Hello all, According to BSSM, this firm lasted for only a year between 1845 and 1846 and has a mark illustrated which says "Webster and Johnson", minus the end "s". I thought at first that this might be a mark in the vein of Slack Sellars and Graysons, where there may possibly have been more than one Grayson in the firm for a while as the mark was normally "Slack Sellars and Grayson". That may still be the case, but if the firm did only survive for about a year (possibly a little more depending upon how the dates were determined), it seems rather a short period of time to be messing around with the mark. Then I read in BSSM that there was a handsaw saw in America that had a "g" at the end - Johnsong", and which was an obvious mistake. This then got me thinking that the "g", whilst a mistake, may have not been a mistake re the name Johnson (i.e. an added "g"), but for the name Johnsons (a substitute for the end "s"). Perhaps the plural Johnsons was the more common mark and BSSM's mark is a scarcer one. I doubt that I shall ever know as there seem to be so few of them around, and so if any of you have one lurking about, please put it on for comparison. I bought the saw, therefore, specifically for the added?? "s", and this is the reason for the thread title. As you will see from the photo's below, the saw, as a saw, leaves a lot to be desired in terms of originality and functionality. Neither was it cheap!! Fred
Thanks for that, Simon said that the saw to which he referred was on an American website. This must be the one. A lovely saw but not 1820. But why on earth would someone put a "g" at the end of Johnson? It is a very hard mistake to make. Fred
http://www.backsaw.net/forum/index.php?threads/webster.390/#post-2355 http://www.backsaw.net/forum/index.php?threads/slack-sellars-and-graysons.205/#post-1101
Hi Toby, To say that I am a little confused re the making of stamps for maker's marks is an understatement. You say that the error was down to using the wrong letter die and which to me points to two methods of attaching maker's names to saws. The first being that, in order to get a single letter wrong then the offending letter (or all the letters) would have to be stamped singly and which I don't think is likely with the Johnsong whereas the "s" on my Graysons is marginally displaced from the plane of the rest of the mark and may well have been additionally stamped by a single letter after the main stamp. or secondly, that name stamps were made much like newspaper type used to be done, by pouring molten metal into a mold that has been pre-made from individual letters. I don't know if the second process was in use during the mid 1840's. I always thought that name stamps were filed out of a block of steel by hand as a single entity and using this process to manually file an extra "g" or a "g" for an "s" must take a fair bit of illiteracy or a massive amount of lack of concentration. I actually saw this process (hand filing of a stamp) in action when I visited the Kelham Island museum one day. Forgive my ignorance on such matters or if I have misunderstood what you were trying to say with the "wrong letter die" reference. Fred
I don't know how they were stamped, I was imagining separate letter dies held in a fixture, so you could replace one if it broke, instead of replacing the whole die.