> 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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