Toolmaker
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L’Outilleur | The Toolmaker
Drawing (artist unknown) appearing in Hardware merchandising March-June 1915, University of Toronto, Wikimedia Commons
Today, an outilleur, or toolmaker, is an artisan who makes jigs, fixtures, dies, molds, cutting tools, gauges, and other tools used in manufacturing processes. Working from drawings developed by the toolmaker himself or an engineer, the toolmaker lays out the design of the object on raw material (usually metal), then cuts it to size and shape using manually-controlled machine tools (such as lathes, milling machines, grinding machines, and jig grinders) and hand tools (such as files and honing stones).
In New France, tools were obviously more rudimentary. The first tools were created to work the land. For example, the croc or crocq was used to remove roots and rocks from the ground. The écobue, a kind of hoe, was used to cut or uproot plants. The billhook was used to prune branches. In the 18th century, more advanced tools appeared, such as the hook and the croissant (also known as a volant).
Sources:
Séguin, Robert-Lionel, "L'outillage Agraire En Nouvelle-France : Du Défrichement Au Labourage", Ethnologie Française 4, no. 3 (1974): 291-308. www.jstor.org/stable/40988308.
“Outillage”, Portail lexique du Centre national de ressources textuelles et lexicales, https://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/outilleur.