Miscellaneous edge tools

This section is very much 'WORK IN PROGRESS' - I will update and add images to illustrate the tools...

Hooks: 

Over the past 2000  years, a wide variety of billhook type tools have been made and used locally. As well as billhooks  and pruning hooks, many makers produced a wide range of edge or cutting tools for use  in agricultural, forestry, coppice work, horticulture, gardening, carpentry and building trades (and in continental Europe, various tools for use in vineyards):

Billhook*: Also known as a Bill, Hand-bill* or Hedging-bill -  a medium duty curved hook with a blade length from 8” to 12” long, used for  splitting and cutting of green wood up to about an inch and a half in diameter. It has been used in Britain  and most other European countries for over 2000 years, and a wide range of  regional patterns exist. It has been (and in some areas still is) used  extensively for hedge laying, heavy pruning, hurdle making and many other coppice  crafts. It is usually fitted with a caulked handle, but some patterns have a  turned round or oval handle. Sometimes the blade is sharpened to a single bevel. The handle is most commonly fitted by a tang which passes through the  handle, but some regional patterns have a socket for an inserted handle, or  have wooden or leather scales riveted on.  

*(Note: a Bill Hook is  a wire hook widely used in offices and shops in Victorian times for holding  completed papers such as paid bills, and a Hand Bill is a small printed leaflet or flyer).

Broom Hook: A double edged  billhook, with a straight cutting edge to the rear of the curved blade. Often used by the makers of besom brooms to trim thebunch of birch twigs to the correct length, in a similar fashion to the block hook, more common in the Midlands and parts of Wales. The Yorkshire billhook is similar, but has a longer, strapped handle. In France and other European countries the double edge billhook is common, often with a long  narrow back blade, and was widely used in the vineyards for pruning old vines  (see below).

Pruning Hook: A small, light hook  used primarily by gardeners and horticulturists for the pruning of plants with
a woody stem. Sometimes found with a shaft to the blade, similar to the  gooseberry hook, or with a long extended handle. They were also made as a large  pocket knife with a folding blade.

Vineyard Hook: Common in most wine  producing countries, usually with a (long and often narrow) back blade used  until the mid 19^th century for pruning grape vines (usually in  February or March). Widely replaced by the secateurs in most vineyards, it  remained in use until the late 20^th century in some regions of France, and some versions are still made (and  presumably used) in Italy  at the beginning of the 21^st . It probably existed in England in  medieval times, but disappeared when wine growing ceased.

Grape Hook: No real equivalent in  England – a very small hook commonly used in France, and also other European
wine growing countries, for cutting the bunches of grapes from the vine during  the vendange or wine harvest. From  the mid 19^th century it was also superseded by the secateurs. It is often very similar to, and mistaken for, the basket maker’s hook (below).

Gentleman’s Hook: Also a smaller Lady’s Hook - a small billhook, often  double edged, usually with a polished blade, brass ferrule and ornate hardwood  handle. Often made by makers who did not normally supply forestry or  agricultural tools, but who did supply gardening tools. The London firm of Holtzapfel,  makers of engineering tools and ornamental lathes, also made them for their  customers.

Milton Hatchet: A version of a double  edged gentleman’s’ hook, usually with a handle made with riveted horn or bone scales. The blade is much thicker than usual, and the rear blade is also  unusual in that it only has a single bevel, similar to a carpenter’s chisel.  Origins unknown, but appears in the Sheffield List and the author has one made  by Stothert of Bath  (late 18th or early 19^th century as by 1815 they were established as foundry-men and engineers).

This section to be rewritten and further images added - text below is a draft

 Gooseberry Hook: A small pruning
hook with an extended shank to the blade to allow pruning of prickly bushes
such as gooseberry. Similarly shaped tools were some times known as Raspberry Hooks.

Blackberry or Bramble Hook: A larger version of the gooseberry hook, used for
cutting back brambles.

Asparagus Knife: Some shapes of
asparagus knives were similar in appearance to the gooseberry hook, although
generally they had straighter blades. Many regions used a tool that was more
like an elongated chisel or gouge, but some look like a narrow, elongated
billhook.

Sheaf Knife: A small curved knife
use by thrashers to removes the binding of the sheaf before feeding it into the
thrashing machine. Often found with a hole in the handle for a loop of string
to go around the wrist so that it would not drop into the machine when the
sheaf was being separated. US
makers produced a leather glove with a cutting blade attached.

