Hello All, I don't normally "do" Disstons but I thought that this one when I bought is was more of an oddball than it has turned out to be. On the photo I could not see any stars an the label screw which, with this design of screw seemed odd. But of course when I got it, lo and behold there the stars were. Having looked at it properly the question then became "What do I and the 19th President of the United States have in common"? The answer being we both have a Disston that has a comma after "the Sons" on the label screw, although I suspect that his saw is in a little better condition than mine. If you go to the "Medallions" section of the Disstonian Institute's website http://www.disstonianinstitute.com/medv2.html and scroll down past the 1876 screw image you will come to two images of medallions, one on a saw presented to Rutherford B Hayes (aforesaid President) and another one of similar design. Both have commas after the "Sons", although mine looks more like a full stop. (Although so does the President's from what little can be seen) The dates for these are unclear except that they seem to fall between the two patents for screws - 1876 and 1888. Are these the best (good though they are) dates that I am going to get or does anyone know of more accurate dates for when this type of medallion was used? Another unaswerable question (I suspect) but one can live in hope. Fred If you go to the "Backsaw" page of the Institute and look at the images of impressed marks on backs http://www.disstonianinstitute.com/backsawpage.html (about 1/5th of the way down) the 4th image in the series has the same impressed mark as my saw, even down to the asymmetrical nature of the name on the stamp. (Curious) Was this purposeful or an error on one particular batch?
Hi Fred, I've started writing a reply to this thread several times now... only to get distracted. I suspect that the turn over of tooling in the medallion making section of Disston would have been quite rapid, so it might well be possible to get a more accurate time line of medallions by looking at the "fine structure", somewhat along the lines that Graham (ilges71) suggested a while back, certainly there are enough surviving Disstons to make such a timeline study possible. The medallion timeline on Eric Von Sneidern's http://www.disstonianinstitute.com/medv2.html would be the starting point. As Eric points out the medallions changed more over time than any other feature. Regards Ray