Adze

How it works

The blade is mounted with its edge athwart the handle, where an axe has its edge parallel to the handle. Moxon states this difference in 1701-era English carpentry: the adze’s edge lies across the handle and is ground to a bevel on its inside to its outer edge. The user swings the tool so the edge removes a thin chip, and the long handle is held in both hands.

Petrie defined the two tools the same way: the axe drives into wood to split it, while the adze takes a thin slip off a larger mass. He adds that the adze is usually ground on one side, has a long body, and in ancient times had only a weak attachment to its handle because it was never struck in deeply.

Anatomy

Blade: Thin and somewhat arching in Moxon’s description, with the edge across the handle and a bevel ground on the inside face.
Eye: The hole in the head that receives the handle on a socketed adze; Moxon notes that the helve must be taken out of the eye before the blade can be ground.
Helve (handle): Long, because the tool is used with both hands; Petrie describes an Egyptian shipbuilders’ example with a handle of about five feet and a blade of about one foot.
Lashing or binding (early forms): On unsocketed ancient adzes the blade was bound to the handle; Petrie describes side lugs on the blade that bear against the lower turns of the binding.

Variants

Stone adze (Neolithic): Polished stone blades, domed on one side and flat on the other; Bakels describes the Linearbandkeramik forms, including the thicker shoe-last celt and the flat hoe.
Copper and bronze adze (Egyptian): The Metropolitan Museum holds New Kingdom adzes with wooden handles and bronze or copper-alloy blades bound with leather, from foundation deposits at Deir el-Bahri.
Lug adze and socket adze: Petrie traces a series of lugged blades and the later socketed adze, which he says finally superseded the methods of binding.
Carpenter’s and shipwright’s adze: Nineteenth-century and later forms in the Science Museum Group collection include a shipwright’s adze, a pin-head carpenter’s adze and an example by William Marples and Sons of Sheffield.
Chōna (Japanese adze): JAANUS describes a carpenter’s tool with a curved handle cut from a branch and a double-edged blade about 10 cm wide, used for rough finishing and for a dimpled surface called nagurimen.

Specifications

Blade length (Egyptian example, Met 25.3.119) · cm: The Metropolitan Museum records a blade 16.6 cm long and 4.9 cm wide, with a handle 23.5 cm long.
Handle length · ft: Petrie gives about five feet for shipbuilders’ adzes shown in Egyptian tomb scenes; modern lengths have not been sourced.

Safety and care

Safety

Moxon says carpenters straddle a little with both legs while working so as to guard against the edge of the tool.
JAANUS describes chōna work as dangerous and demanding great skill.

Tips

Use the adze where the axe cannot reach
Moxon says the adze takes off irregularities on the framed work of a floor already laid, on upright posts set close to other framed work, and on ceiling framing. The axe edge, being parallel to its handle, cannot come at those places.1
Stand before the work with the legs apart
For floor framing Moxon has the carpenter take the end of the handle in both hands, stand directly before the irregularity at a small distance and straddle a little to avoid the edge, then hew it away by degrees. On an upright the worker stands directly before it.1
Hold thin stuff down with the foot
Moxon notes that for small thin stuff the carpenter lays it on the floor and holds one end down with the ball of the foot, or the toes if the piece is short, and hews it lightly to size. He adds that this is often done when the axe or a better tool is not at hand.1
Remove the helve to grind the bevel
Because the bevel is on the inside face, Moxon says the blade cannot be well ground unless the helve is taken out of the eye.1
Rehaft a broken blade
Bakels reports that Linearbandkeramik adze blades were resharpened repeatedly and shortened, with the haft cut back or replaced. Blades broken across were rehafted where possible rather than discarded.1

History

Earliest documented

c. 5400–4900 BC (securely documented stone adzes); earlier use not sourced here

Northwestern Linearbandkeramik, Rhineland, Netherlands and Belgium

Bakels calls the adze one of the most characteristic attributes of the earliest farming communities of Central Europe and states that settlements in her study area date from 5400 BC (calibrated) onward, with the end of the Linearbandkeramik at 4900 BC. The blades are of crystalline rock, domed on one side and flat on the other, and are found in settlements and cemeteries. Petrie, for Egypt, states that the adze long preceded the axe there.1 2