Basket-maker’s Hook: A very small
bill hook, with a blade about 3” to 4” long, used by basket makers for trimming
the end of willow withies that stick out from the woven basket. Like the vine
hook, it has now largely been superseded by the uses of secateurs.

Spar Hook or Spit Hook: A small
billhook, usually between 6” and 7” long, used by spar makers for the splitting
of hazel spars (or broches), used for securing the top layer of thatch to the
undercoat. Occasionally spar makers used a hook sharpened on the outside edge.
In France
basket makers also split their willow or hazel using a wide variety of tools,
including small billhooks (see above).

Block Hook: A billhook with a
straight cutting edge, used for chopping onto a wooden block. The curved nose
of a normal billhook would prevent the cutting edge making contact with the
block. Used for splitting wood or trimming branches to the required length.
Often with a hook, or spike on the back, to allow the user to pull the next
piece within reach. The Knighton and Rodding patterns of English billhooks also
had straight cutting edges, without the hooked nose, and many Dutch hooks and
those from some parts of northern France
and Belgium
are similarly shaped.

Nobby Hook: A Dorset/Devon
variation, similar in use to a block hook, but more like a square nosed bill hook,
often made from a broken, or well worn, billhook. Sometimes known as a Trimming Hook, they are used by hurdle
makers for cutting the protruding ends of hazel
gads at the outer edges of the hurdle, by chopping against a piece of wood held
in the other hand. Straight edged billhooks such as the Knighton or Rodding
Patterns were used for similar purposes.

Furze or Gorse hook: A large, strong, curved billhook (Ireland) or a heavy sickle shaped tool (Devon) used for harvesting shrubby bushes such as gorse
for use as animal fodder or bedding.

Bean or Pea Hook: A longish medium duty hook
used in some areas for similar purposes as the furze hook. Also use for cutting
down dry bean or pea plants for fodder after the harvest of the crop.

Sickle: A light harvesting
hook, with a narrow tightly curved blade that opens out towards the point.
Often with a serrated cutting edge, and used with a slicing or sawing movement.

Grass Hook: A light duty reap hook
mainly used in domestic gardens, often with a sheet steel blade riveted or
bolted to a steel shaft.

Reap or Rip Hook: A medium duty hook with a curved blade, heavier than the
sickle, used for cutting of grass or weeds, and harvesting of corn. Used with a
chopping motion.

Bagging or Fagging Hook: A heavier duty reap hook,
with a wider blade, sometimes with a cranked or offset handle. OED defines to
bag (or badge) as the cutting of corn (wheat) by hand. A bagging hook is thus a
harvesting tool, with a heavier blade than a grass sickle or a reap hook.
Fagging is probably a local dialect variation of bagging (possibly even a
misprint) that has found its way into common usage.

Gathering Hook: Not a cutting tool,
but a hook used to gather the corn towards the harvester so it can be cut with
the reap hook. Usually cut straight from the hedgerow, but sometimes a
manufactured steel hook with a wooden handle. In some European countries a
wooden finger-guard with a curved end is used.

Shearing Hook: Similar in appearance
to a cranked bagging hook, but with a wider and slightly dished blade. It is a
thatcher’s tool used on the backhand for levelling the surface of the thatch.
It appears to be a left handed tool, but in use it used in the right hand,
cutting from left to right, i.e. away from the thatcher and onto the finished
section of roof.

Eaves Hook: A slightly curved
hook, with a long blade, used by thatchers for trimming the under the eaves of
a roof. Some counties, especially those that use combed water reed, not long
straw, used the straighter eaves knife, which is fitted to a long handle.

Ridge Hook or Thatcher’s Knife:
Usually a thin, straight, or convex, blade used to produce the decorative
pattern to the lower edges of the ridge of a thatched roof. Sometimes with a
cranked, or offset, handle to prevent the knuckles contacting the rough ends of
the straw.

Trimming or Staff Hook: A light long handled usually socketed hook, with an
open curved blade used for cutting back bushes and small regrowth on hedges.

Brush(ing) Hook: A medium duty
trimming hook, used for cutting back denser undergrowth, overgrown hedges etc.

Slasher: A heavier and stronger version
of the trimming hook, sometimes with a straight, or convex blade, used for
cutting the thicker stems of large bushes etc. The blade is usually fixed to
the handle with riveted straps, sometimes reinforced with a steel ring or with
an elongated oval socket. French versions, known as Croissants, are often crescent-moon shaped
with a wide blade – heavier than the English Staff hook

Bush Knife: In the USA, South Africa
and Australia
a long handled slasher, similar to a heavy billhook strapped to an axe handle,
was used for cutting of heavy undergrowth.

