Woodworking Tools, 1600–1900, by Peter C. Welsh.pdf
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Woodworking Tools, 1600–1900, by Peter C. Welsh.
The Project Gutenberg EBook of Woodworking Tools 1600-1900, by Peter C. Welsh
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Title: Woodworking Tools 1600-1900
Author: Peter C. Welsh
Release Date: November 12, 2008 [EBook #27238]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOODWORKING TOOLS 1600-1900 ***
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Woodworking Tools, 1600–1900, by Peter C. Welsh.
Cover design after engraving from Diderot.
C
ONTRIBUTIONS
F
ROM
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Woodworking Tools, 1600–1900, by Peter C. Welsh.
T
HE
M
USEUM
OF
H
ISTORY
AND
T
ECHNOLOGY
:
P
APER
51
W
OODWORKING
T
OOLS
, 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.
T
HE
A
UTHOR
:
Peter C. Welsh is curator, Growth of the United States, in the
Smithsonian Institution's Museum of History and Technology.
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Woodworking Tools, 1600–1900, by Peter C. Welsh.
I
N
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]
Figure 1.—1685: T
HE
PRINCIPAL
TOOLS
that the carpenter needed
to frame a house, as listed by J
OHANN
A
MOS
C
OMENIUS
in his
Orbis Sensualium Pictus
were the felling axe (4), wedge and
beetle (7 and 8), chip axe (10), saw (12), trestle (14), and pulley
(15). (Charles Hoole transl., London, 1685.
Courtesy of the
Folger Shakespeare Library.
)
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Woodworking Tools, 1600–1900, by Peter C. Welsh.
Figure 2.—1685: T
HE
BOXMAKER
AND
TURNER
as pictured by
Comenius required planes (3 and 5), workbench (4), auger (6),
knife (7), and lathe (14). (From Johann Amos Comenius,
Orbis
Sensualium Pictus. Courtesy of the Folger Shakespeare
Library.
)
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.
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