Taylor Brothers, the last London Flat??

Hello all,

As you may have realised by now, lots of saws interest or fascinate me and this one is no different. It is a Taylor Brothers 28 1/4 inch rip saw with dome headed nuts which make it very late, post 1910 according to HSMOB.

Measured by Simon Barley's rules of thumb for rip saws, 28" makes it late as well and so does the amount of "meat" left on the blade. This one has 8 1/4 inches at the heel and 2 /14 inches at the toe and as a result has probably not done a lot of work ergo, late saw.

And this is exactly right as barely discernable on the blade is "Taylor Brothers Sheffield 1917".

But of course the fascinating thing about this is that it has a London Flat!!
Provided that the handle is contemporaneous with the blade ( and I have no reason to doubt it) this must make it one of the last London Flat handled saws made. Now, I am sure that someone will come up with a later saw with a flat bottomed handle, but no matter, I will have had my five minutes of fame. Perhaps a little more than 5 minutes because, if my date is genuine it extends HSMOB's span for Taylor Bros. from 1915 to 1917. (Attribution:- "Saw in the hands of a collector"). Someone please tell me how to put smilies in!, my technophobia is working overtime.

As you can hopefully see from the second Taylor Brothers (J Taylor and Son, but still a Taylor Bros.) rip that I have put on with the split nuts and the ground flat medallion, this one is probably older, but has a conventional handle. Please note the lovely medallion with the "recumbent paschal lamb". It is so detailed that even the fleece is visible.

And the final thing of interest in these two saws is that they have lost teeth in approximately the same place at the front of the saw. For those of you who have used such instruments in anger, is this common damage in rips or is it a quirk of (the quality of?) Taylor Bros. saws.

Fred
I am sorry that some of the photo angles and perspectives are curious, but I has problems with glare and reflections.

 

Hi Fred,
Thats a really nice pair of Taylor saws (have you cleaned/refinished to handles at all ? If so, what did you use ?).
Much nicer than two of my Taylor saws pictured below, one a modern 18" panel saw with a nice etch that seems much newer than yours, and the other larger saw with chips in the blade toe worse than yours.

My modern Taylor saw seems to be from about 1950s era. I also googled some references to Trade Directories with post 1917 Taylor Bros (I haven't looked at these Directories myself)
White's 1919; "Taylor (Brothers) manufacturers of saws, steel, files, planing & moulding irons, c Adelaide Works, Mowbray Street"
Kelly's 1925; "Taylor (Brothers) saw &c. manufacturers Adelaide Works, Mowbray Street"

I have other brand saws with broken teeth, both heel and toe locations but maybe more at the toe, and I suspect that is due to the increased bending stresses nearer the toe that have started stress cracking, that combined with later tooth setting has broken teeth. Saw makers were always trying to make their steel as hard as they dared to keep their saws sharp for longer, without being so hard as to make them brittle.

I don't recall seeing any crooked (lamb's tongue) London Pattern handle that's newer than your 1917 one, so that's a record in my books

 

Hello Kiwi,
I got both of these saws off Ebay, probably off the same seller at different times. I think that the coating on them is just varnish/lacquer. The handles do not look as good in real life as they do on photo's. But then again, few saws off Ebay do! I am not overly keen on doing unecessary cleaning to saws, but I am sure that they will sell better and for more if they are cleaned.

Never having set a saw, I didn't think of the teeth fracturing on setting, and your idea of that combined with blade stress sounds good.

I have a Mowbray saw like your small one but with not as good an etch, and I really like your larger saw - that is some fracture that it has. I suspect that that, and the damaged handle will tell a story of the work that it has done. After all tools (to me at least) are about their history and what they have experienced - but I won't go on about that again.

Thanks for the pictures and info.

Fred

 

Hi Fred,

The London flat is a big saw, I don't think I realised how big it was on ebay until put it next to the other saw.

It also turned up quick, a good seller.

Not much to say, and agree that teeth tend to break when setting not when sawing.

Your a lucky man.

cheers

lui

 

Taylor Brothers...

Another interesting one (when is a saw NOT interesting to the obsessive?).
I think that barely visible below the maker's mark is a date, which I suspect is 1916, 1917 or 1918 - this was supplied to the army for use in France. It's a second quality, hence the London pattern handle, and the less than wonderful steel (maybe combined with scarcely gentle use in making wood work for trenches), and the broken teeth.
But fitting a medallion! And, as Fred says, such a beautifully detailed one.But Thomas Turner fitted a medallion to their 6th quality line (the Renrut saw).

And did I really say that 28inches makes it a late saw? If I did I was (not for the first time, or, alas, the last) talking b***ls. 28in saws were made in the 18th century by Joseph Wilson of Sheffield, and big rippers were often that length.His cost 24 shillings per dozen for common steel, and 54 shillings per dozen for best steel (none sold of the top quality, crucible cast steel).

