A Multi Tool

These days we are used to ‘multi tools’. You know the kind of thing; there’s a handle and all sorts of items you can fasten into it so that different jobs can be done – sawing, cutting, drilling, or driving screws for example.

It may seem like a modern idea, but at Market Lavington Museum we have one from 150 years ago.

Here is the tool with an elegant (and very comfortable) wooden handle holding a countersink bit.

An 1860s multi tool at Market Lavington Museum

A quick turn of the ‘butterfly’ releases that bit.

The handle opens.

 And inside it there are several tools.

Here, for example, is a saw blade.

This wonderful tool belonged to the Shore family and really does date from around 1860. One of the Shore family worked as a jobbing carpenter, but this became part of the collection of household tools belonging to Bert Shore. Bert was the man who married Flo Burbidge who was born in our museum building back in 1908.

 

Tags: 1860s, Market Lavington, Museum, tool