Fulton: Sears house brand
Russell Jennings
The American Cyclopædia: Boring
Center Bits
The Iron Age. February 2, 1905. P. 438.
Bits and braces go together like, ... well, you get the idea. This week I will cover some of bits in the Tison Tool Barn that were used with braces. Most of the bits included here are for working with wood. Bits for boring metal are often used these days on wood (and plastic) as well, but the Tison Tool Barn does not have any metal-working drill bits. Over the last two centuries the most common wood boring bit used in braces has been the spiral auger bit. Auger bits differ from T-augers (covered a couple of weeks ago) primarily in that they have a tang for use with a chuck, rather than a cross handle. First is a wooden box that holds a set of spiral auger bits. There are twelve bits in two trays, ranging in diameter from 1/4 inch to 7/8 inch in 1/16th inch intervals, plus a 1 inch bit. The size is marked on the tang of each bit by a whole number, 4 through 14, plus 16, representing sixteenths of an inch. These days I am used to interpreting whole numbers on a set of bits, sockets, etc. as millimeters, but these bits go back to a time when the metric system was not in general use in America, and such confusion was unlikely. Box containing twelve auger bits from the Tison Tool Barn. Photos by Donald Albury. The set is from early in the 20th century. The box is unmarked. Ten of the bits are marked "THE FULTON." Fulton was a house brand of Sears, Roebuck & Co. in the early 20th century. Sears registered the brand name Craftsman" in 1927, but I have not been able to find when Craftsman replace Fulton on auger bits sold by Sears. One of the other bits, number 6 (3/8 inch), has no discernible markings. The final bit, number 16 (1 inch), is marked "THE IRW~~/REG. US PAT~~~/MADE IN USA/MAINBOR." Irwin Tools has been manufacturing auger bits for over a century (and still sells auger bits for hand braces). The Mainbor line of auger bits was advertised at least as early as 1928. Next are two spiral auger bits marked "RUSSELL JENNINGS." The Russell Jennings Company made auger bits from 1855 until 1944. One of the bits is size 8 (1/2 inch) and the other is size 24 (1-1/2 inches). Spiral auger bits made by Russell Jennings. Size 8 (1/2 inch) on the left and size 24 (1-1/2 inches) on the right. Photos by Donald Albury. The Tison Tool Barn also has an auger bit that would not have been used with the usual chuck on a brace. It does not have a conventional tang, but does have an wider section of the shaft with a flat side and a depression where a set screw would hold it in place. This bit may have been for use in a drill press or other power drill. There is no discernible marking or size number on the bit. It is 7/8 inch in diameter. Auger bit on the left .Close up on the right of the round tang with flat side and depression for a set screw. Photos by Donald Albury. Next is a center or centre (British spelling) bit. The center bit was invented in England, and was in wide enough use by 1879 to be included in the article "Boring" in The American Cyclopædia of that year. It reportedly is no longer produced by any manufacturer. The center bit has a wide flat blade. the point in the center anchors the bit as it turns. One wing of the blade bends up and has a sharpened edge, so that the edge shaves the wood to make a hole. The other wing has a spur which cuts a groove around the hole slightly deeper that the cutting edge, so that the cutting edge lifts the shaving cleanly without tearing around the edge of the hole. A center bit superficially resembles a spade bit, but a spade bit scrapes wood from the bottom of the hole, while a center bit shaves wood from the hole, as does a spiral auger bit. This center bit has no markings. It is 1-3/16 inch in diameter. The tang has a slot for use in a cut-tang chuck. The centre bit is on the left. On the right is a closeup of the cut in the tang. Photos by Donald Albury. Another bit is this taphole auger (previously shown in one of my posts about cooper's tools). Like spiral auger bits, it has a gimlet-style point, which lets the tool start its own hole. The tang on this bit appears to have been forged onto the shaft after the bit was made. This suggests that the bit originally had a cross handle (i.e., was a T-auger), and was later modified to work with a brace. The taphole auger bit is on the left. A closeup of the forged joint in the shaft is on the right. Photos by Donald Albury. Reamers are tools for enlarging holes with a taper (wider at the top than at the bottom of the hole). The Tison Tool Barn has three reamer bits. First is a number 1 reamer. It is marked with a logo consisting of a V-shape with a curved line across the top, like a quarter of a pie, with the letters "AKT" inside. I have not been able to identify this mark. Next is a number 5 reamer. This has markings on the stem that are hard to read. The appear to be two triangles, with a "G" in the left hand one. The right side of the marking is either damaged or was not stamped completely into the metal. I cannot identify this mark. Number 5 reamer on the left. Closeup of stamped logo on reamer on the right. Photos by Donald Albury. The last reamer is a number 6 reamer made by the Watervliet Tool Co. Information on the Internet is scarce, but the Watervliet Tool Co. published a catalog of reamers and other automotive tools in 1922. By the 1950s it was known for making automobile jacks, when it was bought out and the business name retired. This may not have been intended as a woodworking tool. Number 6 reamer on the left. Closeup of marking on tang on the right. Photos by Donald Albury. Next week I will finish covering bits in the Tison Tool Barn that were used with braces. Sources::
Fulton: Sears house brand Russell Jennings The American Cyclopædia: Boring Center Bits The Iron Age. February 2, 1905. P. 438.
