CHAPTER II

TOOLS

You can do a great deal with very few tools. The bearing of this observation lies in "the application on it," as Jack Bunsby would say.

Look at the complicated and ingenious curiosities whittled with a jack-knife by sailors, prisoners, and other people who have time to kill in that way! Have you ever seen the Chinese artisans turning out their wonderful work with only a few of the most primitive tools? But of course we cannot spend time so lavishly on our work as they do, even if we had their machine-like patience and deftness acquired through so many generations.

We cannot hold work with our feet and draw saws towards us or do turning out on the lawn with a few sticks and a bit of rope for a lathe; carve a set of wonderful open-work hollow spheres, each within the other, out of one solid ball of ivory; and the rest of the queer things the Orientals do: but it is merely a matter of national individuality--the training of hundreds of generations. We could learn to do such things after a long time doubtless, but with no such wonderful adaptability as the Japanese, for instance, are showing, in learning our ways in one generation.

Examine some of the exquisite work which the Orientals sell so cheaply and think whether you know anyone with skill enough to do it if he had a whole hardware-shop full of tools, and then see with what few simple and rude tools (like those shown in the following illustrations, or the simple drill, Fig. 1, still in use) the work has been done. Mr. Holtzapffel describes the primitive apparatus in use among the natives of India as follows[4]:

"When any portion of household furniture has to be turned, the wood-turner is sent for; he comes with all his outfit and establishes himself for the occasion at the very door of his employer. He commences by digging two holes in the ground at a distance suitable to the length of the work, and in these he fixes two short wooden posts, securing them as strongly as he can by ramming the earth and driving in wedges and stones around them. The centres, scarcely more than round nails or spikes, are driven through the posts at about eight inches from the ground, and a wooden rod, for the support of the tools, is either nailed to the posts or tied to them by a piece of coir or cocoanut rope. The bar, if long, is additionally supported, as represented, by being tied to one or two vertical sticks driven into the ground. During most of his mechanical operations the Indian workman is seated on the ground, hence the small elevation of the axes of his lathe. The boy who gives motion to the work sits or kneels on the other side of it, holding the ends of the cord wrapped around it in his hands, pulling them alternately; the cutting being restricted to one half of the motion, that of the work towards the tool. The turning tools of the Indian are almost confined to the chisel and gouge, and their handles are long enough to suit his distant position, while he guides their cutting edges by his toes. He grasps the bar or tool-rest with the smaller toes and places the tool between the large toe and its neighbour, generally out of contact with the bar. The Indian and all other turners using the Eastern method attain a high degree of prehensile power with the toes, and when seated at their work not only always use them to guide the tool, but will select indifferently the hand or the foot, whichever may happen to be the nearer, to pick up or replace any small tool or other object. The limited supply of tools the Indian uses for working in wood is also remarkable; they are of the most simple kind and hardly exceed those represented in Fig. 2; the most essential in constructing and setting up his lathe being the small, single-handed adze, the bassoolah. With this he shapes his posts and digs the holes; it serves on all occasions as a hammer and also as an anvil when the edge is for a time fixed in a block of wood. The outer side of the cutting edge is perfectly flat, and with it the workman will square or face a beam or board with almost as much precision as if it had been planed; in using the bassoolah for this latter purpose the work is generally placed in the forked stem of a tree, driven into the ground as shown in the illustration."

If we are inclined to feel proud of the kind of wood-work turned out by the average wood-worker of this country or England with his great variety of tools and appliances and facilities, we might compare his work with that done by the Orientals without our appliances. Read what Professor Morse tells us of the Japanese carpenter[5]:

"His trade, as well as other trades, has been perpetuated through generations of families. The little children have been brought up amidst the odour of fragrant shavings,--have with childish hands performed the duties of an adjustable vise or clamp; and with the same tools which when children they have handed to their fathers, they have in later days earned their daily rice. When I see one of our carpenters' ponderous tool-chests, made of polished woods, inlaid with brass decorations, and filled to repletion with several hundred dollars' worth of highly polished and elaborate machine-made implements, and contemplate the work often done with them,--with everything binding that should go loose, and everything rattling that should be tight, and much work that has to be done twice over, with an indication everywhere of a poverty of ideas,--and then recall the Japanese carpenter with his ridiculously light and flimsy tool-box containing a meagre assortment of rude and primitive tools,--considering the carpentry of the two people, I am forced to the conviction that civilisation and modern appliances count as nothing unless accompanied with a moiety of brains and some little taste and wit.... After having seen the good and serviceable carpentry, the perfect joints and complex mortises, done by good Japanese workmen, one is astonished to find that they do their work without the aid of certain appliances considered indispensable by similar craftsmen in our country. They have no bench, no vise, no spirit-level, and no bit-stock; and as for labour-saving machinery, they have absolutely nothing. With many places which could be utilised for water-power, the old country sawmill has not occurred to them. Their tools appear to be roughly made and of primitive design, though evidently of the best-tempered steel. The only substitute for the carpenter's bench is a plank on the floor, or on two horses; a square, firm, upright post is the nearest approach to a bench and vise, for to this beam a block of wood to be sawed into pieces is firmly held (Fig. 3). A big wooden wedge is bound firmly to the post with a stout rope, and this driven down with vigorous blows till it pinches the block which is to be cut into the desired proportions.

