The O.K. Rim Wrench • Boss Hand Vise • Williams Auto Tool • Stanley Planes • Elgin Wrench • Green River Tire Bolt Wrench • Barnes Scroll Saw • Bemis and Call Combination Wrench • Tool Restoration

Bonniwell-Calvin Iron Co. 1910 Catalog Wheelwright Tools

In the hand of the intelligent mechanic the square becomes a simple calculating machine of the most wonderful capacity, and by it they solve problems of the kinds continually arising in mechanical work. The blade of the square should be 24 inches long and two inches wide, and the tongue from 14 to 18 inches long and 1-½ inches wide. The tongue should be at right angles with the blade, or in other words the “square” should be perfectly square.

At Colonial Homestead it is common to see people engaged in building or repairing furniture, such as Windsor chairs with hand tools, or cutting joints for a timber frame house, or carving spoons, building flintlock rifles, sharpening saws, making work benches, or quite often sitting comfortably with a book and coffee.

A set of farrier’s tools is a must on almost any farm that employs horses and mules. If you do your own barefoot trims or set your own shoes, you probably keep your tools in a traditional farrier’s box set up for ready use. However, if you’re like me and you hire a farrier every six to ten weeks to work on your equine’s feet, you should still have a basic set of tools on hand to address the occasional emergency, such as a loose shoe or chipped foot. A farrier’s tool roll is a convenient way to store tools that aren’t used every day.

The brain-tanned and smoked tapered leather strips were braided from the handle to the tip. Then Khoke soaked some rawhide in our pond for a couple days to soak up. Once fully reconstituted, he cut it into tapered strips too. The rawhide was braided wet and was 4-braided over the tanned leather from handle to tip. The overall length for this whip was 20ft. Khoke wanted a bullwhip that was long enough to be effective on horseback. We can all take a moment to reflect on how good a horse Millie is to put up with that.

The top two thirds of these pages features a reprint of the circa 1905 catalog from the Standard Garden Tool company. Across the bottom third of those pages we are running some of the illustrations of cultivator shovel setups from Lynn R. Miller’s Horsedrawn Tillage Tools. This book, originally published in 2001, has been out of print for 19 years. We are pleased to announce that it is once again available.