1.
Tool
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A tool is any physical item that can be used to achieve a goal, especially if the item is not consumed in the process. Tool use by humans dates back millions of years, and other animals are known to employ simple tools. Tools that are used in fields or activities may have different designations such as instrument, utensil, implement, machine, device. The set of tools needed to achieve a goal is equipment, the knowledge of constructing, obtaining and using tools is technology. Anthropologists believe that the use of tools was an important step in the evolution of mankind, because tools are used extensively by both humans and wild chimpanzees, it is widely assumed that the first routine use of tools took place prior to the divergence between the two species. These early tools, however, were made of perishable materials such as sticks. Stone artifacts only date back to about 2.5 million years ago, however, a 2010 study suggests the hominin species Australopithecus afarensis ate meat by carving animal carcasses with stone implements. This finding pushes back the earliest known use of tools among hominins to about 3.4 million years ago. Finds of actual tools date back at least 2.6 million years in Ethiopia, one of the earliest distinguishable stone tool forms is the hand axe. Up until recently, weapons found in digs were the tools of “early man” that were studied. Now, more tools are recognized as culturally and historically relevant, as well as hunting, other activities required tools such as preparing food, “…nutting, leatherworking, grain harvesting and woodworking…” Included in this group are “flake stone tools. “Man the hunter” as the catalyst for Hominin change has been questioned, based on marks on the bones at archaeological sites, it is now more evident that pre-humans were scavenging off of other predators carcasses rather than killing their own food. Mechanical devices experienced an expansion in their use in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome with the systematic employment of new energy sources. Their use expanded through the Dark Ages with the addition of windmills, machine tools occasioned a surge in producing new tools in the industrial revolution. Advocates of nanotechnology expect a similar surge as tools become microscopic in size, one can classify tools according to their basic functions, Cutting and edge tools, such as the knife, scythe or sickle, are wedge-shaped implements that produce a shearing force along a narrow face. Ideally, the edge of the needs to be harder than the material being cut or else the blade will become dulled with repeated use. But even resilient tools will require periodic sharpening, which is the process of removing deformation wear from the edge, other examples of cutting tools include gouges and drill bits. Moving tools move large and tiny items, many are levers which give the user a mechanical advantage
2.
Woodworking
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Woodworking is the activity or skill of making items from wood, and includes cabinet making, wood carving, joinery, carpentry, and woodturning. Along with stone, clay and animal parts, wood was one of the first materials worked by early humans, microwear analysis of the Mousterian stone tools used by the Neanderthals show that many were used to work wood. The development of civilization was closely tied to the development of increasingly greater degrees of skill in working these materials, among early finds of wooden tools are the worked sticks from Kalambo Falls, Clacton-on-Sea and Lehringen. The spears from Schöningen provide some of the first examples of hunting gear. Flint tools were used for carving, since Neolithic times, carved wooden vessels are known, for example, from the Linear Pottery culture wells at Kückhofen and Eythra. Examples of Bronze Age wood-carving include tree trunks worked into coffins from northern Germany and Denmark, there is significant evidence of advanced woodworking in Ancient Egypt. Woodworking is depicted in extant ancient Egyptian drawings, and a considerable amount of ancient Egyptian furniture has been preserved. Tombs represent a collection of these artefacts and the inner coffins found in the tombs were also made of wood. The metal used by the Egyptians for woodworking tools was originally copper and eventually, commonly used woodworking tools included axes, adzes, chisels, pull saws, and bow drills. Mortise and tenon joints are attested from the earliest Predynastic period and these joints were strengthened using pegs, dowels and leather or cord lashings. Animal glue came to be used only in the New Kingdom period, Ancient Egyptians invented the art of veneering and used varnishes for finishing, though the composition of these varnishes is unknown. Woodworking was essential to the Romans and it provided, sometimes the only, material for buildings, transportation, tools, and household items. Vitruvius dedicates a chapter of his De architectura to timber. Pliny, while not a botanist, dedicated six books of his Natural History to trees and woody plants which provides a wealth of information on trees, the progenitors of Chinese woodworking are considered to be Lu Ban and his wife Lady Yun, from the Spring and Autumn period. Lu Ban is said to have introduced the plane, chalk-line and his teachings were supposedly left behind in the book Lu Ban Jing. Despite this, it is believed that the text was written some 1500 years after his death. This book is filled largely with descriptions of dimensions for use in building various items such as pots, tables, altars, etc. It mentions almost nothing of the intricate glue-less and nail-less joinery for which Chinese furniture was so famous, with the advances in modern technology and the demands of industry, woodwork as a field has changed
3.
