15 Forgotten Tools That Built The American West (That Are Now IMPOSSIBLE To Find

I handed you a tool off my bench to start this one, heavy, hammer on one end, cutters on the other, a notch on the side you couldn't place, and you had no idea what it was even though your granddaddy used it before breakfast without ever looking down. This video walks through fifteen tools that used to hang in every working shed in this country, and the twist is that most of them didn't lose to a better tool at all, they lost because the world stopped asking the question they were built to answer. I'll show you which of these are genuinely museum pieces now, a hay knife that fed cattle before balers existed, an axe that squared a beam by eye, a straight iron rod that could get a man in serious trouble just for owning it, and which ones I'd argue are still the best tool for their job today, including a hand drill that beats your cordless in one specific situation and a leather stitch that a machine can't touch for durability. Along the way I get into why speed and heat ruin a good edge on a bench grinder, and why the two cheapest tools on this entire list are the ones that kept every other tool on it actually working. Tell me about the one tool you remember hanging in your father's or grandfather's shed that you could never name, just describe the shape and the weight and what he did with it. I read every comment, and whichever tool gets described the most is the one I take apart next.