When a knife just won't cut it...

I couldn't resist bigger steel (that's a SOD for sizing):

Nice pants- I bet that saw will cut like crazy <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbup.gif" alt="" />

sick! i was just looking at the motorized kind <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Good ol' one man crosscut saw. We've got two, though only one is kept in usable form. When they're kept clean and sharp, they do cut amazingly well. In a time when this tool was state of the art, they knew a thing or two about making saws work as efficiently as possible, because they didn't have the option of using "the motorized version" to fell and limb the tree. The motorized version was a drag saw (for sectioning the logs) powered by horses on a treadmill! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" /> (most were only "one horsepower" too)

I picked it up off 'the bay' just before xmas. I went this route for a number of reasons: 1) I don't mind building up a good sweat on weekends. 2) If it came down to it, a one-man saw is a little more stealthy in a suburban environment than a power tool. 3) I'd hate to have to rely on gas-powered tools if I were depending on wood for fuel. 4) It is a fine example of a classic tool of the Pacific Northwest (perforated lance tooth style).

Now I need to pick up a set gauge, etc. and a beater saw on which to practice sharpening... it would hurt me quite a bit to mess this one up.

That is very cool! Any idea what steel the old crosscut is made out of? My guess would be L6.

The teeth on it is interesting. Is it pretty thin like most saws?

Planning to assassinate some trees? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" />


As a generality, these type of saws tend to be pretty thick, because they cut aggressively in both directions and the saw needs to be stiff. Two man saws, which only cut under tension, can be much thinner; to the point where you can bend one into a circle for easier storage.

I used a saw like that when I was a kid. I wonder what happened to it. Probably lost in one move or another. Many of Dad’s old tools were, alas.

I only ever learned to sharpen carpenter’s handsaws, from 5 ½” to 12 point. You’d need a specialized saw set for those teeth. You’ll also want to build yourself a sharpening frame. I don’t know how to describe one without pictures. But Google is your friend.

Mhr,
That is one very cool saw. Wish I had it when I was helping my brother take
down those 3 trees in his backyard this fall. It would have been done in
half the time <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
Just how big IS that beast?

The one I used was maybe five feet long.

It was really a one-man/two-man saw. That upright handle could be moved to the far end so one sawyer could work it from each side of a log. There should be a hole for the handle at the far end. I can’t see if there is because there’s this knife in the way.

Looks like you're ready for some heavy-duty cutting! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" /> Mark, I still love your avatar: "I dub thee Sir Loin of Beef". <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbup.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbup.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

I am betting that sharpening this is a real skill- how about it Momaw- you ever sharpened one ?

Those pants look like a sheathmakers nightmare!!! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/ooo.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/ooo.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

You'd need a whole cow!!! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

I was thinking about you when I saw those pants Jeff ( lol) . Hey- maybe Dan will start making these ? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" />

Actually, sharpening this baby would be easy compared to sharpening a 12 point saw. I just never happen to have done it.

Once you have a sharpening frame, a saw set, and files for sharpening and jointing, the work would go fast. Think about it. How long does it take to sharpen or set two teeth per inch compared to twelve teeth per inch?

Yes, sharpening these saws is much easier than a handsaw. You have all the space in the world that you need to work, and all the angles are easily visible. You can do the job with an off-the-shelf flat file.

Ordawg, I've sharpened ours. I don't think I did a great job of it, but it cut, so there was some degree of success. Like everything, I'm sure I'd get better with practice.

As far as the sheath, that's a really fancy and nice one. It might almost be worth a whole cow. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" /> On ours, we took a four foot section of castoff fire hose (the fire department replaces hoses on a regular basis; ask your local station if they will give you some!), and slit it down the length. It's rubber inside with a canvas jacket permanently glued on. We hook a bungie into the hole where the front handle bolts on, wrap it around the whole affair a few times, and hook it onto the handle. Not pretty, but real cheap, and it protects us from the saw so...

I have wondered before what a sawblade made of INFI would be like. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" />

Whoa...........INFI- I was thinking 77 or 101-but INFI.It would be cool- maybe Jerry will kick off the Rat board with a release of it in 101 <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />(lol) Would be fun to sharpen one though- I might search around just to get one to play with-Thanks <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbup.gif" alt="" />

What a Monster!
Is that a "newer" saw?
Still being made maybe?

That looks like one of those saws a magician cuts hot chicks in half with. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" />

I think they use something different on hot chicks. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" />

The one I used to use, my Dad bought new. That was sometime back in the fifties.

Lots of good things they made back then, you can’t get any more. Good quality American axes, for example. I still have a few I bought back in the sixties. One is a little double bit hatchet I got, to make up a Nessmuck trio.

To match that quality of axe today, I’d have to buy from Scandinavia.

Y. This saw is in current production (and is now $50 more than it was a month ago!). As I mentioned, I got a great deal (a fraction of the 'new' price) from a great guy on an auction site.

Here is a link to the manufacturer site.

Nope. In these parts, there is plenty of downed timber around. Most of it happens to be on undeveloped 'suburban forest' land where a chainsaw would draw attention whereas an axe, knife, and saw would go unnoticed. I have miles of trails out the front door that require significant clearing after every good bit of wind. On the other hand, I did recently dispatch a 30' big-leaf maple out back with an axe - wife determined that it was a year away from blocking too much sun from the yard (and I can't say I'll miss the leaf cleanup next year!). Daughter and i stripped the bark last week and will try our hand at weaving with it in the near future.