"In using many of the tools, the Japanese carpenter handles them quite differently from our workman; for instance, he draws the plane towards him instead of pushing it from him. The planes are very rude-looking implements. Their bodies, instead of being thick blocks of wood, are quite wide and thin (Fig. 4, D, E), and the blades are inclined at a greater angle than the blade in our plane. In some planes, however, the blade stands vertical; this is used in lieu of the steel scrapers in giving wood a smooth finish, and might be used with advantage by our carpenters as a substitute for the piece of glass or thin plate of steel with which they usually scrape the surface of the wood. A huge plane is often seen, five or six feet long. This plane, however, is fixed in an inclined position, upside down; that is, with the blade uppermost. The board, or piece to be planed, is moved back and forth upon it. Draw-shaves are in common use. The saws are of various kinds, with teeth much longer than those of our saws, and cut in different ways.... Some saws have teeth on the back as well as on the front, one edge being used as a cross-cut saw (Fig. 4, B, C). The hand-saw, instead of having the curious loop-shaped handle made to accommodate only one hand, as with us, has a simple straight cylindrical handle as long as the saw itself, and sometimes longer. Our carpenters engage one hand in holding the stick to be sawed while driving the saw with the other hand; the Japanese carpenter, on the contrary, holds the piece with his foot, and stooping over, with his two hands drives the saw by quick and rapid cuts through the wood. This style of working and doing many other things could never be adopted in this country without an importation of Japanese backs.... The adze is provided with a rough handle bending considerably at the lower end, not unlike a hockey-stick (Fig. 4, A).... For drilling holes a very long-handled awl is used. The carpenter seizing the handle at the end, between the palms of his hands, and moving his hands rapidly back and forth, pushing down at the same time, the awl is made rapidly to rotate back and forth; as his hands gradually slip down on the handle he quickly seizes it at the upper end again, continuing the motion as before. One is astonished to see how rapidly holes are drilled in this simple yet effective way. For large holes, augers similar to ours are used."

When you are obliged to work some day with few and insufficient tools (as most workmen are at times), you will quickly realise how much you can do with very few in case of necessity, and will more fully appreciate the skill of those Eastern people who do so much with so little. We do not need so many hand-tools for wood-work as our grandfathers and our great-grandfathers, although we make a greater variety of things, because machinery now does so much of the work for us. Wood-workers of fifty years ago had, for instance, dozens of planes for cutting all sorts of grooves, mouldings, and the like, which are now worked by machine at the nearest mill.

=Suggestions about Buying.=--Do not start in by buying a chest of tools, certainly not one of the small cheap sets. They are not necessarily poor, but are very apt to be. Get a few tools at a time as you need them. In that way you will get all you need in the most satisfactory way.

Besides the fact that you _can_ do good work with few tools there are various reasons which make it _better_ to begin with but few. You will probably take better care of a few than of many. If you have thirty chisels on the rack before you and you make a nick in the end of the one you are using, there is a strong chance that instead of stopping to sharpen it you will lay it aside and take one of the remaining twenty-nine that will answer your purpose, and before you realise it have a whole rack full of dull tools. If you have but few chisels, you will be _compelled_ to sharpen them, and so get into the habit of taking proper care of them--not to speak of the time which is often wasted in putting away one tool and selecting another unnecessarily.

The longer you work the more you will get to _rely_ on a small number of tools only, however many you may have at hand for occasional use. After you have worked for some time you will be very likely to have your favourite tools, and find that certain tools do better work in your hands than certain others which perhaps someone else would use for the purpose, and you will naturally favour the use of those particular implements, which is another less important reason for not starting in with too great a variety. I do not mean that you will imagine you can do better with one tool than another, but that you really can do so. That is where individuality comes in--the "personal equation."

