Hobbit woodworking tools

Shire-Dwellers and other Middle-earth rarities.

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Charlotte
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Hobbit woodworking tools

Post by Charlotte »

I was watching a fan-edit of the Hobbit, to see if the film could be redeemed on that basis, and something in the Shire scenes immediately caught my eye.

Image

That's a traditional-style English wooden 'coffin' smoothing plane!

And even better - that hobbit is holding it in the correct traditional position in the right stance, too.

Say what you will, the things this film did get right, it got right. Far over the misty mountains cold, anyone?

You can also see a longer wooden plane (maybe a try plane, but I think it's a jack), some kind of rabbeting or moulding or plough plane, wooden handscrew clamps doing the workholding, a folding wooden saw (possibly a turning saw), a wooden mallet, and right off to the right what I think might be a router plane. I'm not sure what he's working on (maybe rocker of a rocking chair or the top piece of a headboard? Idk, but that 'stand' looking thing also visible looks like the leg of a small table to me), but this is a very convincing set of tools for a hobbit woodworker.

The only deviation from 'historical accuracy' is that by 1897 the Bailey-style/Stanley metal-bodied handplane was extremely common place and had largely overtaken wooden planes (perhaps not somewhere as rural as a Shire analogue would have been, but I've no evidence either way), but I think we can all agree that would be an entirely inappropriate tool for a hobbit in comparison to the wooden coffin plane.

I suspect these tools are actual antiques as well tbh, because those would be easier to find than making them (complex mortise work, the distinctive colouring of old beech, the chips and bits of paint on the handscrews, making irons and chipbreakers, etc.) - they're relatively common to find in the US/Canada/England, and that seems much easier to do than making that plough plane for a shot that lasts 2 seconds. Hell, you'd probably need originals to reference to make replicas this close. Someone with a good knowledge of traditional woodworking absolutely had influence on this shot.
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Elleth
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Re: Hobbit woodworking tools

Post by Elleth »

Oh how fun!

As horribly botched (desecrated?) as that production was, I'm quite fond of a lot of the work WETA did, especially for the Shirefolk.

Which fan edit, may I ask?

And do you do woodwork in "Shire" fashion by any chance?
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Charlotte
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Re: Hobbit woodworking tools

Post by Charlotte »

I do quite a lot of traditional woodworking, yeah! Though I usually go for a Bailey-style plane - I have a WODEN, made in Wednesbury in the '50s - for my smoothing plane, purely because of the ease of adjustment. I do have a coffin smoother but it's missing it's chip-brealer so it's not really usable lol. I'm currently on the hunt for traditional wooden hack and try planes though, because imo metal planes that size are way too heavy (and there's not as much utility in easy adjustment as on a smoothing plane). I found a couple the other week but they were in truly terrible condition (deep, structural cracking) that couldn't really be restored. The hunt continues!

There was a used tool store near me that had a bunch, but they closed before I got into hand planes, RIP. The owners might be opening back up in the spring though, so fingers crossed!

And the M4 edit - so far so good, though I'm only up to out of the frying pan and into the fire, and the first film was by far the least objectionable (i think the big terrible of that one was the goblintown parkour, which has been removed - ditto for the azog stuff)
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Re: Hobbit woodworking tools

Post by Manveruon »

Wow! Thank you for such a wonderful breakdown of that shot and the props involved! That is absolutely AWESOME!

Like you said - when they got it right, BOY did they get it right!

I generally agree about the Hobbit movies overall, as well as the fact that the first one was aaaaaaalmost redeemable, minus some pointless bloat and needlessly exaggerated action sequences. So close on so many levels. And I get that Weta’s interpretations of Middle-earth’s material culture are only one possible interpretation, and often probably not what the Professor himself would have imagined, but BOY their work is beautiful. Although in this case, it looks like real-world history did the work for them (which is always a delight to see on-screen).

I’ve had my eye on that M4 edit for AGES now, but I keep forgetting that I need to get an HDMI cable to hook up my tablet or computer to my television so I can actually watch it. Argh.
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ForgeCorvus
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Re: Hobbit woodworking tools

Post by ForgeCorvus »

A friend of mine is a jobbing actor. He said when you fill in your casting form they ask you to put down anything that may be of interest to the company, not just for the film (or WHY) that they're currently doing.
For instance, the film is set in 1770's but you own and drive a Model T or have a 1940's British Bobby persona.

Its possible that the carpenter in the pic may own the tools hes using
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Charlotte
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Re: Hobbit woodworking tools

Post by Charlotte »

Quite possible - it occured to me and I thought likely that whatever traditional woodworker that was consulted likely provided their own tool, but not that they may also have been the actor in question
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Re: Hobbit woodworking tools

Post by Greg »

I LOVE my planes! They're a bit newer than these, but my family has a shadowbox filled with half a dozen old wooden-framed planes made by my great-great uncle, and they're gorgeous. LOVE old tools!
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Re: Hobbit woodworking tools

Post by Eofor »

Sorrel wrote: Wed Jan 19, 2022 6:24 pm And the M4 edit
Might you have a link for that edit Sorrel? It sounds like it makes the hobbit actually watchable (so typically Warner Brothers has told the creator to cease and desist a few months ago)

Apparently you can get a link by contacting him but I'm not on reddit.
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Re: Hobbit woodworking tools

Post by Charlotte »

It's listed on fanedit.info/fanedits , but it requires you to use a program called jDownloader to download it - it was a bit of faff getting it to work properly (you have to add your Google account in the program to download the file from the Google drive they're hosted in because of their size, for example) but not *too* arduous.