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By Donald Albury. This week I continue describing braces that are in the Tison Tool Barn. In the second half of the 19th century chucks using jaws tightened and loosened by rotating a shell came into use on braces. William Henry Barber was issued a patent in 1864 for what became known as the Barber chuck. The Barber chuck has a pair of spring-loaded jaws inside a rotating shell. The jaws are arranged so that they make contact along their full length with a square tapered bit tang. The rotating shell tightens or loosens the jaws depending on which way it is rotated. The Barber chuck, with various improvements introduced over the years, became a popular style of chuck for braces. The Tison Tool Barn holds several braces with jawed chucks. First is this brace with a Barber chuck and a wooden head and sweep grip. There are stamped markings in four different places: "F. BUNNY", "F. DUCK" (twice), and "G. ROCK". I have no idea what those markings mean. This brace is 14.5 inches long and has an 11 inch sweep. While a brace was an efficient tool when the crank could be swept in a full circle, it became much less useful if something obstructed a full sweep. The invention of a ratcheting mechanism solved the problem. William P. Dolan was issued a patent in 1871 that became the basis for most ratcheting braces, in which the sweep could be swung back and forth, turning the bit in only one direction. Ratcheting braces normally have three settings, turning the bit clockwise only, counter-clockwise only, or locked, so that the bit always turns with the sweep. This ratcheting brace, which has a Barber chuck, is marked "NO. 33" and "PAT PDGY.18 1880". "PAT PDG" is short for "patent pending", but the rest of the marking is confusing. The PDG may have been stamped over JUL in what was originally JULY 18 1880, or the date was added in an attempt to overstamp PDG. A (rather cursory) search has not found a patent with that date for either a brace or a chuck. "NO. 33" is probably a model number, but I have no clue as the manufacturer of this brace. The brace is 13 inches long with an 8 inch sweep. Here is another ratcheting brace with a Barber chuck. It is marked "STANLEY" and "NO. 945-10 IN." I have seen comments on the Internet that the model 945 was offered in the 1920s and in the 1950s, so this brace is likely between 60 and 100 years old. It is 13 inches long, and has a 10 inch sweep. The next brace, shown below, is marked "P. S. & W. Co." and "59 1/2". The Peck, Stow & Wilcox Co. was formed in 1870 by the merger of three companies, and continued in business until 1950. This brace appears to have a Barber chuck, which indicates that it was probably produced in the 20th century (braces with Barber chucks are shown in a 1911 caralog from P., S. & W). The "59 1/2" appears to be a model number, but the few model numbers I have seen for P. S. & W. braces have been four digits long with no fractions. This brace is 11 inches long and has an 8 inch sweep. Below is another ratcheting brace from the Peck, Stow & Wilcox Co. with a Barber chuck. The Brace is marked "P, S. & W. CO. 2010". Again, the Barber chuck indicates that this brace was probably manufactured in the 20th century. The brace is 13.5 inches long, with a 10 inch sweep. The next brace is also from Peck, Stow & Wilcox Co. It has a Peck and Powers-style interlocking jaws chuck. (The Peck of Peck and Powers apparently had no relation to the Peck of Peck, Stow & Wilcox.) The Peck and Powers chuck was patented in 1879. The brace is marked "P., S. & W. CO." and "1003". The lack of a patent number for the chuck on the brace indicates this is a later model. The brace is 13.5 inches long with an 8 inch sweep. The brace below is a corner brace. The rotary motion of the crank is transmitted through gears to the chuck. The brace is not marked, but appears to be a Fray model 100, but with a Barber-style chuck rather than the interlocking jaws chuck pictured in the 1911 Fray catalog. This model was also made by Stanley after it acquired Fray, and it may have been produced for sale by other companies. The brace is 17.5 inches long and 9 inches wide. It has an 8 inch sweep. The last brace in this post is more of a toy than a working tool. It probably came from a child's tool kit. The handle on the crank is short, and not really big enough for a grown man's hand. The sweep is narrow, producing a low torque suitable only for drilling very small holes. The chuck is simple. There is a ratchet, similar to ones on mechanical screwdrivers, just below the head. The brace is 12.5 inches long, with a sweep of 2 inches. Sources:
