The Working Tools of a Freemason

Every degree in Craft Masonry hands the candidate a set of working tools. They are the real tools of the stonemason's yard, and each one is explained as a figure of something a Mason should do with his life. This is the American set. English lodges present a slightly different one, with a chisel in the first degree and a skirret and pencil in the third, and the lessons are the same.

The twenty four inch gauge is a rule, marked in inches. The operative mason measured his work with it. The Entered Apprentice is told to use it to divide his day, into work, into service to God and to a brother in need, and into refreshment and rest. Eight hours for each is the traditional reading of the twenty four marks.

The common gavel is the hammer the mason used to knock the rough corners off a stone. The Apprentice is told to use it on himself, to divest his mind of the vices and superfluities of life and fit himself, as a stone is fitted, for a place in the building.

The Fellow Craft receives three tools, and they are the three that appear most often in Masonic art. The square tests a right angle and teaches morality, dealing straight with everyone. The level tests a horizontal surface and teaches equality, that brethren meet on the level whatever their station outside the lodge. The plumb tests a vertical and teaches uprightness, that a man should stand true in his conduct as a wall stands true to the plumb line.

Meet on the level, act by the plumb, part on the square. The three tools give the Craft one of its oldest sayings.

The Master Mason receives the trowel, the tool that spreads mortar. Its Masonic use is to spread the cement of brotherly love and affection, the cement that binds the stones of the building into one, which is to say the brethren into one lodge. The trowel is the only tool that joins rather than tests or cuts, and it belongs to the degree that completes the work.

The Working Tools plate in the Archives collection lays out gavel, trowel, plumb, level and gauge as engraved instruments, with the rough and perfect ashlars and a tracing board around them. The Entered Apprentice plate in the Square and Compasses collection gathers the first degree's tools, and the Fellow Craft plate the second's. The Square plate takes the square alone.