Stonemasonry
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The craft of stonemasonry has existed since humanity could use and make tools - creating buildings, structures, and sculpture using stone from the earth. These materials have been used to construct many of the long-lasting, ancient monuments, artifacts, cathedrals, quarrymen split veins, or sheets of rock, and extract the resulting blocks of stone from the ground. Sawyers cut these rough blocks into cuboids, to required size with diamond-tipped saws, the resulting block if ordered for a specific component is known as sawn six sides. Banker masons are workshop-based, and specialize in working the stones into the shapes required by a design, this set out on templets. They can produce anything from stones with simple chamfers to tracery windows, detailed mouldings and the more classical architectural building masonry. When working a stone from a block, the mason ensures that the stone is bedded in the right way. Occasionally though some stones need to be orientated correctly for the application, the basic tools, methods and skills of the banker mason have existed as a trade for thousands of years. Carvers cross the line from craft to art, and use their ability to carve stone into foliage, figures. Fixer masons specialize in the fixing of stones onto buildings, using lifting tackle, sometimes modern cements, mastics and epoxy resins are used, usually on specialist applications such as stone cladding. Metal fixings, from simple dowels and cramps to specialised single application fixings, are also used, the precise tolerances necessary make this a highly skilled job. Memorial masons or monumental masons carve gravestones and inscriptions, the modern stonemason undergoes comprehensive training, both in the classroom and in the working environment. Hands-on skill is complemented by intimate knowledge of each type, its application and best uses. The mason may be skilled and competent to carry out one or all of the branches of stonemasonry. In some areas the trend is towards specialization, in other areas towards adaptability, stonemasons use all types of natural stone, igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary, while some also use artificial stone as well. Igneous stones, Granite is one of the hardest stones, with great persistence, simple mouldings can and have been carved into granite, for example in many Cornish churches and the city of Aberdeen. Generally, however, it is used for purposes that require its strength and durability, such as kerbstones, countertops, flooring, igneous stone ranges from very soft rocks such as pumice and scoria to somewhat harder rocks such as tuff and hard rocks such as granite and basalt. Metamorphic, Marble is a fine stone easily workable, that comes in various colours and it has traditionally been used for carving statues, and for facing many Byzantine and Renaissance Italian buildings. Their work was preceded by older sculptors from Mesopotamia and Egypt, the famous Acropolis of Athens is said to be constructed using the Pentelicon marble
4.
Metalworking
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Metalworking is the process of working with metals to create individual parts, assemblies, or large-scale structures. The term covers a range of work from large ships and bridges to precise engine parts. It therefore includes a wide range of skills, processes. Metalworking is a science, art, hobby, industry and trade and its historical roots span cultures, civilizations, and millennia. Metalworking has evolved from the discovery of smelting various ores, producing malleable and ductile metal useful for tools, modern metalworking processes, though diverse and specialized, can be categorized as forming, cutting, or joining processes. Todays machine shop includes a number of machine tools capable of creating a precise, the oldest archaeological evidence of copper mining and working was the discovery of a copper pendant in northern Iraq from 8,700 BCE. The earliest substantiated and dated evidence of metalworking in the Americas was the processing of copper in Wisconsin, Copper was hammered until brittle then heated so it could be worked some more. This technology is dated to about 4000-5000 BCE, the oldest gold artifacts in the world come from the Bulgarian Varna Necropolis and date from 4450 BCE. Not all metal required fire to obtain it or work it, isaac Asimov speculated that gold was the first metal. His reasoning is that by its chemistry it is found in nature as nuggets of pure gold, in other words, gold, as rare as it is, is sometimes found in nature as the metal that it is. There are a few metals that sometimes occur natively. Almost all other metals are found in ores, a mineral-bearing rock, another feature of gold is that it is workable as it is found, meaning that no technology beyond a stone hammer and anvil to work the metal is needed. This is a result of properties of malleability and ductility. The earliest tools were stone, bone, wood, and sinew, at some unknown point the connection between heat and the liberation of metals from rock became clear, rocks rich in copper, tin, and lead came into demand. These ores were mined wherever they were recognized, remnants of such ancient mines have been found all over Southwestern Asia. Metalworking was being carried out by the South Asian inhabitants of Mehrgarh between 7000–3300 BCE, the end of the beginning of metalworking occurs sometime around 6000 BCE when copper smelting became common in Southwestern Asia. Ancient civilisations knew of seven metals. Here they are arranged in order of their potential, Iron +0.44 V
5.
