I know this website is primarily interested – and rightly – in high quality items, but it may be worth thinking from time to time about the rest of the huge output of the world's saw industries – the poorer quality items that perhaps don't survive as well as the more expensive and attractive tools that are so desirable even today. Here's one from the factory of Joseph Tyzack, made, I'm thinking, about 1900, give or take a decade. I bought it for two reasons: because I'd not heard of Pape & Sons of Battersea, south London, and wanted it to complete our reference collection at the museum, but also because it's another example of the superb etching techniques this firm used around this period. I hope the pictures may convey the quality of the etch – ridiculously good for such a cheap saw [probably of the order of £4.66 each] – a fine design, and etched so deeply you might think it had been individually engraved, which was impossible at that price and productivity. Today it's blunt, but straight, and I might imagine that it's never been sharpened since it was made, and indeed probably never did much sawing of anything in its life ; again, I'm imagining that someone bought it from this tool dealer as a cheap saw for odd jobs about the house and had neither the means nor the need to get it back to the saw doctor, until it was too late to find one – a sharpener out of business and overtaken by the arrival of an even cheaper saw that the owner could, alas for the planet, throw away.
Hi Simon, Although this was an inexpensive saw, I'm curious as to how firmly the two fasteners have continued to hold the handle to the blade. And, on another note, wondering why it was named after Daedalus, I googled his name and discovered that he had claimed to have been the inventor of the saw! Yet, when the credit was given to his nephew, Daedalus murdered him, fled to Crete, became embroiled in royal scandals, was imprisoned, made wings to flee, etc. etc. Still, if myths are true, we are all in his debt.
These Sheffield makers were surprisingly enterprising in their namings, with medallions their favourite playground for names and designs, it seems to me. I didn't show the back of the handle, but the fasteners are the simplest kind of steel screw, slotted, raised, in need of a fraction of a turn to tighten them.
It looks like a Bowden missing the middle bolt.... nice etch with the acanthus scrolls, & cool to find one with a business name etched into the blade, thanks for sharing Simon. Regards Mari