Got this rusty old 26" saw home from the auction and cleaned off the center of the blade to look for a name, but was initially disappointed. Then I noticed some faint lettering way up at the top edge of the blade. The "German Steel" and partial "crown" stamps were readily deciphered, and with a bit more careful cleaning and using a magnifier while adjusting the light angle I'm confident that the first part of the name above "german" reads "Wharton". The extension of the name over "steel" is too indistinct to read Since I don't have Barley's Super Saw Manual (BSSM), I looked in HSMOB and found several Wharton references for 1828-1858 and believe its likely one of them, although I'm not entirely sure if the "crowns" style fits this time period. The blade does not seem to be taper ground, so I would assume this is a second line saw Comments on Wharton, or on the namestamp location ?
Hi Kiwi, BSSM has three of the HSMOB's Wharton's but not Wharton and Eyre. They are in Pigots 1828 and are down as edge tool makers, file manufacturers, merchants and factors and steel converters and refiners on various pages and finally as saw manufacturers on page 1094. If you appear to have a name after Wharton, the odds are that it will be Eyre. As per HSMOB they are at 67 Carver Street, Sheffield. I wouldn't worry about crowns too much, they seem to be able to appear at any time. Good find - again. Ray, can we get a jealousy icon on this new site. Fred
And I could do with an oh-dear-I-completely-missed-that-one icon; W & E are clearly on my photographed copy of the 1828-9 directory list of saw makers, but otherwise missing. Another correction... The mark is a strange one: it's in a very unusual place, right up at the back edge, and is very feebly struck, unless it was properly struck at the early stage, when the steel was in its softer, annealed stage, but before the grinding, which ought to have had to be more pronounced at the back edge, except that Kiwi finds it not taper ground – or did they start, and then find they were removing too much of the mark and therefore stopped? And the various components of the marking are very crowded together. This firm didn't last long, and perhaps this is an indication of their lack of quality.