That sounds like an awesome family activity. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

We also have a bunch of down trees in the NW with recent storms. I am taking an evening hike that hopefuly will also be a moonlight hike tonight <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/crossfingers.gif" alt="" />. Going to keep my eyes open for anything good while daylight. Where is best place to purchase one of those beasts and if not being rude how much should one expect to pay ? Thanks

With all of the floods and avalanches and mudslides up here, there's going
to be a lot of downed trees around here. Maybe we need a battalion of those
up here. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Do they come in a motorized version?

Cheers <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Yaeh- but no exercise- and not much fun.

Somehow, I don't think that the guys cutting up all those trees would mind
a chainsaw.. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Reckon a DFCG would kick it's a*s! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />

Or an S6 !! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" />

Naw...you're doing that overkill thing again...an SS4 or a Mud Puppy <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbup.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

As I mentioned in a previous post, this is the one I got... Difanis

If I hadn't found it used at a great price, I probably would have gone with this one instead.

If you do a search for "one man crosscut saw" you'll see several other options. Some German made saws look to be decent quality for a bit less, but many claim to come unsharpened - you'd then have to send them out for sharpening, which brings the total price back to what the second one goes for. Again, I'm no expert yet, but I had an itch that needed to be scratched!

A chainsaw is fast and easy but it disrespects the tree. You can cut through something in less than 50 seconds that took 50 years to grow. Using a muscle powered saw makes you work, and gives you a better appreciation for what you are doing. And when you're done, you can sit on the fallen giant with your body pleasantly warmed and limbered, and feel like you really accomplished something. Plus the crosscut saw is as noted quieter, lighter, it doesn't stink, and it's cheap to maintain.

<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

This article does a great job of describing differences and uses of crosscut saws:

The Crosscut Saw

My one-man saw is most appropriate for bucking softwood trees that are already down. For felling, a thinner, longer saw would be more appropriate.

Thoreau said cutting firewood warms you twice; once when you cut it, again when you burn it. There is no record of the man warming himself with a chain saw.

Most of the modern teeth patterns for logging saws were developed to deal with the vast forests of North America. The clearing of European woodlands happened over centuries. People took small nibbles of the forest to open land for a farm or village or monestary. They never faced the volume of cutting demanded by settling the eastern woodlands of North America. New circumstances required new tools. Old saws got new teeth.

North America was settled long before the Europeans got here, and they were doing quite well with forest management in their own way. Many of the lessons they learned, we were forced to relearn: like why burning the forest often and intentionally is a good thing.

I am having a great time studying this and shopping. Great thread here. I think I am feeling an itch <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" />

Burning the woods for forest management? I’m not sure what you are talking about, unless you mean slash and burn agriculture. The Indians of eastern North America did that. It certainly wasn’t “forest management” as we understand the term. It was managing local conditions to allow them to farm new ground until they exhausted the earth’s fertility. After a few years they would move on and repeat the process in a new stretch of woodland. Far more often than not, slash and burn was harmful to the ecology of the forest or jungle in which it was practiced. More and more harmful as the population grew.

If you burn the forest often, it doesn't build up a significant base of fuel. Basically what makes forest fires destructive and vast is that all the stuff fallen and dead on the ground is burning hot and long enough for the live trees to ignite. By burning the forest over to get rid of deadfall every couple years, the fuel load on the ground never gets deep enough to threaten the trees, and the saplings are knocked back. The overall effect is that you get a very open forest with significant sunlight on the ground, promoting low vegetation and ideal game habitat. They did burn the forest for agriculture too sometimes, but that's not the only reason. We don't use burning nowadays, instead we go in and selectively cut, taking out the trees that are too crowded or too weak to allow stronger trees to thrive and to open the floor.

Yep, like Momaw said.
Fire is also needed to help some trees propogate as well.

That’s true enough, and I never denied it. But I’ve never heard that, say, the Lenape or the Seneca practiced such forest management burning. Can you point me at a source?

In his book Collapse, Jared Diamond addresses a few of the facts and myths about the innate abilities of indigenous peoples to be effective stewards of the land. Lucky for us, google books allows us to view his introductory thoughts on the topic online starting at the bottom of page 8... here

I've raised it around here before, but both Diamond's Guns, Germs, & Steel and his Collapse are fascinating and compelling. Anyone else think so? I'd suggest that a few of the hypotheses advanced in GG&S go a long way toward explaining why many (perhaps mistakenly) believe that the original inhabitants of North America were mostly benign symbiotes.

I loved Guns, Germs, and Steel. I haven’t read Collapse.

There were only a few sample pages of Collapse in mhr’s link. In one of them Diamond points out the wave of extinctions that followed modern man as we moved into any new area of the world. Australia, Europe, Asia, North America, South America, New Zealand, Madagascar, the Pacific Islands…we met animals unequipped by evolution to deal with this new super predator, and we wiped them out. Not that that was news to me, but it does bear on this point.

I have no patience with all the scholars who insist that the entry of paleo-Siberian-Americans into North America only accidentally coincided with the extinction of all that mega-fauna. It must have been something else. Asteroids or new diseases or the same kind of periodic ice age warm swing that had left the big beasts unmolested the last dozen times it happened. Bull. Amerindians frequently destabilized their environments in one way or another. Slash and burn agriculture not the least of them.

I’m not trying to bash them. In a lot of ways I respect the American Indians. Were they good woodsmen? Hell yes. Their ten year olds could put any of us to shame when it came to primitive survival. Could they fight? Bet your arse. Did they take care of their own? Sure, as long as you understand that their own was limited to the local tribe and current allies.

But I see no point in foisting virtues upon them that history shows they lacked. For example, New Age wisdom has it that the Indians were far more spiritual than we fallen children of cities and machines. I suppose that may be so. But I’ll get my spiritual advice from cultures that don’t practice cannibalism, or make a sport and religious ritual out of slowly torturing captives to death.