Ruler
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A ruler, sometimes called a rule or line gauge, is an instrument used in geometry, technical drawing, printing, engineering and building to measure distances or to rule straight lines. The ruler is a straightedge which may also contain calibrated lines to measure distances, rulers have long been made from different materials and in a wide range of sizes. Plastics have also used since they were invented, they can be molded with length markings instead of being scribed. Metal is used for more durable rulers for use in the workshop,12 inches or 30 cm in length is useful for a ruler to be kept on a desk to help in drawing. Shorter rulers are convenient for keeping in a pocket, longer rulers, e. g.18 inches are necessary in some cases. Rigid wooden or plastic yardsticks,1 yard long, and meter sticks,1 meter long, are also used, classically, long measuring rods were used for larger projects, now superseded by tape measure or laser rangefinders. Desk rulers are used for three purposes, to measure, to aid in drawing straight lines and as a straight guide for cutting and scoring with a blade. Practical rulers have distance markings along their edges, a line gauge is a type of ruler used in the printing industry. These may be made from a variety of materials, typically metal or clear plastic, units of measurement on a basic line gauge usually include inches, agate, picas, and points. More detailed line gauges may contain sample widths of lines, samples of common type in several point sizes, measuring instruments similar in function to rulers are made portable by folding or retracting into a coil when not in use. When extended for use, they are straight, like a ruler, the illustrations on this page show a 2-meter carpenters rule, which folds down to a length of 24 cm to easily fit in a pocket, and a 5-meter-long tape, which retracts into a small housing. A flexible length measuring instrument which is not necessarily straight in use is the tailors fabric tape measure and it is used to measure around a solid body, e. g. a persons waist measurement, as well as linear measurement, e. g. inside leg. It is rolled up when not in use, taking up little space, a contraction rule is made having larger divisions than standard measures to allow for shrinkage of a metal casting. They may also be known as a shrinkage or shrink rule, a ruler software program can be used to measure pixels on a computer screen or mobile phone. These programs are known as screen rulers. In geometry, a ruler without any marks on it may be used only for drawing lines between points. A straightedge is used to help draw accurate graphs and tables. A ruler and compass construction refers to using an unmarked ruler
6.
Dowel
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A dowel is a solid cylindrical rod, usually made from wood, plastic, or metal. In its original manufactured form, a dowel is called a dowel rod, dowel rods are often cut into short lengths called dowel pins. Dowels are employed in numerous, diverse applications including axles in toys, detents, structural reinforcements in cabinet making, to make a dowel, a piece of wood is split or whittled to a size slightly bigger than desired and then driven through the hole in the dowel plate. The sharp edges of the hole shear off the excess wood, a second approach to cutting dowels is to rotate a piece of oversized stock past a fixed knife, or alternatively, to rotate the knife around the stock. Machines based on this principle emerged in the 19th century, frequently, these are small bench-mounted tools. For modest manufacturing volumes, wood dowels are typically manufactured on industrial dowel machines based on the principles as the rotary cutters described above. Such machines may employ interchangeable cutting heads of varying diameters, thus enabling the machines to be changed to manufacture different dowel diameters. Typically, the mechanism is open-ended, with material guides at the machines entry, since the 19th century, some of these dowel machines have had power feed mechanisms to move the stock past the cutting mechanism. High-volume dowel manufacturing is done on a shaper, which simultaneously forms multiple dowels from a single piece of rectangular stock. These machines employ two wide, rotating cutting heads, one above the stock and one below it, the heads have nearly identical cutting profiles so that each will form an array of adjoined, side-by-side half dowels. The wooden dowel rod used in woodworking applications is commonly cut into dowel pins, some woodworkers make their own dowel pins, while others purchase dowel pins precut to the required length and diameter. When dowels are glued into blind holes, a common case in dowel-based joinery, there must be a path for air. If no provision is made to relieve the pressure of air and glue. An old solution to this problem is to plane a flat on the side of the dowel, some dowel pins are Fluted with multiple parallel grooves along their length to serve the same purpose. When two pieces of wood are to be joined by dowels embedded in holes, there are numerous methods for aligning the holes. Dowel centers are simple and inexpensive tools for aligning opposing blind holes, various commercial systems, such as Dowelmax, have been devised to solve this problem. Alternative joinery methods may be used in place of conventional dowel pins, such as Miller dowels, biscuit joiners, spline joints, and proprietary tools such as the Domino jointer. The word dowel was used in Middle English, it appears in Wycliffes Bible translation in a list of the parts of a wheel. and the spokis, cognates with other Germanic languages suggest that the word is much older
