Old Tools

Inherited Tools

I inherited some old tools this week.  They are a varied mix of both woodworking tools and gardening implements.  Although none of them have been forged from blacksmiths in the Victorian era, they do have a bit of age to them, and a feeling of hand crafted quality with not a hint of plastic moulding anywhere.  

My favourite piece other than the fork and sickle is a complete wooden case holding everything I might need to produce quality pieces of wooden furniture, although all I have used so far are the two saws for cutting our driftwood into manageable pieces to fit in the fire.  A joy to use they are too, owned by a joiner they were professionally sharpened and even though I blunted them quickly they re sharpen beautifully.  The handles on the tools have the maker’s marks and also the stamp of the person I inherited the pieces from.

The fork, spade, half moon hoes and rakes all look the same as their modern counterparts. When you look into the history of some of the most common garden tools we use today, we find not much has changed in hundreds of years. What has changed, though, is the value placed on those implements. The convenience of mass produced tools wasn’t even considered a few generations ago so a lot of tools were hand made locally. Because of their high value, each family's collection of garden tools was highly prized by their owners. Common garden tools were extremely valuable in planting and cultivating the beds and fields that fed whole families. Peoples' livelihoods directly depended on their garden tools. I get the feeling that the tools I have inherited were very highly valued and well looked after.

A Bit of History

Some of the oldest garden tools in the world date back many thousands of years. The first woody plant intentionally pruned by humans is believed to have been the grapevine in Armenia around 6000 B.C. A bronze spade closely resembling more modern ones was used by the Chinese as early as 1100 B.C. The oldest tool though is said to be the hammer, no doubt it was shaped like a rock.

The Romans established the pattern for the spades and shovels we use today when they harnessed the technology of the forge to heat iron to its malleable point. In the mid-14th century, iron smelting made it possible to create lighter, more precisely-shaped tools. Then came the industrial revolution, bringing steel and cast alloys out of the fire and leading to the manufacture of tools that were lighter, finer and far more durable.

Things didn’t stay as they were though and tools such as hand trowels changed the direction of their tines from sideways to flat.  The 1950's saw the introduction of even more lightweight aluminium tools. Before the late 1880s, aluminium was exceedingly difficult to extract from its various ores. This made pure aluminium more valuable than gold. Napoleon III of France is reputed to have given a banquet where the most honoured guests were given aluminium utensils, while the others made do with gold.

Grass Clippers

One of the main tools before the push lawnmower was invented in 1827 by Edwin Buddin, were large grass clippers that resembles sheep shearing clippers.  We had to wait until 1920 for the petrol mower and the rotary one didn’t materialise until 1952.

Old Tools

I was looking through the old gardening tools virtual museum to see if there were any gardening tools that haven’t stood the test of time and been discontinued throughout the years, and there are a lot. The aforementioned grass clippers have morphed into hand shears and the wide choice of weeding tools seems to have dwindled also.  I haven’t seen a gouge for extracting asparagus or a v shaped tool for pulling up daisies for years and have never seen a fern trowel, but they were very popular at one time.

Tools that I found highly entertaining in the collection were the Acme Powder Blower by the Acme Chemical Co made in the 1950’s, ideal for blowing DDT on your roses.  Iron boots that weighed a tonne, bird scarers that were similar to football rattles so you had to run around the garden twizelling it over your head, glass tubes with cork seals for putting plant labels in as indelible ink wasn’t available, bellows for dusting, large measuring devices for getting topiary shrubs the same size and the cucumber straightening jars.

                             The Little Wonder hand operated hedge cutter. Pic courtesy of Old Garden Tools.co.uk

Little Wonder

My favourite though is the ‘Little Wonder’ hedge clippers, introduced in 1939. It cost a staggering 6 pounds and six shillings. It was the most evocative garden tool and also one of the most useless and unreliable by all accounts. The buyer would have been very well off and certainly have 2 or more gardening staff as the steel contraption has three handles along its 5 foot length, which all needed holding to lift it into place. The operating mechanism is very similar to the cog driven hand drill, one of which I have also just inherited.

Something else that I would like to add to my growing collection of old quality tools would be the antler handle hand pruning saw produced in the late 1800’s. It is such a tactile instrument that I’m sure everything that needed pruning in the garden would get the attention it deserved. Check out more old tools for sale here