Wooden Vintage Tools

Woodworking Tools

• The bit and brace or auger makes holes, and this tool has a wooden handle and hand piece. The plane is another woodworking tool that is mostly wood, with a sharp metal blade for smoothing and trimming the wood. Vintage Stanley planes are wood with ball handles and come in large and very small sizes. Handsaws have wooden handles, sometimes with fancy designs like one shown on Mid-West Tool Collectors Association website. Before electric tools were popular, nearly every woodworking tool had some wood, and a wooden toolbox kept the tools in one place.

Garden Tools

• Hoes and rakes, tillers and corn shellers all had wooden parts or handles. The vintage tillers often had a scoop like a shovel with a large wheel and wooden handles. Some were for use by hand and others had the assistance of the mule or donkey on the front end and the farmer on the handles.

Farm Tools

• Vintage hammers and axes, mallets, screwdrivers and chisels all have wooden handles for use on the farm. Stave barrels hold the grain and the wooden pitchfork loads the hay. A sickle and a scythe keep the grass down in the area of the house with a metal blade and wooden handle.

Slide Rules and Levels

• Slide rules were precision instruments made of wood with enamel, and protected by a leather case prior to the availability of plastic. The slide rule does complex calculations with a little help from the user, and is a precursor to the computer. Levels were made of wood with a glass bubble. Folding rules were all wood joined with rivets, painted with enamel and numbers.

Kitchen Tools

• The red-handled eggbeater and the large spoon with the enamel handle both have wood under the paint. Rolling pins are often completely made of wood with ball bearings for rolling precision. Vintage cutting boards are wood, sometimes with a metal bail for hanging. Churns have wooden parts, and a wooden paddle removes the milk from the butter, a project sometimes performed in the wooden dough bowl. Vintage wooden spoons are still in use in the American kitchen and an occasional meat tenderizer wholly made of wood is still in use.