Part 2

American inventories reflect the great increase suggested by the early technical writers and trade catalogues cited above. Compare the content of two American carpenters' shops--one of 1709, in York County, Virginia, and the other of 1827, in Middleborough, Massachusetts. John Crost, a Virginian, owned, in addition to sundry shoemaking and agricultural implements, a dozen gimlets, chalklines, bung augers, a dozen turning tools and mortising chisels, several dozen planes (ogees, hollows and rounds, and plows), several augers, a pair of 2-foot rules, a spoke shave, lathing hammers, a lock saw, three files, compasses, paring chisels, a jointer's hammer, three handsaws, filling axes, a broad axe, and two adzes. Nearly 120 years later Amasa Thompson listed his tools and their value. Thompson's list is a splendid comparison of the tools needed in actual practice, as opposed to the tools suggested by Nicholson in his treatise on carpentry or those shown in the catalogues of the toolmakers. Thompson listed the following:

1 set bench planes $6.00

1 Broad Axe 3.00

1 Adze 2.25

1 Panel saw 1.50

1 Panel saw 1.58

1 fine do-- 1.58

1 Drawing knife .46

1 Trying square .93

1 Shingling hatchet .50

1 Hammer .50

1 Rabbit plane .83

1 Halving do .50

1 Backed fine saw 1.25

1 Inch augre .50

1 pr. dividers or compasses-- .71

1 Panel saw for splitting 2.75

1 Tennon gauge 1.42

1 Bevel .84

1 Bradd Hammer .50

1 Architect Book 6.50

1 Case Mathematical Instruments 3.62-1/2

1 Panel saw 2.75

1 Grafting saw 1.00

1 Bench screw 1.00

1 Stamp 2.50

1 Double joint rule .62-1/2

1 Sash saw 1.12-1/2