying 'an ax is an axe!' Believe-it-or-not both spellings are correct. It used to be said that a man could enter a forest armed with only an ax and survive. The earliest axes contained no 'poll' or heal. It is interesting to see the changes in the ax head designs, dating back from the 1600's to the earliest 1900's. The trade axes or tomahawks, made from iron, had no poll. The earliest head was made by bending rectangular a rectangular piece of iron so that the two ends met. Then a harder piece of steel and the head were heated and welded together. The harder steel was hammered into the cutting edge or blade. A hole was left in the flap of iron for a wooden handle to be inserted. Many of the axes were made that resembled a large 'L' with the wooden handle inserted in the upper part. The bottom part was the cutting edge. Numerous designs of an ax head were soon made by the settlers. Each was used for a specific purpose. Some were made like a giant chisel. Others were so small in one end that they could be used to cut square holes in logs for tenons or pegs. Ax heads were also made with one side extremely flat, with the blade like a chisel. Some were made with the blade eight to twelve inches wide. They were classified as 'broad axes'. It was interesting to note that the English and German immigrants used different styles. The latter used an ax called the 'goose wing'.

The old blacksmiths knew how to make an ax head with just the exact hardness or temper. Many designed their own special style, which could be used for a specific purpose. Someone apparently had a brilliant idea of changing the shape of the cutting edge, by making it flat, thus the adze came into being. With this tool, logs could be chipped down to a flat side. By carving the blade, grooves could be cut.

Almost every farmer and carpenter had his own pattern to make ax handles. I was surprised to learn there were at least three distinct styles. One was in the shape of a deer's foot, called the 'fawn foot'. The next was the scroll knob and the other was the 'swell knob'. The purpose of these was to give the handler a better grip on his tool when swinging the ax.

From the axes came the hatchet. Again, the blacksmith used his craft to make a small ax for small jobs. Thus, he had a tool that could be used to make and work with shingles, lathing and the wide bladed 'coopers hatchet'.

Our modern hatchet came down to us from these early craftsmen. Still another tool was the hammer. The hammer head design has not changed too much during the past centuries. In fact some of the heads were copied from hammerheads which the Romans used.

When large iron heads were not available, in many instances, heavy hammers were made from walnut burls, beech burls and other hard woods. One large wood hammer was called a 'mallet' or 'Commander'. This type was used especially to drive logs and beams into place. They did not disfigure the wood ends.

One scarce type of hammer is the mill pick. This tool was used to dress the round stone burrs of the grain mill. One had the sharp edges made horizontal, while another had a vertical blade. Both were diamond shape. Another rare implement is the small hammer with pointed ends, which the settler used to chip flakes of flint for his flintlock musket.

Other tools were wedges made of wood. They were used to split logs. Wedges made of iron, with a wooden handle were called 'froes'. These were used to split wood small enough to be used as shingles. The froes were pounded into the wood with a club. In the same category came the chisel of many sizes and designs. Round chisels were often referred to as 'gouges'. This instrument had a very sharp edge. Their main use was to cut holes in logs and boards.

One of the most important tools used by wood craftsmen was the plane. The first planes were used by coopers. They were used upside down. Most were around six feet long and had two legs inserted on one end. The other end rested on the ground. Other plans ranged down to about two inches long. They were made from hard wood and often resembled a box. A steel blade was held in a slot by means of one or two wedges. Planes were used to smooth the surface of a board as well as to make it level and straight so each board could be fitted to the next one. Sometimes this was referred to as 'joining'.

A few years ago a former resident of Bedford had one of the largest collections of wooden planes in the county. This man loved to display this collection during the fall festival in store windows. Among his collection were moulding planes of many designs. The 'rabbet' was used to make a cut in the side of a board so that it could be overlapped. The plow was for making grooves, the adjustable to make 'tongue and grooves, other planes were joiners, jacks, halving match, cooper's joiner, raisers, reeding planes, sash, side and table, toothing, compass, carvers, sun, carriage makers, spoke shavers and scoopers. Most of these, I have never seen used, thus, I cannot describe their individual uses.

There were many different ways of making a hole in wood. Tools for this purpose are called awls, punches, augers and gimlets. The awls and gimlets had a handle on the top to give force to separate the wood fibers. The ream, auger and gimlet cut the fibers. Sometimes the settlers used a burning awl. This tool was heated red-hot and then forced into the wood. This method was frequently used to make spiles in the spring to insert into maple trees to run the sap into the wooden keelers. When I was a kid, I used to watch an old wagon maker ream out the hub for a wagon wheel. He would take a large chunk of cured wood, bore a number of holes in the center, then start with his reamers to cut the holes larger. His biggest reamer had a hook on the end. He would fasten a forty to fifty pound weight on the hook. With this weight pulling on the tool, he could cut the hole to the exact size he wanted to make. Cutting holes from an inch or two in diameter required bits with long wooden handles. This tool resembled a very large 'T'. I learned that the shape of the handles helps collectors to classify the periods in which they were made and used. A primitive tapered handle was made in the late 1600's and early 1700's while grooved and ornamental handles were made later.

To assist in drilling the holes, the early American devised a bit stock or brace from native hardwood. Some were made from natural shaped roots and boughs. Each carpenter took special pride in carving revolving buttons on the top of his bit stock.

The farmer, today, has his hay crops harvested by machinery and put into large bales and then stacked in the barn. A farmer a hundred years ago had no large space in his log barn, therefore he had to place his hay in his field in large and high stacks. To get the hay for his livestock, he had to have tools to get it out of the large pile. Some farmers used a long instrument similar to a long cross-cut saw. It had long sharp teeth by which he could cut out sections. It was called a 'hay knife'. Other hay knives were made in the form of an inverted 'Y'. Some were in the form of a large 'L'. The lower part of this tool was very sharp.

To cut his hay and grain he had to use cutting tools. The forerunner was a one-hand cutter, called a 'reaper hook'. This had a blade about three feet long and curved It was thin and tapered to a point similar to our grass sickles. A short blade fastened on a short wooden handle was an important tool for the farmer in the fall. These were used to cut his cornstalks so he could stack his corn into shocks. The farmer usually had several hand corn huskers which he made from a piece of rawhide into which was inserted a piece of hickory about the size of a ballpoint pen. The leather went over the back of the fingers and the hickory stick was held in the palm of the hand. The sharp point of the stick was jabbed into the cornhusk. The husk was then quickly held by the thumb and the wood, thus in one or two twists of the wrist the ear was separated from the husk and in one continuous motion the ear was tossed on a pile on the ground. Later, commercial huskers were fitted with a metal hook to open the husk.

To handle the hay and grain stocks, the settlers had to make their own tools. If he could find a young tree in the shape of a 'Y', he could make a two pronged fork He also would take a hickory or butternut plank and cut the one end into four or six strips twelve to fourteen inches long. Then by the use of wooden wedges he would separate the cut strips into teeth or prongs, which he would taper to a point. The plugs or wedges were held in place by small hickory pins inserted into holes, which were drilled through the prongs and wedges. Now, he had a larger fork.

Long and heavy rakes were also made from hickory splints. You can still purchase wooden rakes, but they are machine made.

I am certain many of the old homes and barns in Bedford County still have many of these old time tools lying around the place. They should be preserved and kept within the family and handed down to future generations.

I am indeed sorry I do not have the artistic ability to make sketches of the many tools I have described here. I hope you will understand how and why these many tools were used. I strongly suggest that when you visit a museum some time in the future, please visit the section where these old tools are on display. You'll be glad you did.