Osier Hook: In some parts of the UK a hook
sharpened on the outside edge was use for harvesting osiers (willow) for basket
making. In France and Belgium a billhook with an offset blade was
commonly found, and in Holland
a special form known as a Risjhack (spelling??)
was used.

Hop Hook: 
For cutting the strings that held hops to the hop poles long handled
hooks were used, consisting of a socketed or tanged blade similar to a small
reap hook that was attached to a pole some 10 to 12 feet long. Often these also
had a small hook projecting from the back of the blade that could be used in
lowering the hop bine to the ground, or possibly also in the fixing of the
network of strings that went from ground level to the tops of the poles for the
hops to grow up.

Secateurs: The invention of the secateur in
by Bertrand de Moleville (a former Minister to Louis XVI exiled from in France after the
Revolution, and who, prior to the return of the Boubons in 1815, occupied his
spare time in invention) and promoted by Pierre Antoine Poiteau (botanist, head gardener at Montainbleau from 1822
and from 1829 to 1851 director of the Revue Horticole) led to the gradual decline of
the pruning hook, particularly in France*, where it had been widely used for
trimming grape vines (La Taille). For a while hybrid tools, the Serpe-Secateur or the smaller Serpette-Secateur, were manufactured – a pair of
secateurs having a small billhook blade (sometimes an axe blade, or both axe
and billhook, or even a small sickle) projecting from the rear of one or both
cutting blades. Some versions were like a billhook with a secondary secateur
blade added.

* Secatuers were at first not
widely used in vineyards, and in his 1887 publication ‘Eléments d'Arboriculture Fruitière’ Louis HENRY decried their use,
stating that they damaged the shoots and led to disease. However by1898 Paul COSTE-FLORET in
his work ‘Les Travaux du Vignoble’, confirmed that in the Mediterranean regions
(from Languedoc-Roussillon in the west to Provence in the east) they were
widely used as they were quicker and safer to use: « La Taille est
exécutée par des hommes expérimentés se servant du sécateur, plus expéditif,
plus commode et moins dangereux que l'ancienne serpe au­jourd'hui complètement
abandonnée ».

Machete or Cutlass: For colonial use a lightweight
tool with a thin, broad blade was developed, ideal for cutting overhanging
vegetation and able to be used for long periods at a time without fatigue (e.g.
cutting trails through dense undergrowth). These were made in a wide range of
shapes and sizes, some of which have
a hooked end similar to an elongated billhook. These are sometimes similar in
shape to the falx, a large curved sword used by the people from Dalmatia (one of the few weapons to strike fear into the
heart of a roman soldier as its curved point was able to penetrate through the
roman shield wall). Today many forms of machete and jungle knife are
manufactured for export and also for military usage; however, many countries
(e.g. Brazil,
Columbia or South
Africa) now have their own edge tool manufacturers and
are no longer reliant upon imports from Europe.

Cane Knife: For cutting sugar cane a wide
variety of knives and hooks are used, some similar in style to the machete with
thin flexible blades, and others very similar in shape to billhooks. Like the
machete, these were made in large numbers and exported to the colonies.

Corn Knife: A long bladed, sometimes curved,
knife used for cutting of corn (maize)
mainly found in the USA.
In the Balkans the billhook, or wide heavy sickle similar to the English furze hook, was often used for the same purpose.

Pruning Chisel: For removing branches from trees
that could not be easily reached, a wide variety of tools were made to be
fitted to a long handle. Some were similar to a large socketed chisel that cut
in an upwards direction, with a billhook blade on the side that cut on the pull
stroke, and others were S shaped, with blades that cut in either direction (see
Coup-gui, below).

Coup-Gui: a small curved billhook mounted
on a long handle, used in France
for removing the parasitic growth of mistletoe from fruit trees.

Coup-Pain: not strictly a billhook, but a
type of sickle used for cutting bread. Many other french tools may also be
found with blades similar to those of some types of billhooks – the Coup-marc
used for cutting up the
marc or residue from wine or cider presses usually has a long handle and may be
similar to a slasher in shape. Sometimes an old blade is remounted in a shorter
handle and used for other purposes, such as chopping kindling wood.

Tea knife: A small billhook used for
pruning tea bushes in India,
some African countries and other areas.

Banana Knife: A small hooked knife used for
cutting bunches of bananas from the plant.

