Adze

Drawing of a man using an adze on a felled tree

An adze or adz (pronounced /ædz/) is a tool used for smoothing rough-cut wood in hand woodworking. Wood is hard fibrous lignified structural tissue produced as secondary Xylem in the stems of Woody plants notably trees but also shrubs Woodworking is the process of building making or carving something using Wood. Generally, the user stands astride a board or log and swings the adze downwards towards their feet, chipping off pieces of wood, moving backwards as they go and leaving a relatively smooth surface behind. Adzes are most often used for squaring up logs, or for hollowing out timber.

The blade of an adze is set at right angles to the tool's shaft (like a hoe or plane), unlike the blade of an axe which is set in line with the shaft. Hoes are Bladed Tools used to agitate the surface of the Soil around Plants to remove weeds pile soil around the base The axe, or ax, is an implement that has been used for millennia to shape split and cut Wood, Harvest timber, as a Weapon

History

Europe

In central Europe, adzes made by knapping flint are known from the late Mesolithic onwards ("Scheibenbeile"). Flint (or flintstone) is a hard sedimentary Cryptocrystalline form of the Mineral Quartz, categorized as a variety of Chert The Mesolithic or Middle Stone Age was a period in the development of human technology in between the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age and the Neolithic or New Stone Age Polished adzes and axes made of ground stone, like amphibolite, basalt or Jadeite are typical for the Neolithic period. In Archaeology, ground stone is a category of Stone tool formed by the grinding of a coarse-grained Tool stone, either purposely or incidentally Amphibolite (æmˈfɪbəlaɪt is the name given to a rock consisting mainly of hornblende Amphibole, the use of the term being restricted however to Metamorphic Basalt (bəˈsɔːlt ˈbeisɔːlt ˈbæsɔːlt is a common Extrusive Volcanic rock. Jadeite is a Pyroxene mineral with composition Na[[aluminum Al]] Si 2 O 6 Shoe-last adzes or celts, named for their typical shape, are found in the Linearbandkeramic and Rössen cultures of the early Neolithic. A last is the Form used in Shoemaking to shape a Shoe in the rough form of a human Foot. A Shoe-last celt is a long thin stone tool characteristic of the early Neolithic Linearbandkeramik and Hinkelstein cultures also called The Rössen Culture ( German: Rössener Kultur) is a Central European culture of the middle Neolithic (4600–4300 BC The Neolithic (from Greek νεολιθικός — neolithikos from νέος neos, "new" + λίθος lithos Adzes were also made and used by prehistoric southeast Asian cultures, especially in the Mekong River basin. The Mekong is one of the world’s major Rivers It is the 11th-longest river in the world and 7th longest in Asia

Egypt

The adze is shown in Egypt from the Old Kingdom onward. The Old Kingdom is the name commonly given to that period in the 3rd millennium BCE when Egypt attained its first continuous peak of civilization in complexity and achievement ^[1] Originally the adze blades were made of stone, but already in the Predynastic Period copper adzes had all but replaced those made of flint. The Predynastic Period of Egypt (prior to 3100 BC is traditionally the period between the Early Neolithic and the beginning of the Pharaonic monarchy beginning with King ^[2] While stone blades were fastened to the wooden handle by tying, metal blades had sockets into which the handle was fitted. Examples of Egyptian adzes can be found in museums and on the Petrie Museum website.

A depiction of an adze was also used as a hieroglyph, representing the consonants stp. Egyptian hieroglyphs (ˈhaɪərəʊɡlɪf from Greek grc-Grek ἱερογλύφος " sacred carving " also hieroglyphic = grc-Grek

The ahnetjer, Manuel de Codage transliteration: aH-nTr, depicted as an adze-like instrument,^[3] was used in the Opening of the Mouth ceremony, intended to convey power over their senses to statues and mummies. The Manuel de Codage (abbr MdC) is a standard system for the computer-encoding of transliterations of Egyptian hieroglyphic texts The Opening of the mouth ceremony (or ritual) was an ancient Egyptian ritual described in Funerary texts such as the Pyramid Texts. It was apparently the foreleg of a freshly sacrificed bull or cow with which the mouth was touched. ^[4][5]

New Zealand

Prehistoric Māori adzes from New Zealand, used for wood carving, were made from nephrite, also known as jade. This article discusses the Māori people of New Zealand For their language see Māori language, and for other meanings see Māori (disambiguation. New Zealand is an Island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses (the North Island and the South Island Wood carving is a form of working wood by means of a cutting tool held in the hand (this may be a power tool resulting in a wooden figure or figurine (this may be abstract Nephrite is a variety of the calcium and magnesium rich Amphibole mineral Actinolite (aggregates of which also make up one form of Asbestos) Jade is an Ornamental stone. The term jade is applied to two different rocks that are made up of different Silicate minerals. At the same time on Henderson Island, a small atoll in Polynesia lacking any rock other than limestone, natives fashioned giant clamshells into adzes. Henderson Island is an uninhabited uplifted Coral Island in the south Pacific Ocean, annexed to the Pitcairn Islands colony in 1902 An atoll (pronounced /ˈætʌl/ is an island of Coral that encircles a Lagoon partially or completely Polynesia (from Greek: πολύς many, νῆσος island) is a Subregion of Oceania, comprising a large grouping of over Limestone is a Sedimentary rock composed largely of the Mineral Calcite ( Calcium carbonate: CaCO3

