Thread: An appreciation of things and times long gone

I am a carpenter by trade, carpentry runs in my family, my father is a carpenter, so was my grandfather, and great grandfather, and his........well you get the picture! Seven generations going back to the late 1700's, not only did we all follow the same trade, we also share the same first name, John.

I own hand tools that belonged to my great grandfather, they are no longer used, the handles are too fragile now, years of pounding with a mallet have taken their toll. The plane irons no longer seat into the wooden bodies very well, so they take pride of place in a cabinet in my living room.
Alongside these tools is a hand forged nail , 6" long, four sided and tapering to a blunt point, I pulled this nail from a 9"x4" Oak floor joist that was part of a building I was helping to restore 20 years ago, the joist needed to be cut away a bit so a new door frame could be fitted. The last man that held that nail before me was the carpenter that drove it into the joist in about 1790, it was probably delivered to him by a young apprentice, who in turn collected the nails from the on site blacksmith that made it.
Holding on to that nail connected me to the past in a way I find difficult to explain, but I'll try, it was like a virtual handshake with someone long dead, an ethereal connection to someone whose line of work I shared, though our lifestyles and conditions would have been very different, I imagined what he would have looked like, how old he was, what was his day to day life like? I might even have been related, the building is in London all my family roots are in London so who knows?
I wonder would he have had a slight chuckle at the thought of someone rescuing that nail 200 odd years later and thinking of him, or would he just have shrugged his shoulders and lit his clay pipe for a quick smoke while he had the chance?

Using vintage straights to me, is a similar experience, a connection with times long gone and the people that used them, the very same experience I have when handling my old tools.

As a tutor I once had used to say “If you want to know where you are going to, you need to know where you came from”, the past defines us all, we are the sum of what went before, and so for me at least, an appreciation of the past is a reminder of who, and what I am now.

I've got a couple of old hand forged nails in my accumulation as well. I too have felt and wondered similar thoughts.

My family was in ranching. I was given my maternal great great grandfather's spurs when I was big enough to wear 'em. They always brought a smile to my face knowing they were his and I've wondered what they could tell as my great great grandfather fought in our (un)Civil War. The spurs post date that mess, but he and his son both drove cattle herds. His son, my great grandfather, was murdered in Oklahoma in 1908 after returning from Kansas City and selling his herd. He had no money when found and he was wearing those spurs.

My grandfather wore these spurs and finally me. I don't ride the rough stock anymore. I'm too old and it takes too damn long to heal up. Haven't been on a horse in close to ten years now. Got a friend with three big ranches in West Texas. I hope to ride one last time before I'm too crippled up to enjoy it and gather a few more wild cattle. It's in the plans, we just have to co-ordinate my time off to his round up. Those spurs are hanging on a peg on the wall. I oil the straps every couple of years and they're ready to go if ever I am.

Doubt my kid will ever use 'em, but they'll be his to do with as he pleases when I'm gone.

I am not a carpenter by profession but i've been making woodworks since i was kid. Some furnitures for our house but nowadays mostly fixing and repairing vintage furnitures my wife carries here from estate auctions and second hand stores. Every now and then there's parts missing so i have to make new ones.
Although electric tools are handy and fast, specially when you use them for living i rather use old hand tools whenever it's reasonable. I have several vintage planes and chisels that belonged to my grandfather. I honestly think that they are far more better than modern electric tools. Modern tools, be it hand tool or electric have no such high quality standards than the ones they used to make back centuries ago. Besides i enjoy working with my hands. And just like with straight razors, it takes a huge learning curve to use them correctly and i think the more i learn there's more still to learn. For some reason i respect much more things that i've made with hand tools rather than electric noise machines.

I admit to loving old vs new for the most part. The history is the icing on the cake but it does seem the quality just isn't there in modern production usually. Not for everything of course but a noticable amount of things. Nothing beats an old tool that's been lovingly restored/brought back to it's former glory. I have some French draw knives, Swedish barrel knives, axes, Sheffield sickles and billhooks and various things I've done up over the years. It's like a tool with a bit of soul to it and they're always a pleasure to use!

I've got two of my father's planes, a craftsman jack plane and a stanley adjustable mouth low angle block plane which i use all the time, one of his father's planes, a stanley 78 which is unfortunately unusable but i do have his mechanic's toolbox full of taps, dies, reamers, extractors, sharpening slips (he was a shoe machinery repairman). when he died in 1963 and the toolbox came to our house, one of the first things my father found in it was what i now suspect was a 32 caliber baby browning. i also have my mother's grandfather's wooden jointer plane, in beautiful condition. i love having these things around.
as far as having been here before, i feel a very strong attraction to anything having to do with the late 18th century. beyond that i think i did a stint as zeus, occasionally hurling bolts of lightning at confused and dazed villagers milling about.
eta
wikipedia just told me that the baby browning was a .25. we took it to the gun range my father belonged to and dropped the hammer. the ammo was so old we found the copper jacketed bullets laying in the snow. didn't go more than a couple of hundred feet. my father drilled one through and put it on a loop of string and i wore it around my neck till one day i was twirling it and flew away, never to be seen again in chuckie stuart's backyard. the browning was swapped for a gorgeous ithaca dbl bbl 12 ga with an engraved receiver and beautiful walnut stock, and i wound up with that and eventually swapped for car repairs to a mechanic who had the broken firing pins fixed, and the chip on the stock fixed. god forbid my brother ever finds out it's gone.

Here' some old stuff I rescued a while back, maybe thirty years worth of while back. LOL Hand made bullet mold reamers.







Not everybody's cup of tea but they were made by hand and used in drill presses that were probably had a water powered line shaft or a man's arm running the equipment.

Originally Posted by Wullie

Here' some old stuff I rescued a while back, maybe thirty years worth of while back. LOL Hand made bullet mold reamers.

Not everybody's cup of tea but they were made by hand and used in drill presses that were probably had a water powered line shaft or a man's arm running the equipment.

Wullie,

Thanks for those pics! It had never occurred to me that the Morse taper was that old, but in checking, after seeing your pics, it was invented by Stephan A. Morse in the mid 1860's. For those not familiar, the tapered end of the tools makes for quick tool changes by press fitting into the spindle of the machine and usually has a slot on the spindle for a metal bar to slide in and be tapped down to loosen and remove the tool. Thanks again, I'm envious of those tools!!

Regards,

Howard