Ancient Carpenters' Tools: Illustrated and Explained, Together with the Implements of the Lumberman, Joiner and Cabinet-Maker i

by Henry C. Mercer

Overview

Classic reference describes in detail hundreds of implements in use in the American colonies in the 18th century. Over 250 illustrations depict tools identical in construction to ancient devices once used by the Greeks, Egyptians, and Chinese, among them axes, saws, clamps, chisels, mallets, and much more. An invaluable sourcebook.

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ISBN-13:	9780486320212
Publisher:	Dover Publications
Publication date:	03/18/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
File size:	24 MB
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Ancient Carpenters' Tools

Illustrated and Explained, Together with the Implements of the Lumberman, Joiner and Cabinet-Maker in Use in the Eighteenth Century

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By Henry C. Mercer

Dover Publications, Inc.

Copyright © 1975 The Bucks County Historical Society
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-486-32021-2

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CHAPTER 1

Ancient Carpenters' Tools

Though nearly all made in America, the tools of the house-builder of one hundred and fifty years ago, here described, including those used in felling trees, making and preparing boards, shingles, lumber, etc., for rough house construction by the carpenter, and for house finishing by the joiner and cabinet-maker, do not appear as American inventions but as European heirlooms, often in type two thousand years old, modified, rather than transformed, by a new environment. Because they pertain to no one district or even country, but to all countries, and to one of the most important and universal of human needs, namely shelter, the following imperfect notes, while often local in origin, are not limited in meaning, and might reasonably apply not alone to New England or Eastern Pennsylvania, but to the United States in general and also to England and Continental Europe. The specimens, shown chiefly by photographs from the originals, may be classified by using the terms employed in Moxon's Mechanick Exercises (ed. 1678), and Knight's American Mechanical Dictionary (ed. 1878), as follows, first:—

Tools for Felling, Splitting and Log Sawing

Among these, the first illustration shows two examples of the so-called

Trade Axes (Fig. 1)

of the seventeenth century, first sold to the Indians by European traders; a heavy, rectangular, hafted blade about eight inches long, representing the original tree-felling axe long ago employed in Europe, brought by the pioneers to Canada, Plymouth and Jamestown, and used by them on the forests of North America.

The now rare instrument should consist of (a) the bit or blade,— (b) the poll, or face opposite the bit,— (c) the eye, generally with a pointed lower lip (here lacking) for inserting the handle,—and (d) the helve or handle. Apparently surviving in common use until c. 1720 or 1740, it differs, not only in appearance, from the common, comparatively square American axe of to-day, but also in construction; namely, though equipped with a very long, down-flaring, flat-topped bit, it has no poll; that is to say, the iron encircling the eye, as if bent around the handle, has not been thickened or squared, to make a pounding surface opposite the blade; hence, as always in old European, and never in modern American axes, the bit outweighs the poll.

W. H. Beauchamp ("Metallic Implements of New York Indians," in New York State Museum Bulletin 55, 1902) says of these heavy, long-bitted, tree-felling instruments, that thousands of them, dating from the early seventeenth century, smith-marked with little round, variously hatched stamps, as here shown; imported from Holland (Utrecht) and also made or mended by English and French blacksmiths employed by the Indians, have been found on Iroquios dwelling sites, in New York and Canada, and there can be no reasonable doubt, from their size,—eight to nine inches long, and weight,—three pounds, fifteen ounces (Fig. 1, lower), that they were not used by the Indians as tomahawks, and that the small, light, and deadly iron tomahawk, so closely resembling them in outline, was an afterthought, derived from them, by white blacksmiths soon after the settlement; before which time, the Indian tomahawk had been a stone or bone mounted club.

The absence of poll, observable in these trade axes, though common, is not invariable among old European axes, since some have polls (cf. Figs. 2 and 4); nevertheless, where occurring, it only adds to the overweight of the bit, by which fixed characteristic these early American tools are seen to be identical with all the old trans-Atlantic tree-felling instruments.

Another early imported axe of the European type is shown in the greatly rusted, heavy- bitted

Anglo-American Axe (Fig. 2)

dug up c. 1890, by Mr. Grant, on the left bank of York River, Me., about one mile from its mouth. Though not positively dated and somewhat differing in the upward flare of its blade, slightly thickened and flattened poll, and lip under the eye, from the un-polled trade axes, above described, and lacking the smith stamp, this rusty master tool clearly shows the characteristic European and now utterly unfamiliar overweight of the bit, and certainly represents in construction the type of tree-felling axe brought over from Europe by the colonists in the Mayflower, and in use in Europe from prehistoric times to the present day. What can better prove the antiquity of these long-bitted tools in Britain than the next illustration of

Prehistoric Irish Axes (Fig. 3)

for the very interesting specimens, now in the Dublin Museum, varying in blade-flare, but not in construction, are nearly two thousand years old. They were dug up from ancient crannogs or mounds, heaped up in County Antrim, before St. Patrick came to Ireland. To demonstrate the survival of this ancestral axe-form in modern Europe, the next illustrations show recent

English and Irish Felling Axes (Fig. 4)

of similar shape and construction gathered by the writer in 1897, in scrap-iron heaps in Limerick and Chester; and a modern

German Felling Axe (Fig. 5)

in its original handle, given to the writer in 1899, by William Hoffman, a German emigrant, living in New Galena, Bucks County, Pa., who had used it in Halberstadt, East Prussia, and brought it with him to America, about 1890.

