Good ol'l Doc Barton heeheh. 
  Just kidding, but DR Barton was one of the largest manufacturers of edge tools at one time.

This is a woodturning gouge. For a lathe. (Sometimes called a fingernail gouge for obvious reasons.)
If you aren't sure when looking at a gouge, much of the time the ones with no bolster??
That swelling of metal so the handle can't pound into the handle any deeper?
  If it doesn't have one of those?
  Its probably for woodturning.

One or two companies made really small woodcarving chisels with no bolsters (Herron for one) but by and large, all the larger woodcarving tools have bolsters on the tang.

Yes they all had numbers once.
  The "sweep" of the gouge?  How much curve it has?
These were always numbered.

The only fly in that ointment is, different companies used different numbering systems.
Big help, huh?

I kind of think this box and tools date to the early 1900's.
The box could have been made last week and there is no way to know for sure.
But the tools?  Seem to mostly be centered around this time.

I see some older and some newer too, but the majority??
    yours Scott 

PS If I was guessing, and I am,  I am thinking this guy worked for the circus.
Something along that line. Carnival maybe? Municipal architecture?
But something involving stand alone carving.
  The box is highly portable. Its missing all manner of cabinet or even carpenter tools. This guy wasn't doing a wide range of work. This was a carvers box.   

Quote from: scottg on August 06, 2013, 08:24:20 PM

PS If I was guessing, and I am,  I am thinking this guy worked for the circus.
Something along that line. Carnival maybe? Municipal architecture?
But something involving stand alone carving.
  The box is highly portable. Its missing all manner of cabinet or even carpenter tools. This guy wasn't doing a wide range of work. This was a carvers box.

Huh, like fixing the carving on the carousel?

or carving things to sell, like the chainsaw logs into bears guy?


Interesting direction...

Woodcarving for a circus was a big deal in the golden era of circuses.  There were a lot of circus carvers.

Quote from: johnsironsanctuary on August 06, 2013, 10:52:43 PM
Woodcarving for a circus was a big deal in the golden era of circuses.  There were a lot of circus carvers.

  Yeah, and there were so many of them, and they were so good, that they didn't make all the money in the world either. There were carvers at the county courthouse, the corner church, every boat of consequence, woodcarving was everywhere.
Not like now when only a handful are good, there were thousands once.

   It was a solid respectable occupation, but not highly lucrative, so that would be reflected in the box in general. Good solid tools, but not the big expensive sets. 
  More like, just what it took the man to do his job and only a little extra. 
     yours Scott

Supply & demand! now we have computers doing the layout & machines carving... hard to compete by handcraft.. 

That's a Barton lathe gouge -- no shoulder for the handle.   I have a number of Barton tools, and three lathe tools.

D.R. Barton is one of my favorite American tool makers.  Always dependable quality.  This mark doesn't appear on the early Barton products, but is some help in determining age.  Attached is a Barton generated drawing showing this particular mark.   I thought the mark wasn't used until 1870, but apparently it was used at least a year earlier.  At the same time, Barton began using the half oval mark as well.

almost done, a few more gouges

new to me names today

Buck Brothers


AUG 143 by skipskip, on Flickr


Moulson Brothers


AUG 146 by skipskip, on Flickr


and a v groove chisel, what is it called?



AUG 152 by skipskip, on Flickr

Thats most of it.

what seem to be missing, at least to my non-woodworking eye.

brace

mallet or soft hammer for the chisels

what else?

moulson and addis both british make.

Buck Bothers -- one of my other favorite American tool makers.  The brothers started their own company after working for D.R. Barton.  One brother left first, and the other joined him later.  I have a plane blade marked Henry Buck.