Woodsman’s Pal: For some reason the billhook
never became popular in the USA,
although several manufacturers did offer them. However a combination tool
(billhook, digging tool and machete), designated the LC-14-B, designed by Frederick Ehrsam (a Swiss émigré) in 1941 and manufactured by the Victor Tool Co. of Reading, PA, became the standard issue to US Marine Corps.
During the Vietnam War it was known as a Type IV
Survival Axe, the main component of the "Tool Kit, Survival, Type IV"
issued as NSN 8465-973-4807 under specification MIL-S-8642C, and was
manufactured by Frank & Warren, Inc. It is still made in several
variations of size and type of handle
by Pro Tool Industries of Boyertown, PA..
Un-licensed copies are now being made in India
and Pakistan,
but are usually of poor quality

Fascine Knife: 
Although the billhook was not widely used in the USA, one type often
known as a fascine knife was used by the military for creating fascines and
gabions out of brushwood (hurdle like structures), used to support earth
embankments in dug-in gun (cannon) positions. Later they were more widely used
for machine gun emplacements, and in the French and UK armies ‘pattern’ billhooks were
issued as a tool to machine gun units in WWl and to Pioneer Corps.

Game-keeper’s Friend: A multi-purpose tool combining
billhook, axe, spade and machete in one compact format – presumably designed
for the game-keeper to carry into the woods when managing the estate.

Combination hooks: Several English manufacturers
offered combinations of billhook and hammer, with and without nail puller, and
several French makers offered a combined billhook and letter punch for timber
marking in place of the more usual tool that combined the punch with an axe
blade. A combined billhook and large hammer head for driving in stakes for use
in french vineyards is also sometimes seen.

Miscellaneous Tools: A wide range of other chopping
and cutting tools can be found for harvesting a variety of crops, these include
Beet Knives, used
for topping and tailing of sugar beet and other varieties or mangolds or
turnips grown as feed for livestock and Cabbage Knives, for cutting the thick woody
stems of cabbages and sprouts; Lettuce Knives for trimming lettuces; Cotton
Knives (USA) or
just general pattern Field Knives. In France
the ‘serpe à betterave’ is a billhook shapedbeet knife with a thin blade.
English beet knives often have a spike on the back (similar to a block hook),
or sometimes on the front of the blade, used for picking the next beet from the
pile… In India
a billhook shaped tool with a tripod leg arrangement, used cutting edge
uppermost, is used for removing the husk from coconuts and for the preparation
of vegetables for cooking.

Choppers and Cleavers: Many
meat cleavers and choppers share similarities with billhooks, and vary only in
the blade profile. In some countries there is no distinction between the word
for a wood-cutting tool and that for a meat cleaver, and in poorer households
the same tool was probably used for both. In the UK distinct regional patterns can
be found.

Other Hooks: Some other trades use
hooked tools, similar in appearance to small billhooks for the cutting of soft
sheet materials. Plumbers and glaziers use them for cutting lead or zinc sheet;
saddlers and shoemakers used them for cutting leather; electricians for
removing the insulation from cables; and they have been made for cutting
flooring materials, such as linoleum. Often of a good quality, they are
sometimes mistaken for pruning hooks, although it is possible manufacturers
sold the same tool to different wholesalers for different uses………

Slater’s axes, or Saz (Sax??), used for cutting slates to
size, commonly found with an offset blade and a point on the back to punch the
nail hole, closely resemble a square edged billhook. Longer and narrower
versions without the spike were used in the quarries of Cumbria.

Diderot’s
Encyclopaedia shows billhook type tools
being used in 18th century french glassworks. In France tools that look like
billhooks were used in ostriculture, to harvest the oysters, but although the
back blade is sharpened like that on a double edged billhook, the main hook is
blunt. Smaller oyster knives were used to open the shells.

Other Tools: Most other edge tools fall outside the subject matter of this site, but almost all other trades  used some form of edge tool. As well as those previously mentioned, edge tool  makers would supply blades for chaff and root vegetable cutters (often worn  blades would be converted to billhooks or beet knives by riveting onto a tang);  block knives as used by clog makers; trowels and chisels for masons and  bricklayers; riving and cleaving tools such as froes used by chair makers,  coopers and others. Larger makers such as Fussell of Mells showed a wide range of tools of all types in their pattern books, that do not appear in their  commercial catalogue, and would also make tools to special order either as  one-offs, small batches or as agents for a patent holder (Talabot in France  offered the same service in their 1935 catalogue).