Sometime early in the eighteenth century, probably about 1740, — as meagre evidence, gathered with great difficulty, shows,—the unique instrument, unknown in other countries except by import from the United States, called in England, the

American Axe (Fig. 6)

(Chambers Encyclopedia, 1897) began to appear in New England and the Middle States. The comparatively short-bitted, heavy-polled tool, here illustrated by old farm axes and Revolutionary camp-site specimens, had become well-established before 1776— by which time it differed from the ancient axes previously described, not only conspicuously in appearance, but radically in construction; since, with the European ancestral instruments, the bit always outweighed the poll; in this new axe, the poll outweighed the bit.

Who knows when this happened? And why should book after book and dictionary after dictionary fail to account for the cause and origin of this change? As they do, we are left to deduce what we can from the scanty evidence. This shows, first, that the European emigrant continued to bring his Old World axes with him and use them, for a while (cf. Fig. 5), both before and after this new axe had superseded the European instrument, and such specimens as the very interesting

Perforated Trade Axe (Fig. 7)

with blade greatly lightened by grinding, and its otherwise meaningless perforation; and the shorter-bitted, heavier polled axe (Fig. 9) of date c. 1740, from Salem, Mass., might indicate that the newcomer, unfamiliar with axes in the Old World and suddenly transformed into a woodman in the New, found that his long-bitted, Old-Country axe "wobbled" in the stroke, and the more he lightened the bit by grinding it down and the more he weighted the poll (Fig. 9) (not so much to pound with, since the woodman rarely pounds with his axe, but to over-balance the bit) the better it cut.

The above described axes, whether of the old European or late American type, though used by carpenters, were more particularly the tools of the woodman, and abundant evidence shows that until c. 1840 they were generally home-made, by local blacksmiths, of iron, with strips of steel inserted for the blade (cf. Fig 8), and that the latter continued to make them, on special occasions, long after 1840, both in America and Europe. This fact is vouched for by the unique photograph,

Axe Making (Fig. 8)

which shows, by two half-finished specimens, recently bought, that William Schaeffer, blacksmith, of Kutztown, Pa., still (1925) makes these axes by hand for sale. Jeremiah Fern of Doylestown, Pa., says that he made American axes, about 1864, at Edge Hill, near Quakertown, Pa., exactly in this manner, by welding together, over a handle pattern to form the eye, the sides of two blocks of iron, and then welding and hammering to an edge, a strip of steel as here shown (the blade), inserted into a split on the bit margin (inf. J. F. to Horace Mann, Aug. 9, 1924); and Karl Klemp, now of Doylestown, made axes of the long-bitted or trade-axe type, at Schneide-moll, near Dantzig, in c. 1896, by hammering one end of an iron block into a thin tongue, wrapping and welding the latter over a handle form, and inserting the steel blade as before (inf. K. K. to Horace Mann, Aug. 1924).

According to J. L. Bishop (History of American Manufacturers, Phila, 1864), the making of American axes in factories, beginning early in forges, with water-run trip hammers (Hugh Orr, at Bridgewater, Conn., 1738-48)— (at Sutton, Mass., 1793)—(Collins, at Hartford, Conn., 1818)— (at Cham-bersburg, Pa., 1829); competing with imported European axes in Virginia, 1788; finally, by the use of cast steel, never employed by the local smith, 1846- 59; (cf. J. M. Swank, Iron and Coal, in Pa., 1878) and the help of railroads, about 1840, generally superseded the home-made axe.

Omitting here the indispensable process of sharpening axes, when possible with a grindstone, when not, with a pocket whetstone, to be described later, the evidence derived from old axes found by the writer, and by tradition, shows that the ancient axe helves (or handles), still used in Europe in 1897, though often knobbed at the hand end, were always straight (Fig. 9), and the much-praised, very carefully curved, tremulous, American axe helve, made by the woodman himself from selected hickory, rarely white oak, with the draw knife (Fig. 6), did not come into general use before the mid-nineteenth century, in the North Pennsylvania lumber country inf. W. J. Phillips of McElhattan, Clinton Co., Pa., to Col. H. W. Shoemaker to writer Oct. 1924); after which, c. 1860, cheap factory-made helves, of the same shape, became so numerous, that to-day, a straight handle on a single-bitted, tree-felling axe is a thing unheard of.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Ancient Carpenters' Tools by Henry C. Mercer. Copyright © 1975 The Bucks County Historical Society. Excerpted by permission of Dover Publications, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents

Contents

Foreword,
Preface to First Edition,
Tools for Felling, Splitting and Log Sawing,
Tools for Moving and Measuring,
Tools for Holding and Gripping,
Tools for Surfacing, Chopping and Paring,
Tools for Shaping and Fitting,
Tools for Fastening and Unfastening,
Tools for Sharpening,
Addenda,
Bibliography,
Index,