I finally got a hold of a copy of “Before the Mast: Life and Death Aboard the Mary Rose” through inter library loan.  It a veritable treasure trove of information on woodworking and tools from 1500′s England.  So many of the wooden tools survived due to amazing and somewhat miraculous circumstances.  Much of the iron is gone, but you can infer a lot from the markings and residue.

Amazing stuff, and very well documented.  Unfortunately I can’t keep the book, and copies go for hundreds of dollars.  Time to get busy with a copy machine I think, at least to grab the sections I am most interested in. There is a great dovetailed box that I might want to recreate.  They were most likely imports from the Continent, as dovetails weren’t the norm in England until later.

– badger