Middle ages manufacturing farm tools

The wooden ploughs used for farming in the Middle Ages barely scratched the ground. Grain was cut with a sickle and grass mown with a scythe. It took an average of five men per day to collect a two acre harvest. Harrowing, or burying seeds, was done with a hand tool resembling a large rake. In John Deere, of Vermont, USA, invented the modern moldboard plow, in Grand Detour, Illinois, using smooth, self-cleaning steel for the moldboard rather than cast iron. By his company was manufacturing more than plows per year, and his Moline Plow Works factory was producing 75 per year by The lifestyle of a medieval peasant in Medieval England was extremely hard and harsh.

Many worked as farmers in fields owned by the lords and their lives were controlled by the farming year. The horse then could work more hours than an ox. This lead to the horse replacing the ox in many agricultural areas of Europe. Thank you for your message Larry, it is true that in many areas in Europe the heavy horse replaced the ox.

The change did take quite some time for several reasons. Horses were owned mostly be Lords of the Manor and not the serfs, In later time after the High middle ages horse breeding became more common this was associated with the creation of standing armies.

We will never send you more than one email per month, we hate spam too! Europe was not the only place where the agricultural flail was used as an improvised weapon. In southeast Asia, short agricultural flails, originally employed in threshing rice, were adapted into weapons such as the nunchaku or sansetsukon.

Larry Hamilton on March 14, at pm. Dimitris Romeo Havlidis on March 14, at pm. Horses were owned mostly be Lords of the Manor and not the serfs, In later time after the High middle ages horse breeding became more common this was associated with the creation of standing armies Reply. Tell us what you think! Cancel reply. Currently Reading. As we will see, tools had a profound impact on the development of medieval, as well as modern, civilisation. Certain technological developments single-handedly pushed the growth of population across the whole of the continent.

Viking axes dating to the 11th or early 12th century. In many ways the axe is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, tools in use during the medieval ages. The idea behind a simple, medieval tool like the axe is that its haft essentially works as a force multiplier, allowing its sharp, wedge-like metal blade to focus this force onto a very small amount of surface area. The axe was thus a very powerful cutting tool, that also slightly extends the reach of the user.

Villagers used the axe mainly for two jobs; cutting wood and killing animals — primarily wild boars, which threatened their families or livestock. Cutting wood was essential for a variety of tasks, from providing their house with fuel for the hearth, to building structures and even other tools. The two wooden pieces were connected by a leather strap, passed through holes or metallic loops at their connecting ends.

The flail was used to separate the grain from the husks, in a process called threshing, after they were harvested. The flail medieval tool also inspired the creation of the flail weapon.

Originally this was used as an improvised weapon, but later became a standard man-at-arms weapon. As a weapon, rather than a medieval tool, the flail would have been fashioned almost entirely out of metal. After the soil has been turned using one of the ploughs see below and the seeds are sown, the earth must be smoothed so that the seeds are covered and protected.

In order to achieve this, medieval farmers used a harrow. The harrow was essentially a wooden frame composed of four to six connected beams. The lower side was set with spikes or nails, made of either wood or metal. The frame of the harrow would be dragged over the ploughed, sown fields, and the spikes would comb the earth smooth, covering over the precious seeds.

As with the flail, it was indeed used as an improvised weapon in many cases. The fork has a wooden handle of about five to six feet long, tipped with two or three prongs or in some instances, as many as four or five , which were usually made of iron.

He bribed a priest in order to get a job in a factory, and then bribed the foreman so he could also work nights. During the day he worked in the factory, and at night he made drawings of the construction. This was classic industrial espionage. That was not exactly the safest thing to do at the time.

Italy wanted to protect its intellectual property. As was common at the time, such crimes were punished by death. The ship was just fast enough to escape an Italian warship. Eventually, both the drawings and Mr. Lombe arrived safely in England. In hindsight, he would not have had to go through all that trouble.

Someone already had published a book one hundred years earlier with quite detailed drawings of these machines, as seen in the picture on the right. The book was also available in the Oxford University Library, and Mr. Lombe could have checked it out there at anytime.

Anyway, the knowledge and technology had successfully arrived in England. Naturally, Mr. That did not sit well with the Italians. Shortly thereafter, a beautiful Italian woman showed up in England, became an employee of Mr. Lombe, and befriended him after that. Soon thereafter, Mr. Lombe died very young, very painfully, and under mysterious circumstances. The woman then returned speedily to Italy. Unfortunately, after a year, he was also dead. The technology was in England.

However, silk back then was a luxury good just as it is today. The volume market was cotton. Yet cotton has much shorter fibers, and therefore is more difficult to spin. The first to improve the technology to spin cotton was Mr. Richard Arkwright, later knighted Sir Richard Arkwright. He took over Mr. He built the first water-powered cotton spinning mill, Cromford Mill, near Birmingham. It was a smashing success. Arkwright became immensely rich.