the Tang – hidden yet important

English version of «Tangen – ute av syne men ikke av sinn» (5.4.2025), translated with the help of ChatGPT, manually checked and corrected by the author, posted to a separate blog post for clarity.

Pre-industrial iron — bloomery iron, wrought iron — has somewhat different properties compared to modern steel. In the Urnes Project, and now in my fellowship at the Craft Institute, I have been fortunate to work with a selection of recreations of old woodcarving tools forged from pre-industrial iron. The experience has helped me understand more about the shape and proportions of the old tools that can be seen in museum collections.

‘Modern’ industrially forged woodcarving tools are usually made of tool steel, quite slender in dimensions, and with a thin tang that is driven into the handle. Between the tang and the blade of the tool, there is a distinct collar or bolster that prevents the tool from working itself deeper into the handle over time, splitting it.

This thin tang and distinct shoulder make it relatively easy to haft these tools — the handle stays firmly in place and rarely splits. The tools that are found in archaeological material, and which have the «appropriate» age for my projects (early medieval), on the other hand, often have a stout tang and no such shoulder.

This presents challenges, including handles that crack — like here, from early in the Urnes Project:

These challenges make it tempting to squint slightly creatively at the archaeological material and consider adding a subtle shoulder at the transition between the tang and the rest of the tool. It is not difficult to make one with a file, and some of the sturdier tools from the archaeological material also have quite a clear shoulder. There are also slightly more modern examples of tools with a distinct shoulder or collar in the later, but still pre-industrial, material.

But my experience with the tools I have worked with so far is that they bend quite quickly at the transition to the tang, when forged from pre-industrial iron with tool steel laminated in only at the edge. Woodcarving tools often are used much like a knife and are dragged and pushed sideways as much as they are driven in the direction of the tang. The stress is greatest at the transition between the blade and the tang, and when a clear shoulder has been forged or filed here, the tang will also bend easily. This could be the reason why only extra «coarse» chisels or gouges were forged with such a shoulder between the tang and the blade, and why the tang generally appears to be quite roughly dimensioned on old tools. It’s possible this shoulder marks the difference between firmer chisels and woodcarving chisels.

But what about the hafting? In depictions of woodcarvers at work from the Middle Ages, one often sees rings around the handles. I have been uncertain about how these should be interpreted — sometimes they are so stylized that they appear to be an integral part of the wooden handle. Based on this, I have made some handles where this ring is part of the turned form, and this has proven to be good handles to work with. In the Oseberg grave, a awl was also found that was hafted in just this way:

But a more reasonable explanation, I believe, is that in many cases, these are stylized ferrules or ferrules. For even though it is plesant to hold, this form is far from immune to splitting. There are not many preserved examples of ferules, but that is perhaps not surprising given how quickly something like this would disappear in the soil, and how few tools have been preserved from the period. Perhaps Theophilus’ manuscript can offer some clues:

Theophilus’ Ferrules

from Scedula Diversarum Artium Book III – XCII

DE SOLIDATVRA FERRI

Fiunt etiam ex ferro circuli tenues qui ponuntur in manubriis ferramentorum qui non possunt per se solidari, quibus in iunctura circumuoluitur cuprum tenue, atque circumponitur modicum argillae. Qua siccata, cum ante fornacem sub carbonibus sufflata canduerit, mox liquefactum cuprum circumfluit et solidat.¹

Brasing of iron [Ferrules]

Thin rings [ferrules] are made of iron, and they are placed on [wooden] handles of tools that are not strong enough on their own. Since these cannot be welded, thin copper is wound around them at the joint, and a little clay is packed around the whole. When this is dry, it is placed on the embers in the forge and blown, and when it glows red, the copper immediately flows around the iron and fixes it.²

That Theophilus spends a whole paragraph describing the making of ferrules in a manuscript that is otherwise very information-dense and dedicated to (church) art is likely no accident. Ferrules appear to have been a frequent necessity, perhaps an obvious part of hafting tools. This way of making them may also have been a local tradition, with a need that elsewhere was solved by winding metal wire around the handle end.

He also specifically describes that iron should be burned into (wooden³) handles⁴, but otherwise does not use space to describe the hafting of tools. Perhaps this suggests that burning in the tang was so advantageous that it was quite predominant. Burning in the tang has a clear advantage in that it provides a nearly perfect cavity in the handle to ‘receive’ the tang, without introducing stresses or cracks. The entire cross-section of the tang would thus press evenly on the wood in the handle, without the same possibility of ‘slipping’ deeper in as a pre-drilled hole might allow. The blunt shape of the tang on pre-industrial irons should correspondingly make the tendency to split the handle less, presenting a steeper wedge shape.

Even though my experiences so far point quite clearly in this direction, much experimentation remains. The slant knife above, from the Follobane excavation with mus.nr C60001/13 stands out as a good candidate for a tool I likely need to have recreated. The same applies to the tool below, a metal detector find from the Netherlands in private ownership. As a loose find without context, it may be of limited scientific value, but it is a very nice and typical example of what seems to be quite a common form from European medieval times. It also has a form we found very useful in the Urnes Project, but in a much more common size.

I think one of the projects for the summer (?) will also be to set up a small forge⁵ and bellows⁶ à la Theophilus to try out the brasing of handle rings. Of course, it is possible to simply cut rings to the appropriate size from pipe scraps or have a blacksmith make an assortment, but there must be a reason why Theophilus encourages the reader to make them themselves?

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1. Latin text from C. R. Dodwell, 1961 p. 165 ↩︎
2. Own translation based on the Latin text from C. R. Dodwell, 1961 p. 165, English translations of C. R. Dodwell, 1961 p. 165, and Hawthorne, J.G. & Smith, C.S. 1979 p.186, and my own (limited) Latin knowledge. [Additions in brackets for clarity] ↩︎
3. Theophilus also specifies that when attaching a knife blade to a bone handle, you should first fit a piece of wood inside the bone handle for the iron tang to be burned into. I can see several reasons for this — it may be to prevent the bone handle from splitting when (not if!) the tang begins to rust, or it may be because it is much easier to fit a piece of wood than to create an exact match for an iron tang. It is still relevant that he also prescribes burning the tang into the wood here.  ↩︎
4. Book III – Chapter XCIII, p. 166 in C. R. Dodwell, 1961  ↩︎
5. Book III – Chapter III, p. 65 in C. R. Dodwell, 1961 ↩︎
6. Book III – Chapter IV, p. 66 in C. R. Dodwell, 1961 ↩︎

All photos by the author where nothing else is stated