Most hand tools made these days are drop forged somewhere in the Far East, untouched by human hand. But there are a few companies in the UK still producing tools in what they consider the ‘proper’ way. And plenty of masons like to use those tools.

When you visit the traditional tool makers of the UK you quickly understand why their tools are a little more expensive than the mass produced tools knocked out by enormous mechanical hammers in their thousands in the Far East.

You also start to understand why skilled craftspeople all over the world still buy the British tools. They are made by people who care and who want to produce the best they can for people who are just as keen to produce the best they can. Many a craftsman and woman swears by the particular brand they favour.

Even as recently as 50 years ago apprentices all over the country made the journey to the local blacksmith once a week to take the tradesmen’s tools to be sharpened, tempered and replaced. Halcyon days.

Today there is a handful of companies maintaining the traditions of hand forging craft tools. They are small companies keeping alive the skills of previous generations, albeit with a little more mechanisation than was always available in the past, although some of the machinery carries the marks of British manufacturers that have long-since disappeared.

One of the strengths of these tool-makers is that they are adaptable. A big drop forge set up to churn out chisels all day can do that highly efficiently but it cannot produce a one-off tool or short run to the special requirements of a particular customer.

The ability to do that has helped keep the few remaining British toolmakers in business. And they are even getting a boost from technology at the other end of the scale as their websites bring in orders from all over the world.

The pictures on these two pages show the products and workshops of the company that is now RH & G Travis & Son in Brighouse, West Yorkshire, which makes the Al-Orr and Ke-Ne brands.

The company is run by Steven Travis, whose grandparents, Reginald and Dorothy Orr, created the Al-Orr brand of Tungsten Carbide tipped chisels in 1956. When Reginald Orr retired in 1979, his son-in-law, Roger Travis, took over the company and, in 1986, bought out a competitor, Drake & Neasham, that added the KeNe brand to the Travis range.

Steven Travis worked with his father in the company for 17 years and has now taken over the running of it, with, he says “the intention of continuing to produce Tungsten Carbide tipped chisels to the quality and standard that we have maintained for over 50 years”. Different grades of Carbide are used to achieve ideal tools for various stones.

RH & G Travis now also offer the Riley brand of firesharp chisels, having taken over Riley Tools, which was a close neighbour and is now even closer as it has moved into the same premises as Travis.

Steve Travis admits he did try to make firesharp chisels to compete with Riley but the heating and quenching that produces the required hardness of tool requires experience to perfect and Travis could not match the standard of the Riley tools.

So Travis has taken over Riley and can assure customers the standard will be maintained because as well as the forge and Massey pneumatic hammer of Riley, Travis also acquired the significant skills of Rob Street, who ran the business in Shepley Forge that he took over in 1995 after being the foreman at GS Whiteley Ltd for many years before that.

The skill in making the tools come from recognising the changes in colour so the steel is put under the hammer at precisely the right time. You have to be able to recognise how far the heat has travelled along the steel, because it cannot all be heated to the same temperature. And it must be quenched at the right time and for the right amount of time in the right medium to make the tool hard without being brittle. They are skills acquired by experience – experience Rob Street is now passing on so that when he retires they are not lost.

The provenance of the business goes back to 1800 and the Riley firesharp tools have been sold to the stone industry since John Riley took over the business in 1900. The tools quickly acquired a reputation for excellence and reliability that they have never lost.

Rob Street continues to produce the tools using the traditional hand forging methods of his predecessors in association with today’s high carbon and alloy steels.

Like all the tools from RH & G Travis, the Riley Tools can be modified on a one-off basis and customers who can’t find what they need in the range are invited to contact the company. It will do its best to provide a solution – as it has just done for one customer who called wanting an 18lb biddle. Steve Travis had never heard of a biddle but the customer explained it is a splitting wedge with a handle so it can be held in place while it is hit. Once they understood what was required, Steve and Rob set about making it.

Another of the traditional toolmakers is G Gibson & Co, based not far from Travis, in Leeds. It has responded to a growing number of requests for one-off or small run specialist tools by setting up a separate Custom Tool department.

Gibson is a bigger company than Travis and although it still makes tools in the traditional way, has a bit of help from CNC machinery that takes some of the labour out of the process while maintaining the traditional look and feel of hand forged tools. Pneumatic shafts are turned on CNC lathes, claw tools are drilled on Haas CNC millers for teeth spacing accuracy and cut-outs for pitcher tips are machined and deburred.

It gives Gibson significant capacity as well as the flexibility to produce the one-offs.
Managing Director Craige Timmins says: “If you have a tool you can’t find, or is prohibitively expensive, we, as a fully equipped engineering facility, can provide you with custom made tools to suit your application. We have full forging, machining, heat treatment and finishing to offer a complete manufacturing process. From a one-off to many thousands, we can manufacture tools to your requirements. We can test materials, analyse the application and even suggest improvements to the tools you require.”

