Tools of Daily Life in Colonial Rhode Island

Colonial Rhode Island's economy—blending agriculture, maritime trade, and early industry—required a diverse toolkit. The tools below reflect the practical needs of farmers, artisans, shipbuilders, and households in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Agricultural Implements

• Harrow: Wooden or iron-toothed frame dragged by oxen to break clods, level soil, and cover seeds after broadcasting.
• Hoes: Essential for planting, weeding, and hilling crops (corn, beans, squash) in small fields and kitchen gardens.
• Scythes: Long-handled, curved blades for mowing hay, grains, and meadow grasses—rhythmic work defining summer labor.
• Sickles: Short, curved blades for harvesting grain, reaping by hand stalk by stalk.
• Flails: Jointed wooden tools for threshing grain—separating kernels from stalks on the threshing floor.
• Winnowing baskets: Shallow woven trays for tossing threshed grain to separate chaff by wind.

Woodworking and Construction Tools

• Broad axe & felling axe: Hewing logs square and felling timber for framing.
• Adze: Transverse blade for smoothing and shaping beams, planks, and ship timbers.
• Augers and gimlets: Drilling holes for pegs (treenails) in timber framing and shipbuilding.
• Drawknife: Shaving shingles, spokes, and rounded components.
• Planes (jack, smoothing, jointer): Flattening and finishing boards for furniture, flooring, and interiors.
• Saws (pit saw, frame saw, compass saw): Converting logs to lumber; pit saws required two men for ripping planks.
• Chisels, gouges, mallets: Joinery, mortising, decorative carving.

Maritime and Specialized Tools

• Caulking irons and mallets: Driving oakum into hull seams for watertightness.
• Shipwright's adze, broadaxe, slick: Shaping massive timbers for frames, keels, and masts.
• Block and tackle, fid, marlinspike: Rigging, splicing, and ropework.

Household and Craft Essentials

• Spinning wheels (great wheel, flax wheel): Fiber to yarn for household textiles.
• Looms: Weaving cloth, tape, and coverlets.
• Iron cookware (spiders, Dutch ovens, kettles): Hearth cooking staples.
• Candle molds, tallow dips: Lighting production.
• Quill pens, inkwells, pounce pots: Writing correspondence and records.

These tools—many locally forged by Rhode Island blacksmiths—enabled the colony's self-sufficiency and its outsized maritime commerce.