Articles

by Sir Stephen Tallents (This article first appeared in Strand Magazine, July 1947) Writing as gracefully as the man with the scythe works, a distinguished countryman discusses one of the great and beautiful arts of the fields.

You’re in a tool auction, or an antique shop, and you pick up a saw with the name of a maker you don’t recognise. What might that name signify? Does it imply that behind it lay a firm where the materials, tools, and skilled manpower existed to make saws?

Although eighteenth century woodworking tools survive in surprising numbers, they are mainly found to be specialised types whose slumber in their owners' tool chests was rarely disturbed, like panel-fielding planes, moulders, or gouges. Everyday tools such as hand saws, hones and mallets are rari...

Probably invented in the 16th century, the carpenter's rule was a device to help a man who could not multiply to find the area or the volume of his timber. In its original form, it gave at a glance either the length to make a square foot of a board of given width, or the length to make a cubic fo...

Amongst the extensive kit of cabinet-maker's tools in the 1797 Seaton tool chest1 are two of the relatively rare2 planes known as cock-bead fillisters.