Tool Collecting Categories
Categories of tools range from the broad - planes, rules, braces, hammers, etc. to the specific - planes made by the Gage Company of Vineland, New Jersey for example. People who are new to the hobby, should know that there are many good modern reference books that will guide you in your search, as well as many reprints of the catalogs in which these tools were originally offered. It is necessary to learn the differences between various tools, their history and the history of their makers. Often tools will exhibit differences contrasting the different locations of their makers, or different features contrasting different time periods. The following are some ways to begin collecting tools:
- Tools of a specific company or maker - for example, L. Bailey Victor tools, Seneca Falls Tool Company tools, Miller's Falls tools, Disston Saws, Chelor planes, etc.
- Tools of a specific type - hammers, braces, axes, saws, patented planes, transitional planes, treadle-powered machines, etc.
- Tools of a specific period - tools from 1850–1900, post WWII era tools, etc.
- Tools from a specific place - Scottish tools, tools from Massachusetts makers, etc.
- Tools of a specific occupation - cooper's tools, machinist tools, watchmaker's tools, garden tools.
- A combination of one or more of the above categories—for example, one each of a specific type of Stanley tool, i.e. all Stanley saws, all Stanley marking gauges, all Stanley planes, etc.
- A "type study" of one specific model, for example, a type study of Stanley #6 jointer planes or Norris A5 smooth planes.
- Tools that show how a specific idea progressed over time, for example tools tracing the development of the plane's adjusting mechanisms, or tools showing how an early patent was bought out and developed by another company.
- Tool advertising and catalogs.
Read more about this topic: Antique Tool
Famous quotes containing the words tool, collecting and/or categories:
“And if thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone: for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it.”
—Bible: Hebrew Exodus 20:25.
“What pursuit is more elegant than that of collecting the ignominies of our nature and transfixing them for show, each on the bright pin of a polished phrase?”
—Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946)
“Kitsch ... is one of the major categories of the modern object. Knick-knacks, rustic odds-and-ends, souvenirs, lampshades, and African masks: the kitsch-object is collectively this whole plethora of “trashy,” sham or faked objects, this whole museum of junk which proliferates everywhere.... Kitsch is the equivalent to the “cliché” in discourse.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)