Posted 9 years ago
hotairfan
(387 items)
Hand forged tool used to drive wooden pegs through the holes to make rake teeth. The teeth were first whittled to a somewhat round shape. They were then driven through the holes with a hammer. The result was a truly round tooth for your garden rake.
You have very interesting posts:) I look forward to your old tools.
Thanks Trey
You do have some great old tools.
Does this one have different size holes, starting with the largest and finishing with the smallest hole to get the needed size?
AzTom, this rake tooth anvil does have different size holes. I don't know why you would need different size rake teeth, maybe the tool can be used to fashion wooden dowels for some other needs.
I have a modern one of these of sort. It is two rows of square holes that start with one at about 1/4 and each hole gets smaller. You pound or pull through the piece of wood or soft metal starting at the larger hole and graduate through the smaller holes until you get the desired size. Does that make sense?
I would guess making the rake teeth would be about the same process.
I've demonstrated these rake tooth anvils at Historical shows. I've found that, if the holes are sharp, they will do amazingly well with only one sharp blow of the hammer on removing the unwanted wood while leaving the dowel with a fine and polished surface.
Isn't it amazing how our forefathers knew what they were doing when it came to making tools that helped them on their homestead?
So, I believe that the varied diameter holes had more to do with the various size dowels that they might have wanted.
The square holes of your tool seems to me to for another use, I can't recall seeing square rake teeth on any of the early rakes that I came across, and if you start with a 1/4 " hole to begin with, it wouldn't make for a strong rake tooth,but it maybe. Could be that another collector can add to this. Thanks for the comments.