RUSTIC HOMEMADE HAND TOOLS

Enlarge Image Image Gallery [1] A properly wielded froe can make fine splits. [2] Our home-wrought mattock is as good as the store-bought version. [3] The hark spud makes skinning a rata log a simple task. [4] This ""poor persons plane"" can shave a timber's ""skin"" or its ""meat"" with ease

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Instead of "springing" for expensive garden and woodworking implements, use...

Nowadays, it seems that there's power equipment available for every imaginable task . . . and for a few that are difficult to imagine. But it's still a real pleasure to stroll through the aisles of your local hardware store and catch sight of an honest-to-goodness manual tool. All too often, though, the price tags on the quality implements are enough to discourage many do-it-yourselfers.

Well, having found that their equipment needs and budget just don't seem to want to get together, MOTHER's shop folks hunkered down and came up with four basic hand tools that're not only simplicity itself to construct, but can be assembled for next to nothing. And the homemade implements will perform every bit as well as their dearer storebought cousins.

Three of the utensils—the bark spud, the froe, and the drawknife—are designed to be used when working with wood. The fourth—a mattockis a general—purpose tool for loosening soil, cutting roots, and digging. All were fash ioned from common junkpile scrap, and—with the exception of the draw "shaver"—use either hand-hewn logs or "reborn" wooden shafts for handles.

by BARK SPUD

All it takes to make this timber skinner is a 1/4" piece of 4" X 8" steel plate, a 5" length of 1-1/4" Schedule 40 pipe, and an old shovel handle that's long enough to reach from the ground to your chin. First, carefully grind one end of the metal slab into a single-sided cutting edge with an angle of about 15° from level. Then weld your pipe collar to the rectangular blade so its forward end is about 4-1/2 inches behind the cleaving lip (be sure that the ground surface is toward the bottom), and the tubular shank itself meets the tool's head at an angle of about 5°. (Some folks may prefer to modify this union by increasing the angle to 20° and filling the space with triangular metal gussets . . . thus making it easier to use the spud to strip the uppermost surfacerather than the side—of the log.)

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