Hello all, Well, you trundle along for your Sunday morning constitutional, during which you come across a saw whose name you can't quite read but you know that you don't have an example of that maker, whatever his name turns out to be. Because the handle and mark look to be quite late, you think, "This is going to be an easy one. If it isn't in HSMOB it must be in the directories." So, having discerned that it's Holy not Moly or Noly ( my wife really got fed up with the Holy Moly comments) you look it up in HSMOB and, lo and behold there is a Holy, but it is not W.F. but D and G. (1833 to 1852). Unfazed you think that the company must be in the directories, probably a little (a lot) later owing to the above mentioned handle design and mark. But, of course it isn't. Now, the eagle eyed amongst you will have noticed two things. The first is that the mark is on the reverse of the saw - which may mean a replaced handle and therefore dating by it may not be reliable although it does have a very good fit and looks untampered with. What you can't see from the photo's, however is that the blade end and back look to have been cut. There is a raised burr on the end of the back and the blade angles out slightly from the line of the cut back. So, have the original screw holes been cut off and the handle put on what was once the "front" of the saw? The blade is still 12" long and which if cut, would have made it 14" - ish. And the second is a little mark between cast and steel which I am assuming is a blemish and not a dot. So, is my dating to the latter part of the 19th/early 20th century wrong? If it is wrong, how wrong is it? Can anyone shed any light on this saw must be related in some way to the HSMOB Holy. Fred
W.F. Holy and Co Hey Fred Interesting saw. I think you are right when you thought it just didn't look old. I took a quick look in the 1879 Directory as a shot in the dark and sure enough...on Hermitage Ln (st) and London St (intersection?) is listed a Wilson Holy, sawmaker. Don't know what the F represented on the steel back. John Wright next door is listed as a "saw handle maker" and I hope he didn't make that handle or it would have been a shortlived business. Hope that helps... Joe S.
Thanks Joe, I was going to say that I get really annoyed with myself when I look through a directory and miss what I am looking for, as per the 1879 entry, but then I realised that I had partially seen it (as in the Wilson, Holy bit but not the sawmaker bit). I discounted it because, after a couple of times transposing Surnames with Christian names in these directories, any highlighted entry (as per the Holy), unless it is at the start of the line - gets ignored. But I did see this one as I remarked to my now substantially suffering wife that it was curious for a person to be named Holy Wilson. (I once knew a man whose names were Lord Gordon Hoskins and I thought that Holy Wilson's parents must have had the same sense of humour). Anyway, you are almost certainly right as the co-incidence of a sawmaker recorded as such would be too great, and I suspect in this instance that the compiler of the directory did a bit of transposing himself. Fred
WF Holy I think I can add a bit, but as usual, backsawers are well ahead. This is the entry in the book, which I have just spent a week re-formatting, to try and get the list of saw makers down a bit - it's still 434 pages. Am getting quotes for printing, but don't hold your breaths... WILSON, Henry SHEFFIELD Hermitage Lane 1876-1879, 1898 & 1906 WILSON, William Frederick Harley (or Holy) Hermitage Lane, London Road 1883-1907 The overlap between these two apparently related men is not clear. Both were simply listed as saw makers. W.F.H. Wilson gave his trade mark in 1900 as “The City Saw†(for which see Slack, Sellars, who presumably took over Wilson). The saw illustrated is assumed to be a second quality item from the second of these two. It sports a medallion, but is otherwise about as second (or 3rd, or 4th) quality as Fred's. PS Fred - could you let me have a more generously pixelated one of the mark, please? Thanks a lot, as before. Simon