Spofford Style Bit Braces - 1897 Featured Braces - The Barber Brace, Dolan's ratchet patent Peck, Stow & Wilcox Co.. PEXTO Braces Another source (for information about all sorts of old hand tools) is: Walsh, Peter C., Woodworking Tools 1600-1900, Smithsonian Institution. The e-book version is downloadable for free from Project Gutenberg. Information about augers is found starting at location 515. By Donald Albury. I was pleased to learn this week that the Tools and Hardware section of the Collectors Weekly web site has linked to this blog as a Great Reference Site. A Brief Note on Augers I could say that the search for truth is unending, but that seems a bit pretentious when talking about old tools. I have found, less than a week after my last post, more information about the history of augers. D.B. Laney posted a few days ago about the book Country Furniture by Aldren Watson. I've had a copy of the book for 40 years, but hadn't looked at it in a long time. I agree with Laney, this book is a real pleasure to browse through. Watson does mention (page 97) that a single cutter spiral auger with a gimlet point was invented about 1770, but the gimlet point was narrow and frequently broke. The 1809 patent that I referred to last week was apparently for the double cutting edge on a spiral auger, rather than for the gimlet point. Another source I just found on Wikisource is the article on "Boring" in the 1879 issue of The American Cyclopedia. Figures 7 through 16 illustrate the various forms of augers and auger bits in use up to that year. Braces: Origins, Sheffield and Spofford This issue of my blog begins a description of the braces held in the Tison Tool Barn. I will finish this topic next week. A brace or bitstock is a woodworking tool used to bore holes in wood. It has a U-shaped section offset from the shaft of the handle that forms a crank. One end holds a bit, which will bore into wood when it is turned. The crank allows the woodworker to rotate the handle with one hand while pushing down on a knob or pad (the head) at the end of the brace with the other hand, imparting a continuous rotary motion to the cutting end of the bit. The sweep is the diameter of the circle swept out by the crank handle as it is turned. The wider the sweep, the greater the torque that can be generated with the brace. A brace and set of bits were essential to woodworkers well into the 20th century, but have been largely replaced by power drills. I bought a brace and set of auger bits some 50 years ago, but have not used the auger bits for 35 years. I have used the brace with a screwdriver bit on occasion. The brace is a relatively recent addition to the woodworker's tool chest. The oldest known surviving brace was found on the Mary Rose, an English warship that sank in 1545. The first known depiction of a brace is in a painting by Robert Campin completed sometime between 1425 and 1428. In the detail below, St. Joseph is holding the brace in an awkward manner that makes me suspect that neither Campin nor his model had ever seen a brace in use. The earliest braces had a bit permanently mounted to the brace. A woodworker would need a different brace for every size hole he wanted to bore. Eventually a socket was introduced into the end of a brace, in which a wooden pad mounted to a bit was held by friction, or by a thumbscrew. The sockets and pads had a square cross-section. Some early sockets and pads had the same width for their full length, but the development of tapered pads and sockets allowed for easier insertion and removal of bits while still achieving a tight fit. Wooden pads for bits were eliminated by the development of tangs, in which bits were given a tapered end with a square cross-section. A mechanical device to secure the tang of a bit to a brace is called a chuck. There have been many types of chucks and many styles of braces in the past two centuries. I will only cover ones for which examples are found in the Tison Tool Barn. One early method of securing bits to a brace was the cut-tang chuck, in which the tang has a slot which is engaged by a spring-loaded hook. The brace shown below is a Sheffield-type brace with a push-button chuck. A push-button chuck is a type of cut-tang chuck. The button pushes the hook clear, releasing the bit. There are no markings on this brace. A book on 18th century tools published in 1816 has an illustration showing a brace with a push-button chuck. Similar braces were made through most of the 19th century. The brace is 