A connection........

This is an old wooden Jack Plane, owned by my great grandfather's brother, WG McCoy. The plane is made of Beech, the blade, steel. Straightforward enough until you start attacking Google looking for information.
My Great Grandfather was Sam McCoy, the brothers were qualified craftsmen in Dublin. This plane dates from 1900 - 1910, it was manufactured by Booth Brothers of Dublin. WG McCoy's name is stamped on the wood, along with several fairly hefty hammer marks. Each carpenter had a name stamp and would ensure his tools were marked; it was not unknown for tools to be permanently borrowed. 
See extras. Just below the handle is another name stamp, it's a difficult place to erase the name from, the same goes for the end of the block.
The final image shows an officer of the Irish Free State Army, formed in 1920, holding a Booths driver and brat at revolver point, the IRA and various other rebels were still getting up to their shenanigans after the Easter uprising. My grandfather was, at the time, a Telegram Boy at the O'Connell St Post Office, scene of the major stand-off during the uprising. 
There we have it, a hand tool which required and requires strong musculature to use and a link directly to an old man I only met once. He was powerful, bowed with age and infirmity and lived in a dark tenement flat in Dublin; I was 7, polished to my finest by his daughter and proudly displayed as his eldest great grandson, her first grandson. 
The first known use of a wooden hand plane is the mid 17th Century. Cor!