OldTools Archive

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256042 Dwight Beebe <dwb1124@g...> 2015‑08‑30 New, old tools
Gracious Galoots,

Well, my shop lives in a new abode.  What a mess!  Found things I'd
forgotten I had and lost some things I knew I had.  In a box somewhere.
Anyway, MLW came home today with even more things for me: a broad axe, a
froe, and what I think is a cooper's adze with a very interesting handles.
  The axe and the froe look blacksmith-made.  The exchange involves
cleaning the rust off of a very old, double-barrel shotgun for the previous
owner of the tools.  Been a long time since I handled a long gun.  It's a
very lovely piece.  I have no real idea how to approach that problem
without doing anything hurtful, but I think this is a question for a
different group.

Pictures of the edge tools are here:

http://bit.ly/1PEUyKY

I think the froe is delaminating or something similar.  I have found no
maker's marks, but have not done a really thorough inspection.  Is the adze
a cooper's adze?

Regards,

Dwight
256047 Michael Blair <branson2@s...> 2015‑08‑30 Re: New, old tools
Dwight,

The froe is definitely blacksmith made.

The adz is certainly a cooper's adz.  This is a standard for English 
coopering
and coopering traditions that derive from English practices.  The style 
appears
to have been derived from a less common French form used specifically 
for trussing
up.  Sometimes it is called a "trussing adz" in fact.  The earliest 
image I have
of this style comes from an 18th Century book, Utensiles de Tonnelerie 
XVIIIe.

Here's a photo of the trussing adz at work:

http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/barrel-maker-royalty-free-
image/182892921">http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/barrel-maker-royalty-
free-image/182892921

I have two other images that show trussing adzes that have no sharp edge 
at all.

Mike in Sacto
256055 Brian Rytel <brian.rytel@g...> 2015‑08‑31 Re: FS: E.C. Stearns bench stops
On Sun, Aug 30, 2015 at 11:16 PM, Don Schwartz  wrote:

>
> That photobucket link comes with a loud, obnoxious & persistent pop-up!
>
> This is not the first time. Would the listmoms consider deleting msgs with
> photobucket links?
>
> Don

It's quite possible many are not aware that some of the photo-sharing
sites are running tasteless ads. I can't speak for anyone else but I
use ad-blocking software that prevent most of those kinds of
annoyances.

I don't think it's fair to those whom have found an image sharing site
that they feel comfortable with (a point of contention in many archive
conversations) to block their content from anyone reading the
list/archives. Deleting the messages would put holes in our
conversations and effectively censor certain contributors that rely on
that site for image hosting. I do think it's good you brought it up;
in case anyone wants to review alternatives.

Best,
Brian Rytel
P.S. If anyone needs a GIC or Galoot-o-pedia account for posting
images, please let me know directly. Also, if anyone is interested in
ad-blocking add-ons for Firefox or Chrome please reply to me
personally and I'll try to help.
256058 Thomas Conroy 2015‑08‑31 Re: New, old tools
Dwight Beebe wrote: "Pictures of the edge tools are here:

http://bit.ly/1PEUyKY

Is the adze a cooper's adze?"

Wonderful haul. The adze does look like Salaman's pictures of cooper's adzes,
except that the hammer end isn't scooped out. Maybe its an early one. The bevel
should be on the side toward the hand; it looks like the bevel has gone missing,
but if the blade is laminated you may be able to make out the steel on the other
side.
Tom Conroy
256061 Christopher Swingley <cswingle@s...> 2015‑08‑31 Re: FS: E.C. Stearns bench stops
GGs,

On Sun, Aug 30, 2015 at 10:16 PM, Don Schwartz  wrote:
> This is not the first time. Would the listmoms consider deleting msgs with
> photobucket links?

For the reasons Brian mentions, as well as the fact that policing
external links would be pretty difficult to do, I don't think that
removing messages with links to other sites is going to happen.  I'm
willing to make an exception if a linked site is actually dangerous or
hosting illegal content, but I don't recall that happening except in
the rare case that someone's email account gets hacked.

My personal approach is to use Flash and Ad blocking software.  That
cleans up most of the ugly and saves me quite a bit of bandwidth as
well.

Cheers,

ListMom Chris, in Fairbanks, Alaska, where it was below freezing on my
morning bike ride to work
-- 
Christopher Swingley
Fairbanks, Alaska
http://swingleydev.com/
cswingle@s...
256062 Michael Blair <branson2@s...> 2015‑08‑31 Re: New, old tools
> The adze does look like Salaman's pictures of cooper's
> adzes, except that the hammer end isn't scooped out.

That's what we think of as a cooper's adz.  I'm not sure just what
the date may be for the earliest of these, but the two we have at
Sutter's Fort, along with another that I have, are marked D.R. Barton
in the cartouche that dates from the 1870s -- '73 IIRC.  This design
has undergone more changes.  The current coopers adz as made by Haldane
can be seen here, on page 24:

http://www.stevenson-
reeves.co.uk/reeves/ReevesCatalogue.pdf">http://www.stevenson-
reeves.co.uk/reeves/ReevesCatalogue.pdf

I've seen earlier examples of the Haldanes pattern, but not reeellly 
old.

But the thing is, these adzes are only common to English coopering and
the coopering traditions that derive from England.  German, Italian,
Spanish and Portuguese cooper's adzes have no hammer head behind the
blade commonly.  These adzes have a blade width of between four and
six inches -- very wide.  People often mistake them for bowl adzes.

As I mentioned earlier. the English style adz seems to have evolved from
the French trussing adz, a tool mostly used in starting down the hoops,
one which can be used with a hoop driver.  But it's for starting the
process.  Driving down the hoops hard was done with a hammer of four
to eight pounds.

As a trussing tool, there is no need for a sharp blade.  Though 
uncommon,
the Typical English adze was also made without an edge.  Rather, the
"edge" was usually about 1/4 inch and perfectly flat.  No need for the
sharp edge since chamfering the ends of the barrel came to be done with
a heavy cooper's chamfer knife.

> Maybe its an early one.

Likely so, in my opinion.  There are numerous examples of transitional
cooper's adzes with a variety of hammer heads as part of their 
construction.

> The bevel should be on the side toward the hand; it looks
> like the bevel has gone missing, but if the blade is laminated you may
> be able to make out the steel on the other side.

Could have gone missing, but it could have never been there.  Before one
thinks of putting an edge on this adz, one needs to be certain that an
edge ever existed.

Mike in Sacto

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