File:JapanHomes032 ANCIENT CARPENTER.jpg

English: From the original book: " By an examination of old books and pictures one gets an idea of the antiquity of many objects still in use in Japan. I was shown, at the house of a Japanese antiquary, a copy of a very old makimono (a long scroll of paper rolled up like a roll of wall-paper, on which continuous stories or historical events are written or painted). This makimono in question was painted by Takakana, of Kioto, five hundred and seventy years ago, and represented the building of a temple, from the preliminary exercises to its completion. One sketch showed the carpenters at work hewing out the wood and making the frame. There were many men at work; a few were eating and drinking; tools were lying about. In all the tools represented in the picture, — of which there were chisels, mallets, hatchets, adzes, squares, and saws, — there was no plane or long saw. A piece of timber was being cut longitudinally with a chisel. The square was the same as that in use to-day. The tool which seemed to take the place of a plane was similar to a tool still used by coopers, but I believe by no other class of workmen, though I remember to have seen a man and a boy engaged in stripping bark from a long pole with a tool similar to the one seen in the sketch (fig. 32)...A carpenter's tool-box is shown quite as small and light as similar boxes in use to-day. To the cover of this box (fig. 32) is attached a curious hand-saw with a curved edge. Large saws with curved edges, having handles at both ends, to be worked by two men, are in common use; but I have never seen a hand-saw of this shape. All the saws represented in the picture had the same curved edge."