Hi everyone, I thought that I'd share a saw that I find rather interesting, it's a Japanese Mae-Biki / Whale Back Rip Saw. It has a 505mm long plate, with a graduated tooth line going from 4ppi down to a coarse 2ppi. I have four of these Mae Biki saws, but this one is different, due to it having the plate re toothed by way of having a "keyed in" section of plate joined into the old plate- I've not seen anything like this on a saw before. The plate has been hand beaten & you can see many of the hammer blows from forging, & the "new" piece of plate is very skilfully joined to the old & has what looks like a Hanko / signature mark. After having all that done to it the saw will clean up reasonably well, it would have been a tricky job to key that piece in & hammer it into place & lock it in & keep the saw straight & in tension, a very skilled saw smith I think! Regards Mari
Hi Mari, Is the repair actually overlapped and hammer welded with heat or is it simply keyed together in a tight fit and then hammered to wedge the keys in place? In any case I think it's an amazing repair. One wonders why it was thought necessary. I have lots of saws with make-do repairs, but they're all to the handles, not to the blade. David
Hi David, thanks for your reply, looking at the dents in the metal along the keyed in joint, they look like it's been done when the metal is hot & been plastic, but how they hammered it together hot & then tempered it & then cooled it down without warping or cracking is pretty impressive I think. I do wonder why they just didn't cut the teeth into the remaining plate? Why did they need to key in that piece? Or perhaps was it made like this originally, with a cutting edge of special steel that they only had a little of? I don't know , it's very curious. Regards Mari
Hi Mari, Thanks for posting a very interesting saw, I've never seen a saw plate joined like that, but then I've not really studied Japanese saws in any detail, my first thought is that it might be a way of extending the life of a saw, or it might be original to a new saw using different materials, perhaps a harder steel for the teeth and a different temper for the backing. Sort of like japanese swords used a harder steel blade forged welded to a softer flexible backing. Either way, it's an amazing demonstration of skill to forge weld with such expertise. Very impressive work. Ray
Thanks for your reply Ray, its a pretty cool piece of work indeed, I'd love to know the story behind it.... Regards Mari