WOODWORKING TOOL ADZE FULL

Roughly speaking, a possible line of development could be described as follows: the adze, normally used for chopping, occasionally had to be moved directly on the workpiece for specific working steps, the blade placed directly on the wooden surface and the handle pointing away from it. Therefore, it is in principle, comprehensible to consider the tool in question to be a link between the adze and the plane. ascia) for chopping and moving the tool two-handed on a wooden surface for smoothing, a movement similar to the use of a proper woodworking plane. This denomination conceptually combines both of the tool’s apparent functions, i.e. As they do not reflect the archaeological record extensively they are not able to give convincing explanations to the question (Schwarz, 2016).Ī considered approach regarding the possible predecessors of the woodworking plane can be found in the work of Wolfgang Gaitzsch (1980, pp.108-109), who uses the term “ascia-Hobel” (adze-plane) for a tool with two handles and a flat blade that is depicted on several Roman monuments in the Mediterranean area. Technical treatises on the historical development of woodworking tools discuss the subject to a certain extent (Norman, 1954 Greber, 1956 Goodman, 1964). The starting point for the practical involvement with the tool that has been called “ascia-Hobel” in the archaeological literature (Gaitzsch, 1980 Matthäus, 1984 2012) and “adze-plane” in English (Ulrich, 2007) was the question of the origin of the plane. It has already been published in German in the EXAR Jahrbuch 2017 but the writer considers an English version necessary to make it available for English speaking colleagues in different countries. This article is based on a poster presented at the EXARC-conference in Leiden, Netherlands in April 2017. Instead, the more suitable term already used in this summary is suggested for further use: “two-handled adze”. As it is typologically similar to the adze and, at the same time, lacks several technical and anatomic features of the plane, the writer proposes abandoning the misleading denomination “adze-plane”. It is functionally rather similar to the adze and obviously not a kind of plane. Therefore, it could be concluded that the two-handled adze is a specialized kind of combination tool and not an intermediate between an adze and plane. Shaving, respectively carving worked more precisely and effectively with the two-handled adze. When used for chopping it worked as well as the two-handled adze even though both tools showed different characteristics. For comparison, another adze of the same shape and construction was built, but with only a single handle.

WOODWORKING TOOL ADZE FULL

In practical use, the reconstructed tool turned out to be a full equivalent to the ordinary adze but with additional features. As there are no complete finds of the “adze-plane” a reconstruction based on a combination of elements from the existing sources has been manufactured. Archaeological finds of specific forms of adze-blades have convincingly been associated with depictions of the tool. It has therefore been considered a possible intermediate between the adze and the proper woodworking plane as known from the Roman era onwards. The tool in question consists of an often semi-circular adze-blade attached to a two-handled shaft and seems to be suited both for chopping and for shaving wooden surfaces. This article presents a practical approach to a Graeco-Roman woodworking tool called “ascia-Hobel” in the archaeological literature, respectively “adze-plane” as the corresponding English term. Experimental Archaeology the Exhibition.Putting life into Late Neolithic houses.

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Woodworking tool adze