From the Past We Can Continue Discovering the Future

My search for tools and equipment turns up some amazing finds and I bought this vise partly because it was inexpensive but mostly because it looked so very beautifully made from elm and steel. It’s a simple enough piece of equipment to make, but the decision was based as always on buying art made by a past craftsman. I think these things are exactly that, works of art, and that they are worth investing my time in just to see how a man worked in times past. An engineer made the piece and the woodwork in the form of shaped coves is gracefully executed. It’s too easy to take things for granted in countries like Britain. Common tools sell for very little; planes and tenon saws, saws of all types and of course related equipment like the vise. I think this vise was for working metal with, not wood, because of the metal plating used on the jaws and such.

See how the man inset the plate with his name in it. I think it’s nice to name your work when needed.

A Flotilla of Woodworking Planes

Here is a collection of beautiful planes of rare worth and scarcely seen anywhere. Two nice panel raising planes, a sash-rail plane that creates the pane divider and two sash moulding planes are part of a collection of planes used for particular work by joiners making doors and door frames and sliding sash windows. It is rare to find these specific planes individually placed anywhere let alone unique a collection of nine planes. Including shipping the planes came to me for about £30 each on average. They are all made by the same Scottish maker named Mathieson.

What we take for granted is a distant wealth of workmanship and knowledge of past times and working men and the way they did indeed worked. In ignorance tools are listed and misnamed, miscategorized and so misplaced. In ignorance we misunderstand the tool’s significance  and thereby misplace the past. The tools are beautiful working tools that saw little use in work as the age of hand work yielded to the machine age and have been stowed and kept in good conditions for decades now. Now they will begin work again. They need work, but not much, before they can perform well.