The adze is distinguished from the axe by the direction of its edge. Moxon and Petrie both state the difference: the axe edge is parallel to the handle and the adze edge is across it. Petrie adds that the adze has a thinner, longer body, is usually ground on one side, and was in ancient times only bound on, since it was never driven in deeply. It is the tool that removes a thin slip from a larger mass, where the axe splits.

The adze is among the oldest woodworking forms in the record used here. Bakels describes stone adzes as characteristic of the earliest farmers of Central Europe from 5400 BC. Petrie argues that in Egypt the adze preceded the axe, because metal was scarce and a single large tool in copper was costly. When copper became freely available at the start of the dynastic period he reports larger, splaying adzes, which he compares to a Cypriote form.

The form changed mainly in how the blade was fixed. Petrie traces lugged blades that bear against the lashing, then the socketed adze, which he says superseded binding and probably arose independently of the unsocketed forms. The Metropolitan Museum’s New Kingdom examples, with metal blades bound to wooden handles with leather, show the earlier method in use in Egypt well after copper became common.

By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the adze was a carpenter’s tool of finishing and correction. Moxon assigns it work the axe cannot do: removing irregularities on laid floors, upright posts and ceilings, and thinning boards. Later holdings in the Science Museum Group, including a shipwright’s adze, a pin-head carpenter’s adze and a Marples adze from Sheffield, and the 1909 White catalog listing adzes with adze handles, show the tool still made by edge-tool firms in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Planes and the axe overlap parts of its work, and the sources used here do not measure how far they displaced it.

Timeline

5400–4900 BC
Linearbandkeramik communities of the Rhineland and neighboring regions use stone adzes as part of the toolkit; Bakels reports that most blades are of foreign rock obtained through exchange and that they were resharpened and rehafted.1
first dynasty (Egypt)
Petrie reports that the Egyptian adze grew markedly in size and widened at the blade within a generation of the first dynasty, when copper began to be used freely, and compares the form to a Cypriote adze.1
IVth–VIth dynasties (Egypt)
An Egyptian adze of the Old Kingdom period is held by the Science Museum Group.1
c. 1550–1300 BCE
Bronze or copper-alloy adzes with wooden handles and leather binding are deposited at Deir el-Bahri; the Metropolitan Museum records two from Foundation Deposits 4 and 5, one dated c. 1473–1458 BCE.1 2
Asuka period (Japan)
JAANUS reports that blade marks on certain timbers confirm the chōna was already used for wooden temple architecture in the Asuka period, while noting that its history is difficult to trace.1
1701 (edition as cataloged)
Moxon’s Mechanick Exercises describes the carpenter’s adze, its bevel, its use on framed floors and posts, and the stance of the user.1
1863–1897
William Marples and Sons of Sheffield make an adze with a wooden handle, now in the Science Museum Group collection.1
1882–1884
An adze of manganese steel dated to these years is among the objects given to the Science Museum by Sir Robert A. Hadfield and cataloged under metallurgy.1
1909
The L. & I. J. White Company of Buffalo, New York lists adzes and adze handles among its edge tools, alongside axes, froes and draw knives.1

Gaps in the record (7)

Moxon’s original publication dates for the carpentry section have not been separated from the third-edition text used here.
The Asuka period is given without calendar dates because the JAANUS entry does not supply them.
No source located on the Linearbandkeramik adze’s function beyond what Bakels reports; wear analysis there is described as future work.
The White catalog is known here only from its Internet Archive record; adze models and dimensions are not read.
No sourced specification for modern adze weights, blade widths or handle lengths.
No manufacturer or standards source for care; care is empty.
Cooper’s adzes and other trade forms are not covered by a sourced description.

Wood chisel