Chapter 1

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_Cover design after engraving from Diderot._

CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY:

PAPER 51

WOODWORKING TOOLS, 1600-1900

_Peter C. Welsh_

SPECIALIZATION 183

CONFIGURATION 194

CHANGE 214

BIBLIOGRAPHY 227

_Peter C Welsh_

WOODWORKING TOOLS

1600-1900

_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 Institution'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]

The literature of the subject, both new and old, is sparse, 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 Association, 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 illustrated _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.

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 documented 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 Institute of Handicraft Teachers_, Goodman has put together a well-researched _History of Woodworking Tools_ (London, 1964), one particularly useful for its wealth of illustration 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 documented to provide at least a general criteria for dating. Frequently, the original appearance of tools can be documented. 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 manuscript and printed material.

Survey the principal 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 illustrate 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 illustrated 30 tools (fig. 3) needed by the joiner. The carpenter's tools were less favored by illustration; 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, illustrates 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).

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 Assistant_ (1738) and Francis Price's _The British Carpenter_ (1765), where building techniques are well described but illustration 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 compass 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 principally the ripping saw, the half ripper, the hand saw, the panel saw, the tenon saw, the carcase saw, the sash saw, the compass 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 assortment of gardening implements (fig. 11). In 1857, the Arrowmammett Works of Middletown, Connecticut, producers of bench and molding planes, published an illustrated catalogue that offered 34 distinct types that included everything from hollows and rounds to double jointers and hand-rail planes (fig. 12).[6]

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, Massachusetts. 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, compasses, 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

1 Backed fine saw 1.25

1 Inch augre .50

1 pr. dividers or compasses-- .71

1 Panel saw for splitting 2.75

1 Tennon gauge 1.42

1 Bevel .84

1 Bradd Hammer .50

1 _Architect Book_ 6.50

1 Case Mathematical Instruments 3.62-1/2

1 Panel saw 2.75

1 Grafting saw 1.00

1 Bench screw 1.00

1 Stamp 2.50

1 Double joint rule .62-1/2

1 Sash saw 1.12-1/2

1 Oil Can .17

1 Brace & 36 straw cold bits 9.00

1 Window Frame tool 4.00

1 Blind tool 1.33

1 Glue Kettle .62-1/2

1 Grindstone without crank 1.75

1 Machine for whetting saws .75

1 Tennoning machine 4.50

Drafting board and square Bevel-- 1.25

1 Noseing sash plane with templets & copes 4.50

1 pr. clamps for clamping doors 2.17

1 Set Bench Planes--double irons.-- 7.50

1 Grindstone 300 lbs @ 6.25

1 Stove for shop--$7.25, one elbow .37 & 40 lbs second hand pipe $4.00 11.62

1 Bed moulding 2.00

1 Pr. shears for cutting tin.-- .17

1 Morticing Machine 10.75

1 Grecian Ovilo 1.13

1-3/16 beed .67

1 Spirit level 2.25

1 Oil stone .42

1 Small trying square .48

1 pareing chisel .37

1 Screw driver .29

1 Bench screw .75

1 Box rule .50

1-3/4 Augre .41

11 Gouges 1.19

13 Chisels 1.17

1 small iron vice .52

1 pr. Hollow Rounds .86

4 Framing chisels 1.05

1 Grove plough & Irons--Sold at 4.50 5.00

1 Sash plane for 1-1/4 stuff 1.50

1 Copeing plane .67

1 Bead 1/4-- .75

1 Bead 3/4 1.00

1 Rabbit (Sold at .92) .92

1 Smooth plane 1.50

1 Strike Block .92

1 Compass saw .42

6 Gauges 1.83

1 Dust brush .25

1 Rasp, or wood file .25

1 Augre 2 in. .76

1 Augre 1 in. .40

1 Do 3/4 .30

1 Spoke shave .50

1 Bevel-- .25

1 Box rule .84

1 Iron square 1.42

1 Box rule 1.25

1 Spur Rabbit (Sold--1.17) 1.33

1 Pannel plane 1.25