Tool of the Trades : The Colonial Williamsburg Official History Site

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For those who could afford bindings, the bookbinder plied these tools to work the leather and apply gold leaf decoration.
Click image to enlarge

Tools of the Trades
by J. Hunter Barbour
Photographer Dave Doody

Colonial Williamsburg Foundation tradespeople make their wares by hand, hands that hold tools, eighteenth-century style tools. Gauges, tongs, punches, needles, ladles, hammers, ink balls, knives, stamps, saws, awls, bits, rules, hooks, compasses, chisels, spoke shaves, lasts, blockheads, gouges, shuttles, planes, clamps, squares, —examples of tools taken up each day by the cabinetmakers, blacksmiths, gunsmiths, silversmiths, cordwainers, wigmakers, printers, apothecaries, binders, coopers, weavers, cooks, carpenters, and others who pursue traditional crafts at Historic Area sites. Fashioned to replicate the functions and appearances of instruments used by colonial artisans, they often are, in their arrangements in the shops and stores where they are used and must be ready to hand, as interesting, and sometimes as handsome, as the furniture, cloth, houses, books, shoes, rifles, hardware, food, and fashions they, among other things, are used to reproduce. As you can see for yourself in these pages.

—J. Hunter Barbour

With a blockhead for every noggin, large and small, male and female, the wigmaker fashioned wigs for all occasions and clients. Click image to enlarge	Made for him by a blacksmith, a caliper and chisels were among the cabinetmaker’s tools. Click image to enlarge
The silversmith’s hammers and stakes. The high polish on the stakes was needed to produce a flawless finish. Click image to enlarge	With curved drawknives to shape wooden staves and bitstocks to drill holes for pins, the cooper fashioned casks and barrels. Click image to enlarge
Able to make many of his tools, the carpenter used planes and clamps in woodworking. Click image to enlarge	A collection of iron tongs used by the blacksmith to hold pieces of differing sizes and shapes. Click image to enlarge
At the foundry, the smith finished a casting on the lathe with tools from this rack. Click image to enlarge	Utensils made of copper, brass, tin, and iron hang from the lintel of a kitchen fireplace. Click image to enlarge