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THE HANDYMAN’S BOOK.

INTRODUCTION.

THE SCOPE AND OBJECT OF THIS BOOK.

THE HANDYMAN’S BOOK is intended to treat upon mechanical handicraft, to show what to do and how to do it, to include the tools, materials, and processes, and to be supplemented with a full selection of varied examples of work. The tools will be described and illustrated, and their peculiar features and adaptability will be discussed. The materials will be examined and the characteristics of different varieties will be mentioned, and the suitability of each explained. The processes incidental to woodworking, such as preparing stuff, setting out work, making joints, etc., will be detailed. Specimens of handicraft work in wood will be minutely portrayed in working drawings, beginning with simple work involving but slight skill to execute, and advancing to complex work developing the highest dexterity. The contents of the book range from the rudimentary teaching that will show the tyro how to hold tools to the construction of high-class examples that will interest the adept craftsman.

WHAT IS A TOOL?

A tool may be considered to be any implement used for performing or facilitating mechanical operations, or for enabling man to change the form of material; but perhaps the second definition is too restrictive, and if it is adopted, certain so-called tools will be found to be mere contrivances. According to it a chisel or a hammer is a tool; but the boxing of a chisel or plane and the handle of a hammer are contrivances, for by them the modes of application and the power of the tools are extended and varied; and according to the second definition, a vice, a soldering bit, a nail, a square are not tools, but “contrivances” only. This is the opinion of Mr. A. Rigg, M.A., as expressed in Cantor Lectures delivered before the Society of Arts. According to the lecturer, it is hardly possible to draw a distinction between a tool and a machine. Whilst the former is more simple than the latter, they so merge into one another that it is difficult to determine where one ends and the other begins. For example, a lathe is a. handicraft tool, and yet in its highly developed form it is a very complicated machine. It was one of the earliest devices to be erased from the list of tools and promoted to a place amongst machines.

TOOLS AS HUMAN BENEFACTORS.

It may be said that tools increase and vary human power, economise human time, and convert substances apparently the most common and worthless into valuable and useful products. Without tools the hand would be nearly powerless; add to it a hammer and a cutting instrument, and its capacity is increased many fold. Rollers as a means of moving heavy blocks of stone were a contrivance which very largely extended the powers of men; the application of grease to bearings and surfaces enabled man to utilise a much larger portion of his power; whoever first pointed a strip of bone or shell, and made an eye in it, gave to man as a tool an invention far exceeding in importance and value anything yet accomplished by heat or electricity; and whoever first applied a barb to a spear and a hook, introduced a contrivance of inestimable importance.

TOOLS USED IN PREHISTORIC TIMES.

Aristotle (384—322 B.C.) made the first known attempt at determining the place which man should occupy in a general zoological classification. He selected as the distinguishing characteristic of man, regarded for this purpose alone, that man was “a tool-making animal,” and he could not find any other group of animals who made special implements and used them as man does tools. This view of man is accepted generally, and in recent times the inferences from it are wider and more extended than Aristotle could have anticipated, antiquarians now admitting that wherever on the earth tools are found, there men must once have dwelt. The first traces’ of tools are said to be met with in the post-tertiary strata, and the inference is that man’s existence may be placed so far back that centuries seem insignificant periods of time. Sir Charles Lyell speculates that at least two hundred thousand years have passed since implements were formed; these implements are found in the respective geological strata, not in isolation, but in groups which are silent evidences of facts long precedent to all human traditions. History, at all reliable, written in a known language, and in intelligible alphabetical characters, does not carry further back than the days of Herodotus (“the father of history”), born between 490 and 480 B.C. In a scheme of geological strata, the strata found above the tertiary are divided into three classes—the post-glacial, prehistoric, and historic; in the post-glacial there are not any traces of handicraft work; in the prehistoric, there are found remains of canoes made of trees, of dwellings erected on piles, implements made of flint and stone, and fragments of charred wood. For the present purpose these are three “ages”: in the first one tools were of stone, and this is again subdivided into two periods, the palæolithic or ancient stone period, when the stone tools were left with rude and rough exteriors, and the neolithic or recent, when there was somewhat of an external finish or polish on the tools. In the second age bronze tools are found, and also those of pure copper, these latter tools being so rare that they are comprehended in the term bronze. In the third age tools are of iron, and form an introduction to the present age. These ages are not markedly distinct, and it is probable that whilst in one part of the world men were using bronze, in another they were using iron. It is known that in times to which even geologists might hesitate to apply the term “recent,” the smelting of copper and of tin was known, and the combining of these metals to form a bronze as hard as any made and used at the present time was also practised. An analysis of these ancient bronze implements shows that the copper is alloyed with from 5 to 10 per cent. of tin. Analysis of Egyptian bronze implements gives 94·0 copper, 5·9 tin, and 0·1 iron.

