Browse Items (21 total)

A cow bell is attached to livestock so that their owners can locate them. Livestock was often free-range and the only fenced areas were the spaces that you wanted to keep livestock out of. So, if your animal wandered off, you could keep track of…

A shaving horse is a work bench that you sit on, which also held whatever piece of wood you are working on in place. The user would sit down across from the piece of wood, then push the foot pedal to move the dumbhead down. The shaving horse outside…

This tool would have been used to scoop grain out of a barrel for livestock. There are two holes in the wood which provide a means of holding the tool, the smallest for the thumb, and the largest for the rest of the fingers. A groove is visible…

A bear trap was used to wound bears (in this region specifically, the American Black Bear). The trap would be set with the metal clamps open. The bear would step on the metal plate beneath it, which would trigger the closure of the clamps around the…

A sickle has a wooden handle and a curved metal blade. It is used to cut a bunch of stalks or stems (such as grass or crops), either to harvest or trim.

This wooden rake, or pitchfork would have been used to move hay, straw, and wheat—raking actions as well as scooping and lifting. The tool could relieve some of the labor of harvest.

A double bitted axe would be used for cutting wood: trees, branches, limbs, or logs into their preliminary size before being shaped or smoothed. Both sides of the blade feature a bevel, so that the axe cuts on both sides.

A foot adze is used to shape and smooth wood. The blade is curved so that when swung in front of the user, it will always come back under and be stopped by the user's foot for safety. One would not want to swing an adze toward their body without…

A hand adze is used for similar purposes as a foot adze (wood shaping), but on smaller pieces of wood. An adze leaves short, choppy marks on a piece of wood, that would typically be smoothed out later in the process. Dennis demonstrates how to use…

A hewing hatchet is a small tool used to shape wood. One side of the blade is flat, and the other side has a bevel (whereas a double-bitted hatchet or axe has bevels on both sides and cuts evenly). One would use this tool to cut and shape smaller…