Maybe even have Biff give it a good spit shine. Today’s destination? Seventeenth century Denmark. The joiner’s guild has built an ornate chest with various tools of their trade depicted on it. Chests like this were constructed by guilds and proudly displayed by them in their guild halls. A black and white photograph of the front of this chest is on page 130 of Goodman’s History of Woodworking Tools. Let’s don our puffy shirts and go in for a closer look.
All of the tools depicted on the chest are interesting, but one particularly caught my eye. Even if you didn’t already know, you could probably guess which one—that bow saw with the nice lines and the scrolls at the tops of the arms. Some time back, a year or more I’d guess, my neurons were mounting a titanic mutiny and I decided I needed a side project—so I decided to make this saw. I normally don’t copy or reproduce tools, but that’s pretty much what I did here, with the exception of a few liberties that I’ll explain momentarily.
Different people mean different things when they use the word “reproduce”—all biological senses of the word notwithstanding. With this saw my goal was to make a “reasonable” copy but not to agonize over reproducing the saw down to its last molecule. I wouldn’t imagine that was the spirit in which the original was made anyway.
So making the saw involved one actual measurement—the blade is about 22″ long. I chose that length because I thought it would be useful, and because the saw on the chest clearly is not a small turning saw. Everything else was sized according to information gleaned from the image on the chest, or in the case of the stretcher, the length was dictated by the length of the blade. I sketched an arm of the saw onto some poster board to make a pattern for the arms.
The toggle that tightens the cord is one of the places I took some liberties. The one on the actual saw is plain and I chose to put some low relief carving on mine. I also made the brackets that hold the blade decorative. The one liberty I took that I soon regretted was to make one of the saw’s handles longer and more vase-like. With the way the arms of the saw are shaped, it tilts your wrist right down into that handle. That could be easily fixed by simply replacing that handle with one that matches the handle on the far end, but in fact, making this saw once showed me several things I would do differently were I to make it again, so I didn’t bother changing anything.
For instance, I didn’t entirely care for the curvature of the lower part of the arm for other reasons—the way it forces your wrist to tilt really saps your leverage and feels awkward. Were I to make this saw again I’d play around with that lower part of the arm to find something a bit more user friendly while retaining the character of the saw. Also, there is more wood in this saw than in most bow saws—while it was not ungainly or unwieldy, were I to make a second one I would play around more with the design to make it a bit lighter. Why not?
So why not just replace the large handle on this saw and tweak the arms a bit more? Well, I think I’d rather just leave this saw as it is and keep it as a frame of reference for subsequent forays. Sometimes it is best to let a first piece be a first piece, rather than try to impose on it from the outside a degree of refinement it didn’t possess from its inception. I just haven’t gotten around to making the second saw yet. Maybe some of you would like to make it too.
But first thing’s first—let’s get out of the 17th century before something happens and we’re stuck for the rest of our lives with no indoor plumbing. Or worse, 17th century beer!
Eccentric Toolworks 