13.5 inches long, and the crank has a 7 inch sweep. The next brace is another Sheffield style brace with a push-button chuck. This brace has brass (or brass-plated) reinforcing plates attached to the curved sections of the brace. The only markings on the brace are the name "JOHN GREEN" with unevenly spaced and aligned letters, and "1816" in another location. "John Green" is probably an owner's name. The number is a problem. I doubt an owner would bother to stamp a date on his tool. A manufacturer might stamp a part number on a tool, but that is seen primarily on metal tools. A year may appear on a tool as either the date the manufacturer was founded, or the date a patent was issued, but neither is the case here. I suspect the "1816" was added at some point to make the tool seem older, and therefore more valuable. The brace is 11 inches long and has an 8 inch sweep. The brace below is a Sheffield style brace with a lever release chuck. This is another type of cut-tang chuck, in which pressing the lever lifts the hook out of the slot on the tang. It has brass reinforcing plates on the curved parts of the brace. It is stamped "Made for T. TILLOTSON SHEFFIELD". Thomas Tillotson was a merchant and dealer in New York. The business, an old family firm, became "T. Tillotson" after 1843, when Thomas's brother John left the firm, and appears to have closed by the beginning of the Civil War. This leaves a well defined time period in which the brace was probably produced. The brace is 14 inches long, and the crank has a sweep of 7 inches. This next brace is a steel brace (even the head is metal). It has a Taylors Patent chuck, which is another type of cut-tang chuck. Jeremy Taylor of Connecticut patented this chuck in 1836. The brace is also marked "I. WILSON". Increase Wilson manufactured tools starting in 1818. His business became a public company under the name "Wilson Manufacturing Co." in 1855. This brace is 12 inches long, and the crank has a 9 inch sweep. In 1859 Nelson Spofford received a patent for a "clamshell" type of chuck. This chuck was formed by a fork or split at the end of the brace, with a channel for a bit tang. The chuck was closed on the tang like a vise by turning a thumbscrew. The Spofford chuck was used starting in 1859 on braces produced initially by Fray & Pigg Manufacturers, and from sometime before 1866 by John S. Fray and Co. Stanley Works acquired John S. Fray & Co. shortly after 1900 and continued to manufacture Spofford chuck braces until 1942. The brace below has a Spofford chuck. It is marked "JOHN S. FRAY" and "BRIDGEPORT, CT." The wood head and rotating wood grip on the crank indicates that this is a later model from Fray. The wood crank grip is two parts held together on the crank by pewter rings. The brace is 11.75 inches long, and has a sweep of 13 inches. This next brace is not marked, but is very similar to the one above, and likely also from John S. Fray & Co. It also has a wood head and crank grip, and is therefore from sometime in the later part of the 19th century or the 20th century. The brace is 11.5 inches long and has a 17 inch sweep. I will cover more braces from the Tison Tool Barn next week. Sources:
Hand-powered drilling tools and machines, Low-Tech Magazine A Collection of Bit Braces Brace Innovative History: an Overview The Primitive Wooden Brace Repair of push-button chuck John S. Fray & Co. Spofford Style Braces PEXTO Braces Barlow, Ronald S. (1999) The Antique Tool collector's Guide to Value. Gas City, IN: L-W Book Sales. Another source (for information about all sorts of old hand tools) is: Walsh, Peter C., Woodworking Tools 1600-1900, Smithsonian Institution. The e-book version is downloadable for free from Project Gutenberg. Information about augers is found starting at location 515. Augers and gimlets are tools used to bore holes in wood. They consist of a metal bit that digs out wood when it is rotated, and a handle, usually wood, mounted on the far end that is turned by hand. The primary difference between augers and gimlets is size: augers require two hands to turn, while gimlets need only one hand. The augers I'll write about here are woodworking tools used by themselves, sometimes called T-augers because the handles are set perpendicular to the shaft. I will cover woodworking auger bits, which are used with a brace or drill, in a future post. Other types of augers include earth augers, grain augers, coal augers, mine augers, and ice augers, but the Tison Tool Barn does not have any examples of those types of augers. Besides boring holes for pegs, or more