AJB Temple":23o7auv6 said:
I find I lean towards Japanese styles and would like to spend more time on that. No idea off hand what the old Japanese boring tools were like.
Well, that's an interesting question. I know very little about Japanese tools but this is what I found in the only books I have that cover the area.
This is from Toshio Odate's book, "Japanese Woodworking Tools, their Tradition, Spirit and Use". Written in 1984, it was, I believe, a big influence on the rise in Western interest in Japanese tools. The relevant chapter is entitled
Gimlets (Kiri).
It shows these simple tools, held in two hands and twiddled manually, like a boy scout lighting a fire.
The mouse tooth gimlet looks to me more like a modern flat bit than a centre bit - it does score a circle around the central locating point, but it looks like it must cut with a scraping action rather than a paring one.
There's no mention of braces, rotary drills or interchangeable bits.
"China at Work" by the anthropologist Rudolf P. Hommel was published in 1937 when China was rural, traditional and little known outside its own borders. Hommel spent eight years in China in the 1920s and a year in Japan in 1927, which he drew on for some comparisons.
The book records a simple way of life showing the tools and methods used in what was then a subsistence economy. In the chapter about tools for building, Hommel notes that the Chinese did not use the crank for drilling but did use the bow drill, like this:
He goes on to show two 'Japanese Twirling Drills':
and explains
"This instrument was the only drilling apparatus until recent years, when the western brace and bit, and similar tools were introduced. I was assured by Japanese that the bow and pump drill were never known in Japan. This is a curious fact and we are forced to the conclusion that the Japanese mode of drilling has never advanced beyond the stage which was in vogue in palaeolithic times in Europe, for the neolithic people, going a step farther, had devised a drill held in a frame, and worked with a bow."
) then you'll want bits of all types for hand use and for powered. Maybe some of the interest is a social-media fuelled fad, but not all; there's a cross-fertilisation from green woodworking as well.