TOOLS USED BY SAVAGE RACES.

Another source of information materially helps in supplying inferential, if not actual. knowledge with regard to the first formed tools. The traditions and customs of a people are preserved and repeated, generation after generation, by savage and isolated races of men. Hence amongst savage tribes and roving barbarians may be found at this day tools altogether different in form from those amongst civilised people. Such tools may be, and probably are, derived from ancestors of geological antiquity. In the Pacific Islands, in North America, Australia, Africa, and elsewhere, there are races who know not the use of metals, and whose implements correspond exactly with those found mixed with the fossil remains of extinct animals. Herodotus mentions that flint knives were used in Egypt in embalming, and such knives are found in the tombs, and were employed long after bronze and other metals were general. There is thus a connection between the tools used in prehistoric times and those of savage races. The handicraft contrivances and skill of the untutored are not to be despised, and much is owing to uneducated men of clear thought, cunning resource, singular ingenuity, and much handicraft skill. It is well known that even in our own times the earliest germs of many most important inventions and discoveries have their origin in the suggestions of hard-working but illiterate artisans.

TOOLS USED IN ANCIENT EGYPT.

To pass from the earliest suggestions of bronze implements to the first unquestionable period of metal tools, the forms and modes of using which are so clearly shown pictorially, Egyptian history must be considered. The paintings and sculptures of ancient Egypt and Herculaneum show very clearly the tools which were then in use, and an amazing amount of information has thus been preserved. The subject cannot be gone into here, but it may be said that the tools and contrivances used in the building of the early pyramids are not known. The erection of these early pyramids is placed about 2120 B.C., that is, about a century before Abraham arrived in Egypt, and (1902 + 2120) 4,022 years ago. There are no hieroglyphics on these, and they do not carry their history as the tombs do. In a tomb at Thebes have been found a case of tools and a tool basket, belonging to a cabinet maker, these now being in the British Museum; the tools, etc., are: Bass of palm fibres, neatly plaited, with cover; bell-shaped wooden mallets or hammers, such as are used by masons at the present day; bronze nails; a skin pouch for holding small tools and nails; a horn for oil for sharpening tools, such as now is used in a country wheelwright’s shop; drill bow, drill spindle, and drill cap; chisels; hatchet heads; adzes, knives, and chisels with wooden handles. On one bronze hatchet, and one bronze adze, and one bronze saw is the name Thothmes III. of eighteenth dynasty, 1453 B.C. These therefore were in use (1902 + 1450) 3,352 years ago. And on other blades of axes is the name of Ata, an officer in the time of the sixth dynasty. In addition to these, the Egyptian cabinet maker had in his bass rasps, a plummet, and a hone. Sufficient has now been said, it is thought, to convince the reader of the antiquity of many commonly used tools.

CLASSIFICATION OF TOOLS.

Tools may be classed according to their functions and modes of action, as follows: (1) Geometrical tools for laying off and testing work: such tools are rules, straight-edges, gauges, etc. (2) Tools for holding and supporting work: such tools are benches, vices, stools, etc. (3) Paring or shaving tools, such as chisels, spokeshaves, planes, etc. (4) Saws. (5) Percussion or impelling tools, such as hammers, mallets, screwdrivers and (combined with cutting) hatchets, axes, adzes, etc. (6) Boring tools, such as gimlets, brace-bits, etc. (7) Abrading and scraping tools, such as rasps, scrapers, glasspaper, and implements such as whetstones, etc., for sharpening edged tools. These tools and their functions will be described in much the same order as the above.