recently, bolts, augers are also used to remove much of the waste wood from rectangular holes, such as mortises. Gimlets are often used for pre-drilling nail and screw holes. A woodworker would need a set of augers and gimlets in various sizes. As the handles are fixed, the woodworker would also need a lot of storage space. Early augers were of the spoon, pod, or shell type, with a half cylinder forming the cutting part, tapering to a rounded point on the end, on a shaft extending to the handle. Spoon augers are known from more than a thousand years ago, and perhaps were used as long ago as classical times (2,000 or so years ago). The Viking-age Mästermyr chest that I mentioned last week held a number of spoon augers. Spoon augers require a starting hole, made by a chisel or other cutting tool. Another disadvantage of spoon augers is that chips and shavings accumulate in the hole, and the auger has to be periodically withdrawn to clear the hole. The Tison Tool Barn does not hold any examples of plain spoon augers. It does have an auger, shown below, that appears to be a twisted spoon auger with a conical screw point, also known as a gimlet point. The screw point, which is found on all of the augers and gimlets in the Tison Tool Barn, allows the auger to start its own hole, and helps pull the auger into the wood as it is cutting a hole. This auger bores a hole 1/2 inch in diameter. The shaft is 7 inches long and the handle is 8 1/2 inches across. Spoon augers were eventually replaced by twist or screw augers. A screw auger has the form of an Archimedes' screw, with a helical surface extending about one-half of the length of the auger. The bottom of the helix has a cutting edge which shaves wood from the bottom of the hole as the auger is turned. The helical surface lifts the waste wood up and out of the hole. A typical screw auger, as in the detail view below, has a conical screw point on the end, which helps center the auger as the hole is started, and draws the auger into the wood. It also has spurs at the outside edge of the cutting blade to cut wood fibers and permit the shavings to be lifted up without tearing the wood. The screw auger may have been invented in the 18th century, but did not come into wide use until the 19th century. The conical screw point, or gimlet point, on an auger was patented in 1809. The Tison Tool Barn has several screw augers, shown below. They bore holes that range from 9/16 inch to 1 1/2 inches in diameter. Photos by Donald Albury. The Tison Tool Barn also has several gimlets, shown below. All of the gimlets in the Tool Barn are of the spoon or twisted spoon type and have conical screw points like those on the screw augers in the Tool Barn. They bore holes that range from 3/32 to 3/8 inch in diameter. Photos by Donald Albury. I have not found a comprehensive history of augers and gimlets on the Internet, but a few short bits of information are at:
Augers, Gimlets, and Braces, at Colonial Williamsburg The Mästermyr Find, page 13 Auger, in Encyclopedia Britannica Spoon auger - a carpenter's tool (BBC) Another source (for information about all sorts of old hand tools) is: Walsh, Peter C., Woodworking Tools 1600-1900, Smithsonian Institution. The e-book version is downloadable for free from Project Gutenberg. Information about augers is found starting at location 515. Drawknives By Donald Albury Drawknives, also known as drawing knives, draw shaves, or shaving knives, are tools used to shape wood. As the first three names suggest, drawknives are drawn, or pulled, towards the worker. As the last two names suggest, drawknives remove shavings from wood. A drawknife consists of a long narrow blade with projections at each end fitted with handles. One long edge of the blade is sharpened. In many woodworking traditions, including English and American, the wooden handles usually are on tangs set at a more or less right angle to the axis of the blade and extend more or less parallel with blade toward the side of the blade that is sharpened. French drawknive handles often also are at a right angle to the blade, but have very short handles, while Swedish, Japanese and some German, Austrian and Swiss drawknives have handles that extend straight out from the ends of the blade. The length of the blade, the curvature of the edge, and the curvature of the flat of the blade may all vary. The drawknife has had many uses, including removing bark from logs, rough shaping of boards, rounding pieces of wood for later finishing on a lathe, making tool handles and fence posts, preparing horse's' hooves for shoeing, and