Early American Tools

The Axe

• The axe may have been one of the early American settler's most important tools. With a wide array of designs, the axe was made to chop down trees, frame and mortise the beams of barns, and turn round logs into square beams. Some early American tool catalogs list more than 50 patterns of axe heads, including chisel axes, mortise axes and broad axes. Chisel and mortise axes were used to create tabs and slots to fit pieces of wood together in building beams as well as furniture. Broad axes were mostly used to turn round logs into square beams.

The Chisel

• Chisels may have been one of the simplest tools early Americans used, but they were among the most necessary. Due to the precision of the chisel, this tool was able to make cuts that axes, saws or planes during Colonial times could not. There were a large number of sizes and shapes of chisels that were used for woodworking, shaping joints, shaping wood on a lathe and cutting designs and ornaments into wood. Generally, the chisel consisted of a wood handle and metal blade.

The Plane

• Unlike their European counterparts, the early American plane was completely devoid of decoration. Consisting of what looked like a rectangular box with a handle, the average carpenter would have up to 30 different sizes of small planes. Planes were used to level a wood surface, to cut matching tongue and grooves to fit pieces of wood together, or cut round, hollow shapes for more intricate molding.

The Saw

• Although they were the most complicated to manufacture, saws came in a large variety of sizes and shapes during the early American period of history. The wooden frame saw was the most popular type of saw for that time. Since metal could be problematic to acquire, the wooden frame saw was useful in that it only needed a very thin blade. The wooden frame held the blade and stretched the metal. The slightly smaller handsaw was used to cut boards, while the cross-cut and pit saws were extremely large and used by two people to cut logs.