Hey Ray et al. Rob, I loved the words you used on an earlier post, the "non-conformance to identicality of product" and sort of "pushed it' in a title for an interesting saw that I just received. I couldn't resist this little gem from Josh Clark and I am wondering what the group's ideas might be because neither Josh nor I have come up with anything definitive so I share it. I had hoped there might have been some identification in the plate (and believe me I looked hard) but if there was it is now gone. I would think it is an "early" beech handle holding a 12" blade. The depth has been well sharpened to a 1 1/2 depth but you can see it was 2-2 1/2" wider. The nose is rounded over and the thickness of the blade interestingly tapers from a .9mm cutting edge to a .8mm back. The two brass nuts are 7/16's haven't really been messed with but have been tightened. The blade has been tightened even further with a later small sliver of plate between the blade and handle. Now for the conjecture.... There is now no sign of there being a back on the saw. I included pictures from above of the handle that shows no sign that there was a "let in" to suggest there was a back. Is this a table saw that has been cut down because it was broken or twisted? Any of my table saws seem to have a thicker plate but none of them would date to this time. Maybe a failed development gone wrong and adjusted as time went on. The nose rounding would have been done very long ago because the patina matches everything else. Or.... do we have an old handle with a newer thin plate that has been added and the extra thicknesser addressed some of the issues of stability? ..another saw mystery. Enjoy Joe S.
Hi Joe, I will defer to you on the details of the construction because you have the saw, but from what I can see on the photo's, it may well be that you have a different blade and handle. I use the word different because I cannot see which is older from the photo's. I hazard this guess because:- There is a "spacer" between the blade and the boss; The topshot of the handle looks like a thicker blade was marginally set into the chamfer stop. I also think that the rear saw screw has been removed at some stage. The striation marks on the front screw are in the plane of the sanding process that would have finished the handle. Sort of 20 to the hour to 10 past the hour, whereas the striation marks on the rear screw appear to me to be more or less 12 o'clock to 6 o'clock. If you take screws out that have a square section "root" to them, you have 50/50 chance of getting them back right. ( I think, I never was any good at sums but because you cannot tell from the marks whether they are facing the correct way or back to front, that removes two of the four possible placings ). This is what has possibly happened with this saw The boss and handle look to have a bit of age to them and the patina is lovely. Hope that this is helps. Fred
Hi Joe, I'm intrigued.. I'd not discount the possibility of it being a user concoction, cobbled together out of a few available parts. But, if the handle shape is somewhat original, then I'd think it's the handle from a keyhole saw or something along those lines, and the blade has been salvaged from a cut down handsaw, which might go someway towards explaining the taper. 0.9mm (36 thou) is more like a handsaw thickness.... so why did they put a spacer in the handle? There's some interesting history to be unravelled there... I wonder what it was used for? Regards Ray
+1 on the re-purposing of a keyhole saw handle and a piece of saw plate. Keyhole saw blades are typically quite a bit thicker than handsaw blades, hence the need for a spacer plate. By the looks of the concave toothline, this saw was likely fabricated long ago (say 100yrs). It would be nice if old saws could talk (and show pictures), but maybe that would lessen the enjoyment of WAGing on the saw's history. Thanks for sharing.
Hey all Thanks for the responses. I don't have a lot of keyhole saw examples to say right or wrong but you are probably right on the marriage of two "old" parts which I figured was the case originally. They do have some age and it certainly has been sharpened a few times to make that kind of a significant concave. An interesting "flyer". Joe S