carving compound curved surfaces such as chair seats and the interior of bowls. There is little evidence on the early history of drawknives. Ancient drawknives are very rare. A remarkable find was the Viking-age Mästermyr chest, which contained many tools and other items, including an inshave or two-handled scorp (a specialized type of drawknife). References to drawknives in art or writing before the 18th century are also rare. The first use of the term "draweing-knife" recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary was in 1645. The OED also has a quote from 1679 describing the use of the tool: "With the Handles of the Draw-knife in both their hands, enter the edge of the Draw-knife into the Work, and draw Chips almost the length of their work." With the development of mass production of tools in the 19th century, many drawknives were acquired by people who made only occasional use of them. As more household and farm items, such as tool handles, chairs, and such were store-bought instead of home-made, tools like drawknives were used less often, and many from the 19th and 20th centuries have survived. The Tison Tool Barn has several of these drawknives. First I will list the standard drawknives in the collection. The drawknife below is marked "D. R. BARTON ROCHESTER". The cutting edge is 7 5/8 inches long. D. R. Barton began manufacturing edged tools in 1832. The name remained in use until 1939. D. R. Barton tools had a reputation for high quality. The next drawknife has no discernible markings on it. The blade edge is 8 1/8 inches long. The light colored areas on the blade are pieces of old masking tape, which are difficult to remove without scratching the metal. This drawknife is marked "STEPHENSON". Unfortunately, I have not been able to identify what this name signifies. The blade edge is 7 3/4 inches long. The next drawknife is marked "~~ CROSSMAN 9" (the first part is unreadable) and "CAST STEEL". A. W. Crossman & Co. of Warren, Massachusetts manufactured cast steel tools from about 1850 until sometime after 1870. The company seems to have been known mainly for making chisels and slicks. The edge of the blade is 9 inches long. The next drawknife is marked "T. ~ WITHERBY 7" (the second letter is unreadable). T. H. Witherby of Millbury, Massachusetts began making chisels in 1827. Witherby's company was later acquired by the Winsted Edge Tool Works, which continued use of the Witherby brand until 1955. Witherby brand tools had a high reputation for quality. The form of the name stamped on this drawknife appears to have been in use from 1882 to 1919. Although the tool has a '7' stamped on it, the blade edge is just 6 1/2 inches long. The next drawknife has only "9 IN" stamped on it. The edge of the blade is 9 inches long. The drawknife below has a logo stamped on it, "PEXTO" inside an oval, followed by "10". The logo was for the Peck, Stow & Wilcox Co., and was first used in 1914. The PEXTO name is still used by Roper Whitney for metal fabrication equipment. The blade edge is 10 inches long. I initially read the final letter in the logo as "D". This seems to be an easy mistake to make, as I have found a number of tools on auction sites on the Internet listing them as made by the "PEXTD" company. The next drawknife has no markings. The blade has been bent in two places, seriously cracking the metal. Someone tried to repair the blade by filling in the cracks with a bronze-colored metal, but voids remain along the cracks. I suspect someone tried to convert this drawknife to an inshave. The blade edge is 8 3/8 inches long. The drawknife below has folding handles, secured in the desired position by wingnuts. When folded, the handles protect the edge of the blade, and make the tool more compact for storage. The drawknive is marked "JENNINGS" and "PAT PEND", and with a "J" inside an upward pointing arrowhead with the base open. The "J" in an arrowhead was trademarked by Charles. E. Jennings & Co. The company was in business from 1873 until 1923. A patent on this tool was issued to Jennings in 1906. This indicates that the tool was made no later than 1906. As I don't know what the backlog for issuing patents was at the time, I can't say how much earlier than 1906 it may have been made. The edge of the blade is 8 1/8 inches long. The drawknife below also has folding handles secured by wingnuts. The wooden handles have notches, allowing the handles to enclose the blade when folded. The drawknife is marked "A. J. WILKINSON & CO.", "MAKERS BOSTON, MASS" and "PATENTED JULY 16, 1895". A. J. Wilkinson & Co. manufactured tools from 1842 to 1993. They were noted for their folding drawknives. The edge of the blade is 8 inches long. The next drawknife has adjustable handles. The handles originally could pivot around the long axis of the blade, and be locked into position. The mechanisms are rusted in place. There are no markings on the tool. The blade edge is 11 3/4 inches long. Shown below is the cooper's hollowing drawknife I wrote about two weeks ago. The tools has no markings. The blade edge is 6 3/16 inches long. We now come to some specialized variants of drawknives. The next drawknife is the cooper's champer knife that I wrote about last week. Note the asymmetrical handles that distinguish this tool. The final tool in this week's post is an inshave or two-handled scorp. This tool has a moderate curve in the blade, but the handles are set close to each other, at a distance shorter than the length of the blade. (A one-handled scorp has a much more sharply curved blade, with the tangs at the ends of the blade meeting at a single handle.) This design allows an inshave to be used in an enclosed space, such as inside a bowl. Drawknives continue to be manufactured and even crafted by hand, but their use is confined to hobbyists and a very limited number of craftsmen. All photographs by Donald Albury in this blog are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
By Donald Albury
The Cooper's Craft
I will be exploring the cooper's tools in the Tison Tool Barn collection in a series of posts. In this post I will provide some background on the cooper's craft, which I hope will make my explanations in the next two posts of how those tools were used a little easier to understand.
A cooper is a traditional craftsman who makes round containers assembled from wooden staves and bound with hoops, with one or both ends sealed by flat ends or heads. Containers made by coopers include casks and what is often called “white cooperage”, such as buckets, tubs, vats, water tanks, and butter churns. Casks (often called barrels, although a barrel is just one size of cask) bulge in the middle, with curved staves, and have both ends closed when they are full. Buckets, tubs, churns and such have straight staves, and are closed on only one end.
Casks are made in many sizes besides barrels. Traditionally, a barrel is a size of cask which holds between 25 and 50 gallons. The size of a barrel (or any other cask) depends on what it was used for and where and when it was made; English and French wine barrels, ale barrels, beer barrels, and whiskey barrels all have had different capacities. The sizes of various ale and beer casks in England were changed several times by Act of Parliament. The gallon with which cask capacity was measured also has varied by type: wine gallon (on which the U. S. liquid gallon is based), ale or beer gallon, corn gallon (a dry measure), and imperial gallon. Modern cask sizes are often measured in liters.
The above illustration shows traditional (before 1824) English wine casks in descending order of size. A wine tun held 262 wine gallons (a tun would therefore hold about a ton of wine). Traditional English beer casks were, in descending order, called tuns, butts, hogsheads, barrels, kilderkins, firkins, and pins. A beer tun held 218 ale gallons, while a beer pin held 4 ½ ale gallons. The wine gallon equals the U. S. liquid gallon, while the ale gallon was a little larger than the British imperial gallon, so a beer tun was approximately the same size as a wine tun.
Almost anything could be stored and shipped in a cask: flour, seeds, fruit (the apple barrel in Treasure Island), vegetables, crackers (hardtack), pickles (famously sold out of barrels in country stores), salt pork and beef (in brine), oil (whale oil, and later, petroleum), water, wine, beer, or liquor. Gunpowder and heavy items such as nails or other hardware were shipped in smaller casks called kegs. Liquids such as wine were often stored in larger casks. Almost all the food, and all of the water, on sailing ships was stored in barrels. While they have largely been replaced by cardboard, glass, plastic, and metal containers, wooden casks are still used today for aging beer, wine, and liquor.
Casks are easy to store and move. A cask is stable when standing on end. When the head is knocked out of the cask bulk contents can be easily reached. Liquids can be dispensed in small quantities from a cask using a tap. An unopened cask can be turned on its side, and rolled. A cask is easier than a similar sized box to lift onto a ship in a sling or move into a cellar.
