Hello all, This S. Biggin & Sons is in my shop for cleanup and sharpening. I'm posting these pictures with permission of the owner. What I find interesting about the saw is the shape of the handle. It appears to be original as far as I can tell. The front edge of the cheeks even has some of the same orange/yellow varnish that is further back on the handle. Has anyone seen a handle like this? What date would you give this saw? Bob
Hi Bob, For what it is worth I think that the front of the handle has just been chopped off and the chamfer altered as well. I think that you can see saw blade marks on possibly cut edge. If there is orange yellow varnish on it it is probably post 1870 - ish although I am not at home at the moment and do not have access to BSSM or HSMOB and so I do not have Biggin's dates. Fred
Hi Fred, I thought the handle had been chopped too before seeing the saw in person. I think what you are seeing as saw marks is actually the grain of the wood. Looking in person and up close, there are no saw marks visible. Also, the front edge of the cheek is slightly concave and consistent on both sides. This would be hard to achieve with a saw cut. The bevel on the front of the cheek is smooth, uniform, and consistent with the bevel on the bottom of the cheek. The picture below shows where the chamfer stop would normally be on a saw. The rounded ends of the cuts show some care was taken, and would also be hard to make with a saw. These things plus the varnish on the front of the cheek makes me believe the handle has not been modified. On the date, I was thinking the use of mixed case letters in the word Sheffield stopped earlier than 1870, but I'm not sure. Bob
Hi Bob, Biggin's dates makes this more interesting. BSSM has them up to 1856 as "Sons" and HSMOB has and "Co" up to 1860. BSSM also has mixed case letters up to 1870 for Sheffield only, which yours is. If your handle is an original factory produced piece with original varnish, then this would put the usage of said varnish back to 1860. I really hope that your handle is original, but another doubt for me is in the image of the saw from the top in the post above this . The chamfers at the handle end do not terminate symmetrically, the one on the right seeming to go further back than the one on the left. Not by much but noticable. I cannot see a company putting a handle out with chamfers like that. If it has been adapted, then is has been done an awfully long time ago. Again, I hope that I am wrong, as is so often the case. Fred
Well I took the handle off this afternoon, and that explained some things. There are 6 screw holes in the plate, showing that this is not the original handle on the saw. That explains the age discrepancy between the (newer) orange varnish and the (older) lower case Sheffield. It also explains how such an atypical handle came to be on a Groves saw. I still think this is an original handle, just not original to this saw. It begs the question of what saw did the handle come off of, but perhaps that matters less now. The mysteries of saws never ends. Bob
Agree that this doesn't look like an original factory product, for all the reasons above, plus the medallion being rotated - the original would be most unlikely to have left the works like that, and the slots on the nuts have evidently had some pretty brutal work applied.