[Illustration: Figure 11.--EARLY 19TH CENTURY: THE ADVERTISEMENTS OF TOOLMAKERS indicated the diversity of production. The Castle Hill Works at Sheffield offered to gentlemen 20 choices of tool chests designed to appeal to a wide variety of users and purses. The chest was available in either oak or mahogany, depending on the gentleman's tastes (fig. 49). (Book 87, Cutler and Company, Castle Hill Works, Sheffield. _Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum_.)] [Illustration: Figure 12.--1857: THE DIVERSITY OF TOOLS available to buyers made necessary the illustrated trade catalogue. Although few in number in the United States before 1850, tool catalogues became voluminous in the last half of the century as printing costs dropped. (Smithsonian Institution Library. Smithsonian photo 49790.)] American inventories reflect the great increase suggested by the early technical writers and trade catalogues cited above. Compare the content of two American carpenters' shops--one of 1709, in York County, Virginia, and the other of 1827, in Middleborough, Massachusetts. John Crost, a Virginian, owned, in addition to sundry shoemaking and agricultural implements, a dozen gimlets, chalklines, bung augers, a dozen turning tools and mortising chisels, several dozen planes (ogees, hollows and rounds, and plows), several augers, a pair of 2-foot rules, a spoke shave, lathing hammers, a lock saw, three files, compasses, paring chisels, a jointer's hammer, three handsaws, filling axes, a broad axe, and two adzes. Nearly 120 years later Amasa Thompson listed his tools and their value. Thompson's list is a splendid comparison of the tools needed in actual practice, as opposed to the tools suggested by Nicholson in his treatise on carpentry or those shown in the catalogues of the toolmakers.[7] Thompson listed the following: 1 set bench planes $6.00 1 Broad Axe 3.00 1 Adze 2.25 1 Panel saw 1.50 1 Panel saw 1.58 1 fine do-- 1.58 1 Drawing knife .46 1 Trying square .93 1 Shingling hatchet .50 1 Hammer .50 1 Rabbit plane .83 1 Halving do .50 1 Backed fine saw 1.25 1 Inch augre .50 1 pr. dividers or compasses-- .71 1 Panel saw for splitting 2.75 1 Tennon gauge 1.42 1 Bevel .84 1 Bradd Hammer .50 1 _Architect Book_ 6.50 1 Case Mathematical Instruments 3.62-1/2 1 Panel saw 2.75 1 Grafting saw 1.00