Browse Items (26 total)

A planer was used to uniformly shave wood. The flat side is for shaving wood, and the user would set the blade for the preferred depth. The planer pictured is a more basic example, but the tool house also includes fancier molding and…

Nails were used to create smaller joints and were frequently reused. This nail was not round like most nails we see today, rather it has four sides which were created by hammering the iron into shape. This is a brad nail which would have been used…

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…

Three men stand in front of a log. The man on the left uses a double-bitted axe. The man in the center uses a broad axe. L-R: Roe Mann (of Enka section), Montford Mease (of Enka section), Pail Scoggins (of Brevard Road)

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…

A hand saw is a multi-use wood shaping tool. It was used on smaller logs for making items such as wooden furniture, rather than larger logs (used to make cabins for example). The saw is not missing a piece at the bottom—that is actually a single…

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 froe is a wood splitting tool. It is used to make shingles. The tool's user would place the blade into a log and hit the opposite metal end with a mallet-type item to create a shingle. Because the shingles were made by hand in this way, the size of…

Four men work on the first story of the reconstructed Vance house. The two men to the right appear to be sawing logs, and the men to the center-left appear to be placing those logs. The original fireplace is visible to the left.

Figure 4 "Dovetail or Box Corner" from "Building with Logs." "Building with Logs" was published in 1944 by the United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service, and is considered a gold standard in cabin building. This diagram demonstrates how…