Gibson manufactures a huge range of both the Faulds brand of Carbide tipped chisels (having bought JG Faulds in Glasgow and moved it into the Gibson factory in Leeds in 2001) and firesharp chisels, balancing strength with durability to provide tools that have been tested and developed over a century.

Gibson manufactures its own line of hammers and mallets, from standard Nylon to stone bushing hammers. It makes steel and aluminium squares from 150mm up to 1200mm. It is famous for its scutch combs, scutch hammers and scutch chisels. It makes cast, pressed, ring and wooden wedges, it supplies rifflers from Milani, air hammers from Cuturi, diamond blocks, rubbing blocks, plugs & feathers, Lewis pins, splitting wedges… in fact, the range is so extensive it is hard to imagine any more can be added to it.

Yet more there is. Any day now will see the launch of a full brass bodied sliding bevel with an 8in (200mm) leg. Just before that came Carbide-tipped dividers in 150mm and 200mm versions as either spring or wing type. Ring Rasps have been added – in sizes of 100mm, 80mm and 60mm diameter – made to the finest Milani Riffler specification. There are new mini-bushing hammers from 10mm square up to 25mm, single-ended and double-ended. There is a new removable faced bushing hammer and a small artist pick hammer has been added in various sizes.

Gibson are also now putting together kits, which are especially suitable for enthusiasts and students – one of the kits in the past year was made for the City & Guilds of London Art School. And if you want your tools really personalised, Gibson engrave to order. They make nice prizes and promotional items for competitions and exhibitions.

Another of Britain’s traditional tool makers is just north of the Scottish border, in the town from which the company takes its name, Kelso.

Kelso Tool Company, owned by Bill Donald, make the Bon Accord pneumatic hammers that are widely used in the stone industry as well as a complete range of hand tools.
Gibson and Travis are both run by the next generation who have followed their fathers into the businesses, but Bill can remember when his father, who was a stonemason, used to take his firesharp tools to the local blacksmith, who took pride in knowing all the masons and just how they liked their chisels to be tempered.

As it turned out, toolmaking interested Bill more than the stonemasonry, although he says it gives him great pleasure to know he is making tools that are being used to create and preserve some of the country’s most important built heritage – indeed, the World’s most important built heritage.

Because Kelso tools are sold all over the world, again aided by the website and the fact that essentially the same tools are used by stonemasons wherever they happen to be. That means the tools of today cannot be quite as personalised as when the local blacksmith was making them for Bill’s father. Nevertheless, Kelso Tool Company still wants the stonemasons to feel as if the tools have been made specially for them.

And, of course, some of them have. The small size of the company means it can take special orders and will make one-offs for customers who want something special.

For example, Boden & Ward asked for groves to be cut in the blades of the chisels they were using at Stirling Castle because the stone was ‘plucky’ (ie bits chipped off when it was worked). Kelso was happy to oblige.

It takes pride in everything it makes, whether it’s a one-off like the example above or a run-of-the-mill point or punch.
“If the people using the tools enjoy using them they will look after them. And they will work to the best of their ability with them,” says Bill.

He has a lot of respect for the toolmakers of former times and the people who used the tools. “They weren’t great scientists and computer buffs 300 years ago but they knew how to make tools that were good to use.

“Take a modern lump hammer with a 4in face. It wants to come off the top of the chisel. A mash hammer was much finer. It was banana shape with a striking face only about 1in square – a 31/2lb hammer! All the energy goes straight down the chisel.”

While Bill has great respect for the toolmakers of the past, he says the Tungsten carbide-tipped and firesharp tools being made by Kelso Tool Company today are better tools than those made through most of history largely because the steel is better – for which you can thank science and computers.

Even so, he still believes there is an art to making good tools as well as a science and that good tool makers have to grow into the job, recognising the subtle changes in the metal as it is worked.

Bill: “What we today do they were doing when they built the pyramids, although there are always advancements in materials – that’s the single biggest change.”

And new materials bring new challenges. “It’s difficult getting carbide to stick to anything,” says Bill. But it has to be stuck into the end of a chisel of softer steel in order to be able to use it. “The tips of these chisels are like a mix of concrete,” says Bill.

There is finely ground carbide, which is almost as hard as diamond, and tungsten held together in a matrix of cobalt. When the tips are being made, the mixture is held together with paraffin wax so the mix can be shaped.

There are many different grades of Tungsten Carbide, as well as the steel shafts into which the tips are placed. The different grades make tools ideal for different purposes, which is why there are different chisels for working marble and sandstone, for example. The makers normally colour code them so they don’t get mixed up.

Tungsten carbide tips are presintered to drive off the wax then sintered at high temperatures in an oven. More sintering is used to fix them into the shafts of the chisels.

There are all kinds of fire sharpened and tungsten carbide chisels in the Kelso Tool Company range, from tiny lettercutting chisels to 70mm fishtails. The company’s price list contains 208 different shapes and sizes. “It’s ridiculous,” admits Bill, although as he only makes to order, not to hold stock, it does not really matter to him how many products there are on his price list. And, he says, it is sometimes only a matter of terminology, which can vary from county to county in the UK, let alone from country to country.