My assessment is that it is about as good a film as could be made - a good adaptation and very watchable. Not as good an adaptation as LOTR, but those are impossible shoes to fill, and if this is what had been released then I would have been very satisfied.

It hews very closely to the book with afaict all of the new/extraneous plot pretty much removed and in a way that feels totally seamless. Excellent job. I like Legolas just being There when they get captured in Mirkwood still but with there being no namedropping or conversation about who he is - entirely plausible interpretation of events in the book tbh, since the company don't know who he is (but of course with film being a visual medium the audience would).

Some of the cartoony bits remain that are beyond the bits in LOTR, but that's appropriate for the different tone of the Hobbit than LOTR imo (and I wouldn't expect otherwise from PJ regardless), and without the truly ridiculous bits that destroy all sense of tension that doesn't detract from it. I found myself quite emotionally invested in it in a way I did not with the originals

Thorin's characterization is still eh, in that he comes across as just a massive dick a lot of the time, but that's probably impossible for an edit to fix and that (and some of the other characterizations I don't like that much, like Beorn), I can understand as a necessary part of adaptation where characters need arcs and growth that fit within the structure of a film

Not part of the edit, but the character design of the dwarves has grown on me since I first saw them - I didn't like how they ran the gamut from caricature to essentially pretty and almost human, but I appreciate that they managed to visually and in character distinguish 13 different characters to the point that they are all memorable and differentiable to me. I also think Thorin comes across appropriately 'Lordly,' to use the Professor's terms.
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Re: Hobbit woodworking tools

Post by Manveruon »

Sorrel wrote: Sun Jan 23, 2022 9:19 pm It's listed on fanedit.info/fanedits , but it requires you to use a program called jDownloader to download it - it was a bit of faff getting it to work properly (you have to add your Google account in the program to download the file from the Google drive they're hosted in because of their size, for example) but not *too* arduous.

My assessment is that it is about as good a film as could be made - a good adaptation and very watchable. Not as good an adaptation as LOTR, but those are impossible shoes to fill, and if this is what had been released then I would have been very satisfied.

It hews very closely to the book with afaict all of the new/extraneous plot pretty much removed and in a way that feels totally seamless. Excellent job. I like Legolas just being There when they get captured in Mirkwood still but with there being no namedropping or conversation about who he is - entirely plausible interpretation of events in the book tbh, since the company don't know who he is (but of course with film being a visual medium the audience would).

Some of the cartoony bits remain that are beyond the bits in LOTR, but that's appropriate for the different tone of the Hobbit than LOTR imo (and I wouldn't expect otherwise from PJ regardless), and without the truly ridiculous bits that destroy all sense of tension that doesn't detract from it. I found myself quite emotionally invested in it in a way I did not with the originals

Thorin's characterization is still eh, in that he comes across as just a massive dick a lot of the time, but that's probably impossible for an edit to fix and that (and some of the other characterizations I don't like that much, like Beorn), I can understand as a necessary part of adaptation where characters need arcs and growth that fit within the structure of a film

Not part of the edit, but the character design of the dwarves has grown on me since I first saw them - I didn't like how they ran the gamut from caricature to essentially pretty and almost human, but I appreciate that they managed to visually and in character distinguish 13 different characters to the point that they are all memorable and differentiable to me. I also think Thorin comes across appropriately 'Lordly,' to use the Professor's terms.
Having recently watched the M4 edit myself at LOOOOOOONG last, I generally agree with your sentiments here. There were certainly some pacing issues, particularly in the middle parts in and around Mirkwood, and a lot of stuff that sadly just couldn’t really be completely fixed without a ton of re-shoots, but overall it really did make the film(s) like… 95% more watchable as a whole. Seriously.
I still could have done with a bit more Thranduil, a tiny bit more dwarf-backstory-flashback, and even some or all of the Dol Guldur stuff, buuuuut… that would have made it very very long indeed, since as it was the whole thing still had a 4-hour runtime. But overall, just a way way better and more satisfying adaptation of the actual book.
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Re: Hobbit woodworking tools

Post by Eofor »

I now have the drive link for the M4 edit if anyone is interested. I have yet to find the time to watch it but the sneak peek I had looked quite palatable.
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Re: Hobbit woodworking tools

Post by Manveruon »

Eofor wrote: Mon Feb 14, 2022 10:50 am I now have the drive link for the M4 edit if anyone is interested. I have yet to find the time to watch it but the sneak peek I had looked quite palatable.
That’s good to hear! I was trying to share it on FB, but my Drive app wouldn’t let me for some reason, and I haven’t been able to get to an actual desktop computer to try it (seems I do most everything on mobile these days).

I’m currently watching it through again with the editor commentary (piece by piece), and it’s quite enlightening!
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Elwindil
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Re: Hobbit woodworking tools

Post by Elwindil »

There's a site that sells vintage and antique tools, the fella that owns it is also a luthier and loves his old tools quite a bit, he jokes that part of the reason he even has the tool shop is to feed his own vintage tool addiction. I'll post a link here, in case folks want it, he's got quite the selection of tools for all manner of things. https://vintagetoolshop.com/
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Re: Hobbit woodworking tools

Post by Cimrandir »

Oh, that's a cool site Elwindil! I'm struggling hard to not jump into yet another hobby but someday down the road I'd like to pick up woodworking. I'm sure eventually I'll get a collection of vintage tools going.
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Re: Hobbit woodworking tools

Post by ForgeCorvus »

Thanks Elwindil, you do know you're enabling my addiction to old steel don't you.
I dread to think what the value of the contents of my workshed is.
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