More mystery tools

Having a tidy up I came across a mysterious wooden tube containing eight tools:

The one at the top appears to be a miniature tapered reamer (which makes me wonder about clock-making), the next six have what look like hand forged square section tangs and the bottom one has a slightly mushroomed head which makes me think it might be a tiny chisel.

No idea where these came from - anyone recognise them?

Robin.

Edited By Robin Graham on 12/07/2019 22:58:02

Quite probably engraving tools, Robin

MichaelG.

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http://expositions.bnf.fr/bosse/grand/214.htm

Image located via Wikipedia

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 12/07/2019 23:13:30

Robin,

As Michael G says these look very much like gravers, they are missing their mushroom shaped wooden handles.

Essentially they are a metal cutting chisel but not struck with a mallet they are driven into the metal by hand pressure alone.

I used to watch a Sheffield hand engraver at work and marvelled at the strength and control he was able to achieve.

I still have some of his work which I really ought to photograph and post here.

Best regards Mick

I used to watch an engraver engraving shotgun side plates. Used to marvel at the quality of his work, very delicate especially in steel However if you got a receipt from him you couldn't read his handwriting

Roy

Is there a hole in the end of the case to take the shanks?

A very good friend of mine was a master engraver who used to decorate the expensive guns of the prestigious gun makers. When he finished a gun, which took several months work, I used to photograph them for him. Here are some examples.

Wow

Wow + 1

I've seen it being done, it is a fascinating process - and knowing that one slip could ruin weeks, if not months, of work must be nerve-wracking.

Some top notch engraving there, shame it seems to be dying out. The only guy that I know of still doing gun work is Don Blocksidge but apparently he's no spring chicken and never took an apprentice on to continue the skill.

My friend's name was John Salt - if you look closely you can see his name in the bottom 2 photos. He died a couple of years ago.

He taught me the rudiments of engraving some years ago, but I'm still very much a novice.

Beatiful work by Mr Salt, Gary ... and your photos are a fitting tribute.

Thanks for sharing them.

MichaelG.

Remarkable craftsmanship.

Neil

Real works of art, a pleasure to view. Interesting that the engraver has been thoughtful enough to depict your target just in case all that crusted port and vintage cognac has clouded your memory.

Rik

Factorial Wow!

SO sad that such skills are dying out with such craftsmen.

With the increasing rarity, it no wonder that examples are becoming astronomically expensive.

Howard

Gary, the bottom three pictures are signed, you missed one.

They are used for turning arbors and pivots for watch and clock making,I have some in the same wooden tube and use them occasionaly when turning thin items.

Frank

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I am happy to be wrong, and learn something new, Frank ... but :

I have never seen curved gravers being used in an horologist's lathe.

MichaelG.

Both suggestions seem possible but.

They look a bit slim as graving tools and the ones I have seen (and used / played with) were quite a bit shorter with a bend right at the end to angle the cut near parallel to the work. The long curve also fits with the idea of producing a cutting force almost parallel with the work face, It is a very scary business. I couldn't stand the tension; I'm clearly not of the right stuff.

I have seen YouTube videos of turning clock arbors and it involved a technique more like wood turning; Hand held with a rest. Those tools could possibly be used for that too.

I think engraving and polishing must be the oldest metal-finishing trades.

Having seen decorative metalwork as early as Bronze-Age in Dorchester Museum, I woinder if they used metal tools or flint gravers?

A couple of years or so ago the Dorset Echo published a photo of the back of a bronze mirror, decorated with dozens of overlapping scallop-shell patterns. Accepting a newspaper's normal photograph definition is not as fine as a standard photographic print, looking at the image of the mirror closely you could see the tiny irregularities in the spacing and curves of the shell ribs you'd expect from hand work with what to us would be crude tools - but none had slipped over the borders.

If anything those tiny imperfections stress this was the patient hand work of an unknown craftsman or woman millennia ago, working with this up-to-date material with so many practical and aesthetic possibilities.

I don't know where it is now, but the mirror's structure is a very elegant circular reflector on a handle composed as I recall, of a row of three toroids.

It's interesting and rather awe-inspiring to see that the decorative work of many otherwise functional items made now, still often uses motifs developed hundreds or even thousands of years ago, as the second of Gary Wooding's photographs show by all that Celtic knot-work.