photo 49790.)]

American inventories reflect the great increase suggested by the early
technical writers and trade catalogues cited above. Compare the content
of two American carpenters' shops--one of 1709, in York County,
Virginia, and the other of 1827, in Middleborough, Massachusetts. John
Crost, a Virginian, owned, in addition to sundry shoemaking and
agricultural implements, a dozen gimlets, chalklines, bung augers, a
dozen turning tools and mortising chisels, several dozen planes (ogees,
hollows and rounds, and plows), several augers, a pair of 2-foot rules,
a spoke shave, lathing hammers, a lock saw, three files, compasses,
paring chisels, a jointer's hammer, three handsaws, filling axes, a
broad axe, and two adzes. Nearly 120 years later Amasa Thompson listed
his tools and their value. Thompson's list is a splendid comparison of
the tools needed in actual practice, as opposed to the tools suggested
by Nicholson in his treatise on carpentry or those shown in the
catalogues of the toolmakers.[7] Thompson listed the following:

1 set bench planes $6.00

1 Broad Axe 3.00

1 Adze 2.25

1 Panel saw 1.50

1 Panel saw 1.58

1 fine do-- 1.58

1 Drawing knife .46

1 Trying square .93

1 Shingling hatchet .50

1 Hammer .50

1 Rabbit plane .83

1 Halving do .50

1 Backed fine saw 1.25

1 Inch augre .50

1 pr. dividers or compasses-- .71

1 Panel saw for splitting 2.75

1 Tennon gauge 1.42

1 Bevel .84

1 Bradd Hammer .50

1 _Architect Book_ 6.50

1 Case Mathematical Instruments 3.62-1/2

1 Panel saw 2.75

1 Grafting saw 1.00

1 Bench screw 1.00

1 Stamp 2.50

1 Double joint rule .62-1/2

1 Sash saw 1.12-1/2

1 Oil Can