My Bone Folder and others

Some of my hand tools. From left to right, we first encounter the Bone Folder which is....wait for it, made from bone (bovine I think) and is used for folding and manipulating various materials. Widely considered to be the general purpose tool for the book binder. Its neighbour, the Teflon Folder, much the same use as the bone folder, much more the space age than the stone age. Next is the Awl or Bodkin, I must say that I am not sure as to the correct term so I just refer to it as The Sharp Pointy Thing. Manifold uses including working with very small pieces of leather as in the image The Bookbinder Working on Klimt (see below). We move swiftly to the Craft Knives, useful for many things including cutting stuff up. The final two knives are specialist, the all metal knife is a Straight Blade or English Paring Knife. Though in the U K we may just say Paring knife. Used the work and trim mainly leather but also vellum, paper and book cloth. The rounded knife with the wooden handle is a French Paring Knife, the French would just say a Paring Knife (in French of course) Does much the same as the English Paring Knife but with a little more style.

To give some idea of the size of my tools the green cutting mat forming the back drop is graduated in centimeters.