Northwest Coast America

American Northwest coast natives traditionally used adzes for both functional construction (from bowls to canoes) and art (from masks to totem poles). Northwest coast adzes take two forms hafted and D-handle. The hafted form is similar in form to a European adze with the haft constructed from a natural crooked branch which approximately forms a 60% angle. The thin end is used as the handle and the thick end is flattened & notched such that an adze iron can be lashed to it. Modern hafts are sometimes constructed from a sawed blank with a dowel added for strength at the crook. The second form is the D-handle adze which is basically an adze iron with a directly-attached handle. The D-handle therefore provides no mechanical leverage. Northwest coast adzes are often classified by size and iron shape vs. role. As with European adzes, iron shapes include straight, gutter and lipped. Where larger Northwest adzes are similar in size to their European counterparts, the smaller sizes are typically much lighter such that they can be used for the detailed smoothing, shaping and surface texturing required for figure carving. Final surfacing is sometimes performed with a crooked knife. The crooked knife sometimes referred to as a "curved knife" "carving knife" or in the Algonquin language the "mocotaugan" is a utilitarian

Modern adzes

Modern adzes are made from steel with wooden handles, and some people still use them extensively: occasionally those in semi-industrial areas, but particularly 'revivalists' such as those at the Colonial Williamsburg cultural center in Virginia, USA. Steel is an Alloy consisting mostly of Iron, with a Carbon content between 0 Colonial Williamsburg' is the historic district of the Independent city of Williamsburg Virginia. The Commonwealth of Virginia ( is an American state However, the traditional adze has largely been replaced by the sawmill and the powered-plane, at least in industrialized cultures. A sawmill is a facility where logs are cut into boards Sawmill process A sawmill's basic operation is much like those of 100 years ago a log enters It remains in use for some specialist crafts, for example by coopers. Traditionally a cooper is someone who makes Wooden staved vessels of a conical form of greater length than breadth bound Adzes are also in current use by artists such as Northwest Coast American and Canadian Indian sculptors doing pole work, masks and bowls.

"Adze" was frequently mentioned by William F. Buckley as one of the most obscure words in the English language. William Frank Buckley Jr ( November 24 1925  – February 27 2008) was an American Author and conservative

One of the most common tools used in the fire service today is the Halligan. This is a multipurpose pry-bar used most commonly in forceable entry of a structure. One end of the halligan is called the adze end. It has an adze along with a 4 inch spike on one end and the other end has a pry fork.

Types

• Carpenter's adze - A heavy adze, often with very steep curves, and a very heavy, blunt poll. The weight of this adze makes it unsuitable for sustained overhead adzing.
  • Railroad adze - A carpenter's adze which had its bit extended in an effort to limit the breaking of handles when shaping railroad ties (railway sleepers). Early examples in New England began showing up approximately in the 1940s - 1950s. The initial prototypes clearly showed a weld where the extension was attached.
• Shipwright's adze - A lighter, and more versatile adze than the carpenter's adze. This was designed to be used in a variety of positions, including overhead, as well as in front on waist and chest level.
  • Lipped shipwright's adze - A variation of the shipwright's adze. It features a wider than normal bit, whose outside edges are sharply turned up, so that when gazing directly down the adze, from bit to eye, the cutting edge resembles an extremely wide and often very flat U. This adze was mainly used for shaping cross grain, such as for joining planks.
• There are also a number of specialist adzes once used for barrel stave shaping, chair seat forming and bowl and trough making. Many of these have shorter handles for control and more curve in the head to allow better clearance for shorter cuts.
• Another group of adzes can be differentiated by the handles, the D handled adzes have a handle where the hand can be wrapped around the D, close to the bit. These adzes, follow closely traditional forms in that the bit or tooth is not wrapped around the handle as a head.
• The head of an ice axe typically possesses an adze for chopping rough steps in ice. An ice axe is a multi-purpose Mountaineering tool carried by practically every mountaineer
• A firefighter tool called the halligan has an adze on one end of the bar. This bar is a multipurpose pry-bar with a fork on one end and an adze on the other with a spike that sticks out next to it.

Footnotes and references

• The section about types of adzes is based on a Quicksilver Wiki article at A Glossary of Terms For Traditional Timber Framing (Timberbee) under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, last accessible 25th July 2006. Neal Town Stephenson (born October 31, 1959) is an American writer known primarily for his Science fiction works in the Postcyberpunk genre