Casks have been made and used for at least 2,000 years. Coopering, the making of casks, developed into a sophisticated technology. Until the 19th century, coopering was a demanding manual craft. It required extensive skills, acquired through years of apprenticeship, and a number of specialized tools. Factories using machinery took over most the coopering trade in the 19th century. Wooden casks and "white-cooperage" goods are seldom used now, but some casks used for aging whiskey and high-end wine and beer are still made by craftsmen using hand tools. The Tison Tool Barn has examples of some of the specialized hand tools used by coopers. Next week I will describe some of the tools used by coopers to shape staves.
Disclaimer: I did not know anything about coopering until I became curious about the cooper's tools in the Tison Tool Barn. I have researched the subject on the Internet and found tantalizing hints, speculation, contradictions, blurry images of old books, and what I hope is relatively reliable, if incomplete, information. I have tried to hold my own speculation in check. Some sources I consulted for this post are:
'Cooper (profession)', at Wikipedia 'Barrel', at Wikipedia The Cooper (Bedford County) Eighteenth Century French Coopers Making Wooden Buckets All photographs by Donald Albury in this blog are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
An Introduction to the Tison Tool Barn
The Matheson History Museum holds a number of old tools and related objects. Approximately 1,000 of these tools and related objects are housed in the Tison Tool Barn, a component of the Matheson History Museum.
John Mason Tison, Jr. was a native of Gainesville, and an electrician. He was also a member of the Gainesville Sunshine Clowns. In his persona as Dilly-Dally he helped entertain children in hospitals.
John Mason Tison Dilly-Dally
Photo courtesy of Matheson History Museum Photo courtesy of Matheson History Museum
John Tison collected old tools for twenty years, and in 1993 built a barn in his backyard to house his collection and his workshop. Mr. Tison ordered the parts for the barn from a company in North Carolina, cut to his specifications (in effect, a custom kit), and assembled the barn largely by himself. The frame of the barn is post-and-beam or timber framing, consisting of large square timbers joined by mortise and tenon joints, secured by wooden pegs. No nails, bolts or other metal parts are used in the frame. The barn has a rustic front porch and a second floor under a high-pitched roof.
The Tison Tool Barn The post-and-beam frame of the Tison Tool Barn
Photo by Donald Albury Photo courtesy of the Matheson History Museum
Before his death in 1995, John Tison donated the barn and his collection of approximately 500 old tools to the Matheson Museum. Although Mr. Tison's residence was less than two miles from the Matheson Museum, it could not be moved over city streets. In 1997 the Matheson Museum Board contracted with Geoffrey A. O'Meara to dis-assemble the barn and move the components. O'Meara and his crew carefully labeled each piece of the barn as it was taken down. They re-erected the barn adjacent to the Matheson House (behind the main Museum building) in 1998. Since then, another 500 old tools and other historical artifacts have been added to the collection.
The Tison Tool Barn holds hand tools used in a number of occupations, including farming, forestry, navel stores (turpentine) collection, blacksmithing, carpentry and joinery, coopering, metal working, mechanics and electrical wiring. The barn also includes a display assembled by John Tison of the old knob-and-tube electrical wiring system used in the United States from the 1880s until the 1930s.
The east bay of the Tison Tool Barn Display of knob-and-tube wiring elements
Photo by Donald Albury Photo by Donald Albury
The Tison Tool Barn is generally open by appointment, depending on the availability of staff to conduct tours. The Tool Barn may also be open during some events at the Museum. Please call the Museum office at (353) 378-2280 to arrange a tour, or to inquire whether the Tool Barn will be open during an event.
All photographs by Donald Albury in this blog are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. |
AuthorI have been a volunteer at the Matheson History Museum. Feeling an affinity with old hand tools (some of which I remember from my youth), I have tried to learn more about the history of the tools in the Tison Tool Barn, and how they were used. All text and photographs by Donald Albury in this blog are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. All illustrations taken from Wikimedia Commons are either in the public domain, or have been released under a Creative Commons license.
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