About

We help people buy old hand tools that still work. Name the tool you’re after, like a Stanley No. 4, a Disston D-8 or a set of Sheffield chisels, and there’s a page for it. Each one tells you the tool’s story, how to tell its age from the photos and what to check in a listing before you buy.

What old-tool people know is spread across type studies, collector catalogs and forum threads, and a raw eBay search gives you none of it. So we keep 42 tool pages in one place, write down the tells that usually take years to learn (cracked castings, replaced parts, planes put together from several others, bent saw plates) and pick the listings we’d buy.

We don’t sell tools. No affiliate links. We earn nothing. We run no analytics and set no tracking cookies. We’re not affiliated with any maker we cover or anyone who owns those names today. See how we work for how the pages are researched and our disclosure for how links, picks and photos work.

Shavings is part of allbutnew, a set of shops for secondhand gear. Got old tools to sell? The “Get an offer” link on every tool page sends them to our tool expert, who replies by email.