Dear all, Usually the saws I find are hiding under a 100+ year old layer of rust & dirt, so to find a saw that needs no cleaning is very rare for me. This saw came from the USA & the lady who sold it to me had a large box of tools that were her Great Great Grandfathers & the chest had been in the family basement for 80+ years unopened. It's a 14" carcass saw, 11PPI peg tooth profile, 3 X saw tooth bordered stamps- "JOHN BUXTON" & "SHEFFIELD" & "CAST STEEL". A warranted superior medallion, & an arrised brass spine top & lower edge. BSSM has a John Buxton from 1833-1862 & mentions that Joseph Tyzack later uses the name also. It has a chip off the top horn but overall in pretty good shape for its age, I'm thinking that perhaps it is from the later years of John Buxtons production- 1860s? Regards Mari
Hi Mari, For a start, you have a wonderful mark there, the style of which is quite scarce on an 1860's saw ( which I think that it may well be). I have it in my mind, although from where I do not know that W/S medallions in the form that is on this saw, were not used until the early 1860's. The only snag for this date and not a later one is the rounded nose to the back. However the roundedness seems to me to be more pronounced on your saw that on later ones (clutching at straws here??) and I am sure that I have a similar shaped nose somewhere that I put at a little earlier than the 1860's. If this is the case then they may have been used earlier than Circa 1900 as an alternative to the hammered square nose. Does anyone have any ideas on this. Fred I have just looked properly at the handle and do I see some of the dreaded orange/yellow varnish on it?? I don't know when they started varnishing handles, but I don't think that I have seen one on a saw that was made much before the late 1870's/80's. So this is potentially snag no.2, although half the time I cannot distinguish the remnants of varnish, from wood polished by gripping/usage.
Hi Fred, Many thanks for your input, yes it definitely has a "shellac" type finish on it, that's an interesting point that you have not seen that finish on your earlier saws, that may be a helpful dating feature indeed. Most saws I see have the finish mostly, if not completely gone (apart from Dissons that seem to be quite resilient to finish loss), so this one with a near complete finish is unusual. Regards Mari
I think of John Buxton saws as puzzles, chiefly because they don't resemble what I would expect from the dates in the directories, and because the name was taken up and used by a later maker. That said, I have a picture (alas, and shame on me, I can't remember where it came from: it might even be my own, but I'd have to check that) which shows exactly the mark on Mari's, but on a saw which I didn't feel too much hesitation in dating at c1850. The brass back is rounded, not arrised, and I don't think there is any varnish on the handle. The screws look as though they may have been replaced, or at any rate messed about with. Whether a saw-toothed edge to a mark could have been used as far as 1860, I would doubt, but there's always a first time for everything, and old mark punches could hang around for a very long time; Moulson Brothers used the same style of 3 separate marks with the same edge pattern, but not, I think, beyond about 1840. Handles and varnish can be later additions, but this [Mari's] looks all of a piece. The sharpening [of Mari's, that is] is mostly distinctly wobbly, except for the proximal 3 inches, which look very well set and regularly sharpened. Not sure I've done much useful, here. Sorry, Mari.
Hi Simon, Many thanks for your reply, and great to see your photo of another John Buxton with saw tooth border stamps- they are out of line too, so 3 X separate stamps indeed. I really like the look of the saw tooth border stamps & have found that even chisels that have that style of stamp are often early, so I keep an eye out for them too. I wonder- would there be enough evidence for the saw tooth border stamping on a saw to be used as a dating feature, such as no more usage past 1840-50s? No doubt there would be possible exceptions- maybe even John Buxtons....? Regards Mari
Thank you, Mari. I suggested on p68 of BSSM that the saw tooth frame might go as far as 1820, but I think that was probably a bit conservative, and it would not be unreasonable to extend the end date to c1840 – but not later, until someone tells us otherwise (which could well happen). If only there were some sort of tree-ring marking for us to date saws. The uneven-ness of multiple mark punches being used together was overcome by Wheatman & Smith, who marked saws with several marks simultaneously held in a some sort of jig (thanks for that suggestion to the late, great, Jay Gaynor). The handsaw here is about 1880.
Thanks Simon, that's great, another "pointer" to help with dating saws. & those Wheatman & Smith marks sure are a lot straighter with the help of the stamping jig. Regards Mari