Bailey type No. 5 Jack Plane (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Original Article

I could also call this old-fashioned carpentry, since this list comes from Handy Farm Devices and How To Make Them, a book from 1907.

This is a list of the essential tools needed for a farmer in the ages before electricity. Mr D and I will use this as our checklist as we build up our tool collection. Where I could, and felt it necessary, I added notes and descriptions. Any thoughts?

• Rip saw – the front edge is flat and the teeth are not angled forward or backward, allowing each tooth to act like a chisel instead of a knife so that the saw does not follow grain lines.
• Crosscut saw – the front edge is flat, the cutting edge of each tooth is angled back with a beveled edge, allowing each tooth to act like a knife and cut horizontally through a trunk or piece of lumber.
• Back saw – a handsaw with a stiffening rib opposite the cutting edge, allowing for more precise cutting.
• Compass saw – a handsaw with a narrow triangular blade for cutting circles and curves in wood
• Keyhole saw – smaller than a compass saw, this is the non-electric version of a jigsaw, with a long, narrow, tapered blade.
• Scrub plane – plane used to remove large amounts of wood from the surface of lumber, it makes a deep, gouging cut
• Jack plane – general all-purpose bench plane, the “jack of all trades”, about 12-15 inches long, used after the scrub plane and before the jointer plane and smooth plane.
• Fore plane (also called jointer plane, try plane or trying plane) is used to straighten the edges of boards or flatten the surface of a board
• Smoothing plane – used properly, this gives a much finer surface than sandpaper or scrapers
• Drawknife – this is a long, curved blade with a handle at each end and is used to shape wood by removing shavings
• Two or three chisels of different sizes for woodworking
• Cold chisel – a tool made of tempered steel used for cutting “cold” metals, ie., ones that have not been heated in some fashion
• A gouge or two – similar to a chisel except that the blade edge is curved instead of flat
• A good hatchet – a small, short-handled ax, usually with a hammer on the side opposite the blade
• Two or three hammers, including a tack hammer (for small nails) and a bell-faced claw hammer
• Brace or bit stock with a set of half a dozen or more bits of different sizes
• One or more gimlets – a small tool for boring holes, having a shaft with a pointed screw on one end and a handle perpendicular to the shaft on the other
• Mallet – a hammer with a rubber head
• Nail set
• Large screw driver and a small one
• Gauge
• Spirit level – where the bubble lets you know if the piece is straight
• Miter box – for cutting precise angles, usually with a backsaw
• Steel square
• Compasses or dividers
• Cut nippers – possibly an old term for tin snips?
• A pair of small pincers and a pair of large ones
• A rasp
• A large, flat file
• At least one medium-sized three-cornered file
• A half-round file – a file that is flat on one side and convex on the other
• A variety of nails, brads and tacks, screws, rivets, bolts, washers and nuts
• Small bolts about 2 inches long with thumb nuts
• Hinges, hasps, staples, sandpaper
• A good plumb line, chalk and pencils
• A pair of carpenter’s saw benches, a shaving horse, a small anvil and a grindstone
• Painting supplies, including several colors of good standard ready-mixed paints and stains, raw linseed (flaxseed) oil, boiled linseed oil, turpentine, varnish, putty, points for setting glass, several brushes of different sizes, a good putty knife and panes of glass of different sizes ready for emergency
• Soldering iron, a bar of solder, resin, a little bottle of soldering fluid, which can be purchased already prepared, also a small sheet-iron furnace in which to heat the soldering iron – A non-electric soldering iron has a wooden handle and is available in different sizes. Like its electric counterpart, it is heated and then apply to the solder.