old chisels

[zoki]

hello
i have come to a set of chisels they seem to be very old, and they have makers marks like sheffield nad london with freemasons compas-divider symbol and some have london stamped beside,
does anybody know who was the maker and how old are they
thanks
z

[nadcarves]

zoki, with the masonic symbol, the tools are probably Addis,very excellent jems for carving. Now, the age, the very early tools would be marked gravel lane southwork,or worship street finsbury. Possible dates,prior to 1840. London came in about this time to the early 1900's. 10 prize medals was stamped on later editions,don't know when this stamp was started. So, as to age,I'll take a WAG and say your tools have a good chance of being 150 years old.Properly sharpened,you will find that they dance,and dance better than most modern tools. It is a shame,but for many tools,quality is just a word and you must be very careful to match the brands to your type of carving. Just as many of my tools predate the 1900's, I find that Hill,Frost ,Herring are the equal of Addis, and in many cases,I like them better.What are the tools you have worth? That depends on the buyer.I went to a show ,took along 18 redundent tools, nine early birds, only dog in the bunch a late Marples,and put 180 on the lot, best offer made was a hundred. Think I'll just sharpen them in case I get stranded on a desert island ,(with my luck there will be no good looking gals to teach woodcarving to! )cordially Nad ps,there are a lot more stamps and age break downs, but I just starting to get the information and even the experts are putting down guesses for dates and marks.

[zoki]

thank you a lot!!!
yes there is adis written on some of them. I do mostly sculpture with them, and right now i carve back and top for archtop guitar!
the chisels are serving me beautifuly and i am very happy to have them!
best regards:D

[nadcarves]

Why not drop a short note about carving in your neck of the woods, guitars, the type of wood,how you got started,etc.Maybe we can get some of the" down under people" to carve guitars while they sing"how dry I am". The rain here is killing me, I work outside,even in the winter,and we are getting the water you all should be getting.Was carving big mushrooms. Dumbest thing in the world. The real ones come up, the gals cut them down,and go out and spend $30 to replace the real things with mine. It has gotten bad enough that my wood is growing mushrooms and turning black. Of course great for the little wood eating bugs,, cordially nad

[zoki]

hi
I have collected some useful links of people who are already doing it, I think it can use someone to start carving his own,

http://www.sakashtaguitars.com/Sakashta/directory.html

http://www.mollinst.com/archtop.html

http://www.dave.weimer.com/

Because I am employed as a web designer I have really little time to carve wood, besides my guitar practice:mad:
I have finished back plate from maple, and now I will start on top plate from spruce.
wood is all from our country Slovenia because we are i between Italy and Austria , under south side of Alps!
So here is not shortage of wood, luckily, you still can get very good quality walnut, pear, oak ...from local farmers who usualy have their own local-village bandsaw and they prepare their wood themselves.
I will post pictures of back plate and one little table I made later this week.
:D