tradesmans toolbox contents
- Thread starter ellabbs
- Start date
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Very nice box and tools but as John says how to carry it. I'd also be worried about how someone else would carry such an attractive thing away . My own tool boxes , and especially the power tool boxes , are made of rough shuttering ply to make them look cheap and un inviting .
I think they are working man's tools. It's a slightly later version of a traditional cabinet makers chest. If you read the blurb, the guy was a piano maker. The most often seen type are full of the older wooden tools, and the chest was made by the man at the end of his apprenticeship. They're usually beautifully made, and inlaid inside. The outside though was normally just painted matt black, presumably to make them look as uninviting as possible. They were meant to stay in the workshop though. A carpenter or a cabinetmaker going out on a job would carry the tools needed in a tool bag.
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Deleted member 174758
You need a donkey.... and a small boy to drive it
I think that the journeymen carpenters on a big job would take his box out to the job for the duration, although it would take a carter to deliver it. At the end of the day they are really just the older equivalent of the modern lockable steel site box
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Deleted member 174758
I've seen green and rust red because the common paints used were lead-based and the boxes I've seen were often painted with undercoat - it was cheaper.
No he wouldn't. As a cabinetmaker if you worked out you made-up a small, suitcase-size box with a handle at the top. The top was sawed off in such a way that you left a pocket at the bottom of the box which was where you kept your French polish in bottles, rubber, boxes of screws, etc. Even this box would be lined-out with turnbuckles and leather straps to hold your tools because an edge tool banging around in a sack or bag will soon get blunt and some guys had two or even three boxes (e.g. one for poolishing, one for installation kit, etc). I well recall making one in "modern stuff" (plywood) when I started. I've also seen references to this type of hand case in Victorian books.
Carpenters employed in rough work might use a bass, like plumbers have, but only if they had proper tool rolls for the edge tools like chisels - even then their tools were always rougher-looking because they goy bashed about. It's easy to forget these days that tools were a substantial investment and needed to be looked after properly (I still carry my hand planes wrapped in oil-soaked canvass and oilskin)
I've also seen "fitters toolboxes" which were essentially a smaller version of the main tool box to carry a site tool kit which could be manhandled onto a hand truck to be taken to site (in the days before motor vehicles).
I think I prefer my rolling tool boxes TBH, although a fitted interior would be nice
Interesting post Jobandknock. You have a great deal more experience in the trade than me, I'm a relative newcomer. I used to have one of those boxes with the turnbuckles and so on that I was given when I was a kid. I think it got left when I got married. That was painted black outside, but was fitted out quite nicely, but plainly inside. Unfortunately it didn't have the tools with it! I was self taught as a furniture maker. I never liked to use the term cabinetmaker, because that (to me at least) gives the impression of being time served. I did read somewhere about them using bags though. Probably in some long ago Woodworker article. I will say that I carry my "second" set of tools in a bag Saws with guards for edges, plywood sole covers for planes, and rolls for chisels and bits. I only use it for round about home though really.
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Deleted member 174758
There is quite a variation in the trade, but my experience was that the bass was predominently a plumbers or pipework fitters item, although you did see the shipwrights and ship fitters carrying them on and off the docks in Liverpool and Birkenhead as well. I seem to recall that they used to have straps stitched inside to hold stuff like braces, but other than that the main thing which struck me was how small their kits were compared to ours.
I'm now in my 60s, so by the time I started the firm had owned a van for at least 30 years (when I started we had an HA Viva van, for the foreman, and a Commer Walk Through van which looked like a box on wheels and was the coldest van in the world in winters because it had sliding doors, sod all heating and no insulation in the sides - noisy and snail-slow, too) but there was still a hand cart at the back of the yard which had beed used to take finished items and toolboxes out to jobs before the first van was purchased. I shudder to think how hard that job would have been for the apprentices.
My dad was from Liverpool. Grandad was a blacksmith at Camel Laird. I wonder if he said about ship fitters using bags and it stuck in my mind. I know he said that when he started as an apprentice electrician, in about 1938 I would think, he and the electrician pushed their tools and material to jobs around the city in a hand cart. No vans. The apprentice did all the wall plugging with the old hammer type tool.
I'm just in my 60s too. Did my time at British Steel in the early 70s.
shipwrights in Pompey had a great tool chest, like a traveller's trunk. You wouldn't have slung that under your arm every morning. I suppose they might have carried a bag of what they expected to need on a particular day or for a particular job.
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Deleted member 174758
Bet they hated it if they got a job up Mount Pleasant or Brownlow Hill near where Paddy's Wigwam is these days! (unless they were already based up there, that is). Liverpool is a lot flatter tgha Glasgow, but there are still some long drags up from the Pier Head
I think that the guys we saw were doing the same. I know that the ship repairers had their own workshops off the docks, so it would make sense to carry only the tools needed for the task at hand
I think he actually said something about pushing the cart up Mount Pleasant. He's long gone now though. Never got to retirement.
I know he said it was hard work, and long hours. Minimum 48 hour weeks and a lot of overtime.
Almost unthinkable to push your tools around in a cart these days, although if you had to work in the city, were going to "a" job as opposed to lots of bits, and didn't travel big distances, I wonder if a cart wouldn't be easier than a van!
I know he said it was hard work, and long hours. Minimum 48 hour weeks and a lot of overtime.
Almost unthinkable to push your tools around in a cart these days, although if you had to work in the city, were going to "a" job as opposed to lots of bits, and didn't travel big distances, I wonder if a cart wouldn't be easier than a van!
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Deleted member 174758
I remember being told that in the City of London a lot of BT engineers used to go one stage further. They used to travel to faults almost everywhere on the tube with a small portable test kit in a valise. These guys would analyse the fault then phone in the requirements to control and leave. A second engineer would then turn up with a different kit to fix the fault and a stores van would deliver the parts (and sometimes specialist large tool kit) to site for him before going to its' next drop. Don't know if they still do it, but in the 1970s and 1980s when there were physically large computer systems (mainframes, etc) engineering support was organised in exactly the same way. And since then traffic has only got worse.......
Maybe we'll all be going back to hand carts if the energy crisis gets worse
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