Redaction: This verse underscores Nephi’s narrative method: a relentless focus on spiritual information that ruthlessly excludes information of lesser priority, including building a ship sufficiently seaworthy to sail to the Americas. Nephi is not reporting this revelation verbatim since he mentions that Yahweh has already shown him the future ship, an event that must have taken considerable time and explanation. Yet Nephi records as his only response a simple request about where to find the raw materials. His acceptance of this daunting task and reliance on Yahweh are total.
History: Kelly DeVries, professor of the history of technology at Loyola College in Maryland, describes the tools Nephi would have needed for his task:
One of the points that Nephi makes is that he refines ore to make tools. Presumably these tools were iron tools. He doesn’t tell us that the tools were any different from what he’d seen in the north, which would have been a series of axes, wedges, and chisels—all basically metal objects that could be sharpened to use to cut trees. Saws were not used at the time, nor, in fact, would it have been beneficial to use a saw to cut much of the wood. Cutting planks using axes created flexibility in the timber that could not have been acquired using a saw. Flexibility meant that the wood was far more durable.