Watch a skilful carver at a piece of ordinary work. See how few tools he spreads before him, and how much he does with the one in his hand before he lays it down for another. You would think it would take twenty-five tools, perhaps, to cut such a design, but the carver may have only about half a dozen before him. He gets right into the _spirit_ of what he is doing, and somehow or other he does ever so many things with the tool in his hand in less time and carries out his idea better than if he kept breaking off to select others.

This shows that confidence in the use of a tool goes a long way toward the execution of good work, which is one reason for learning to use a few tools well and making them serve for all the uses to which they can advantageously be put. In short, if you have but few tools at first you get the most you can out of each tool and in the way best for yourself.

Now I do not mean by all this that it is not a good thing to have a large kit of tools, or that you should not have the proper tools for the various operations, and use them. I mean that you should get your tools gradually as you find that you need them to do your work as it should be done, and not get a lot in advance of needing them just because they seem to be fine things to have, or because some carpenter has them in his chest.

Do not place too much reliance on the lists of tools which you find in books and magazines--the "tools necessary for beginners," "a list of tools for boys," etc. Such lists are necessarily arbitrary. To make a short list that would be thoroughly satisfactory for such varied work as a boy or amateur may turn his hand to is about as impracticable as the attempts you sometimes see to name the twenty-five greatest or best men or the one hundred best books. When you can find half a dozen independent lists which agree it will be time enough to begin to pin your faith to them. The most experienced or learned people cannot agree exactly in such matters. It depends somewhat, for one thing, on what kind of work you begin with, and, of course, somewhat upon yourself also.

Now while, as we have seen, most wonderful work can be done with the most primitive tools, the fact remains that you are neither Chinese nor Japanese, but Americans and English, and you cannot work to the best advantage without certain tools. "Well, what are they? Why don't you give us a list to begin with? That's what we are looking for." Simply because a quite varied experience has taught me to think it better to give you suggestions to help you make the selection for yourselves.

Just as the great majority of boys would agree upon _Robinson Crusoe_, for instance, as belonging in the front rank of boys' books, but would make very different selections of second-rate or third-rate books, so there are a few "universal" tools, upon the importance of which all agree, such as the saw, hammer, hatchet or axe, and a few others; but beyond these few you can have as many "lists" as you can find people to make them, up to the point of including all you are likely to want. So let your list make itself as you go along, according to your own needs.

It is safe to say, however, that if your work is to be at all varied, such as is given in this book, for instance, you cannot get along to good advantage for any length of time without a _rule_, a _try-square_, a _straight-edge_, a _knife_, two or three _chisels_, a _hatchet_, a _gouge_, a _smoothing-plane_, a _spoke-shave_, a _panel-saw_, a _hammer_ and _nail-set_, a _bit-brace_ and three or four _bits_ (_twist-drills_ are good for the smaller sizes), a _countersink_, a few _bradawls_ and _gimlets_, a _screw-driver_, a _rasp_ and _half-round file_ for wood, a _three-cornered file_ for metal, an _oil-stone_, a _glue-pot_. An excellent and cheap combination tool for such work as you will do can be bought almost anywhere under the name of "_odd jobs_." Of course you will need nails, screws, sandpaper, glue, oil, and such supplies, which you can buy as you need them. A section (18 inches or 20 inches high) from the trunk of a tree is very useful for a chopping-block, or any big junk of timber can be used.

You will, however, quickly feel the need of a few more tools to do your work to better advantage, and according to the kind of work you are doing you will add some of the following: a _fore-plane_, a _splitting-saw_, a _mallet_, a _back-saw_, _compasses_, one or more _firmer chisels_, one or more _framing-chisels_, a _block-plane_, _pincers_, a _gauge_ or two, one or more _gouges_, a _steel square_, a _draw-knife_, a large _screw-driver_, a _scraper_, a few _hand-screws_ (or _iron clamps_), a few more _bits_, _gimlets_, _bradawls_, or _drills_, _cutting-pliers_ or _nippers_, a _bevel_, a _jointer_ (plane), a _wrench_. An iron _mitre-box_ is useful but rather expensive, and you can get along with the wooden one described further on. A _grindstone_ is, of course, essential when you get to the point of sharpening your tools yourself, but you can have your tools ground or get the use of a stone without having to buy one for a long time.

The following list makes a fair outfit for nearly and sometimes all the work the average amateur is likely to do, excepting the bench appliances and such contrivances as you will make yourselves and the occasional addition of a bit or chisel or gouge or file, etc., of some other size or shape when needed. This is not a list to start with, of course, unless you can afford it, for you can get along for a good while with only a part, nor is it a complete list, but merely one with which a great amount of useful work can be done to good advantage. You can always add to it for special purposes.

For further remarks about these tools and others and their uses, see