I know I’ve been on a big kick of old gear and tools from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century lately but its good to see the range and availability of these essential items.  I find it interesting though, how poor the descriptions are and the arrangement of the catalog.  It’s like they just invented this whole idea…

Above you can get an anvil, axe, and workbench on the same page as an Alpine climbing rope, Alpine belt, and a wrist sling (in case the Alpine rope breaks I presume).  I would really like the upper “foreign” work bench.

Fretsaws, forges, and blacksmiths’ tools oh my.

I know people who would give almost any left appendage for this nice selection of planes.

The woodcutters’ frame saw isn’t even pictured (too common most likely) but I would be happy with a few others from this page.  In all the tools I’ve ever used or seen, I have never come across a “walking stick pruning saw.”  German invention, of course.

I think I own that very same “saw set” as pictured above.  When I was given by my grandfather I was warned I’d probably do more harm than good if I didn’t know how to use it.  Of course, I was probably ten years old at the time.

And in the middle of the page, voila!  The very frame saw I plan to make this weekend, and hopefully make a good instruction set to give out or post.  Known as a turning saw, frame saw, or nowadays, a coping saw, this design goes back a couple thousand years.  Maybe this will be a nice class project for Rabbitstick this year.

Selections from the 1907 Catalog of the Army and Navy Co-operative Society Store, London.