Regards Simon

 

Hi Ray,

I hadn't looked at the teeth before as I assumed with such a low ppi it would be a rip. However the teeth look more like cross cut teeth, filed with a sloping gullet. Fred should be able to confirm if they have been sharpened for cross or rip.

If they are cross cut, this raises two possibilities:

1. The saw was a rip saw with big teeth and has been re-filed to cross cut for some reason. The re-filing was carried out by someone who new what he was doing, sloping gullets went out of popularity in the 19th C.

2. It was was made with cross cut teeth. This raises an interesting question. Why make a cross cut saw with teeth this big? I've never seen a X cut hand saw with an extremely low ppi, 3 ppi is low even for a rip saw.

Cross cut saws with big teeth were one and two man logging saws, they are normally 3' long minimum and and are breasted for green wood work.

I agree that the date stamp suggests that it was for the military, 1917 puts it at the tail end of WW1.

I would hazard a suggestion, (with no colaborative evidence) That the saw was made for the trenches and dugouts, where space was at a premium, a big hand saw would have been much easier to use than a 3-4' logging saw for cutting props etc.

The blade is big with lots of weight, and for cross cutting with with big teeth you need that weight to carry the saw in the cut.

Big teeth mean quicker rougher cutting, but props in a dougout didn't need to look good, just be functional.

All the above is hyperthetical, but it is and interesting saw.

regards

lui

 

Hello all,

I have just lost my entire reply and am having to do it again, but at least you will be spared some of the drivel that I put in the first one.

You are right about the medallion Ray, it is on the smaller saw not this one.

As for the teeth Lui, I am not very good at angles etc., but I think that the teeth are cut (by and large) straight across which in my book is rip. Although there is one tooth in the first photo that has some sort of fleam angle to it, but this is not consistent throughout the saw. The rake angle though is not rip, more crosscut. Anyway I have taken some more photo's of the teeth in order to let you decide for yourselves.

Just one comment about teeth/filing. At the end of their working lives, saws may not end up in the hands of people who are as fastidious and concerned for their futrure wellbeing as some of you are. The sharpening may be done in a slipshod manner or by amateurs and so their present condition may not reflect their normal working purpose.

Looking at the teeth on this saw, the final sharpening was not necessarily done with skill or care that it should have been.

Having said that, I like your (various) ideas about usage in the trenches and cutting green wood, whether rip or crosscut. I am thinking that in the probably appalling working conditions in the trenches, you would not want to put your rip saw down in the water/mud in order to pick up a crosscut. You would probably want a "one size fits all", especially as Lui implies the finish need not be to bench joinery standard.

In my limited experience of bodging things, you can crosscut with a rip far more easily than you can rip with a crosscut, and so a combination of both may have been the order of the day if it worked effectively. (Crosscut rake, rip fleam - I hope that I have read the "nomenclature" section properly) Could the way that this saw is sharpened fill this particular bill?

I find Simon's comments on the handle and the steel interesting as they do answer a couple of questions that I had. Firstly, cheap saw = poor steel = teeth breaking more easily?? Secondly cheap saw = London Flat which is much simpler/cheaper to make than a fishtail. After all, if it was destined to be used at the Front, it may not be expected to last much longer than some of the men did. It makes a certain amount of sense.

I am a little disappointed though with London flats being on cheaper saws. I had thought/hoped that the usage of a London flats on later saws would hark back to a time when their uasge would have been on quality saws and therefore imply quality. But , realsitically there would be little nostalgia in Victorian industrial Britain, or during the first world war.

A fascinating series of replies. Thanks to all.

Fred

 

Today I was looking at my S Tyzack & Son catalogue No 640, which is reputedly from about 1938, and find a London Pattern saw listed there.

Sorry Fred (although, if no-one has seen one in the flesh, maybe you do still have the newest London Pattern saw)

 

Hi Kiwi,

C'est la vie. 1938 is awfully late for a (note) "London Pattern" handle. Ken Hawley was correct. ( I never thought that he wasn't).

A reward of half my kingdom is offered for information leading to the owner of one who is prepared to sell it.

You must realise, of course, that half of nothing is still nothing.

Fred

 

Taylor brothers

Hope this doesn't sound like a dampener - the problem about interpreting saw tooth shape is that they can have been altered at any time after the saw left the maker...
Took possession today of a hand saw by J Pagdin (Sheffield, c1850) which has been refiled to a tooth pattern that is a complete replica pattern (but much smaller) of a two man cross cut of c1900 - except for the last 6 teeth at the heel, which are still those of a normal cross cut hand saw. Someone having fun, showing off his filing skills???

Simon