Tool Tuesday; assorted tools

[johan_steele]

Clockwise from left: three wooden mallets that are of the type that have been around since carpenters discovered the need to hit things. A simple turnscrew. A spill plane where fine kindling is a useful byproduct of its use; I use that byproduct to light my pipe. Spills are cheaper than matches. A handmade stag horn carpenters knife and a Scandanavian hand made wooden plane. There is a grace and beauty to hand tools that I can appreciate. Any of these tools might be found in the typical tool box.

 

[A. Roy]

Nice collection! I have a mallet very much like the one at the top of the photo. I have indeed found occasion to use it to ... hit something.
ARB

 

[Tony Z]

For anyone interested, one can buy a modern version of a spill plane from Lee Valley, a Canadian web business. I have one on the mantle of our fireplace at our hunting camp. Just the ticket for lighting cigars, whilst sipping on borbon.

 

[Patrick H]

I have a lot of hand and power tools--many of them inherited and some of them collected. I usually reach for a hand tool first. They are quiet and usually just as fast as a power tool (sometimes faster, when you factor in the set up time for a power tool.) They just require a little more physical effort, which I find enjoyable.

 

[UCVRelics]

Nice collection. Thanks for sharing them with us.

 

[Jeff in Ohio]

I still remember seeing decades ago an article in the National Geographic of medical instruments recovered from a shipwreck (I think it was a Spanish Armada sunk off the coast of Britain in 1588), which included several sizes of metal skull caps. A patient was rendered unconscious by striking the skull cap with a wooden mallet. The metal skull cap would allow the blow to be spread out over the skull.

When those cannon balls started blasting into those ships, they had boxes of sand to throw into the pools of blood so the sailors could keep their footing, and if a sailor needed an amputation or some other emergency treatment, I support getting hit on the head with a mallet to get knocked out would be better than no anesthesia at all.

And by having different sizes of metal skullcaps, it would work better than the old "oater cowboy movie" technique I've seen where the patient is punched in the jaw to knock him out; I suppose the sailors would have preferred a good measure of rum, but in an emergency, there would likely not be time for that!