Selection of hand cross cut and felling saws
Peter Gray, Newcastle, but originally from the Huntly area has provided several images of hand cross cut and felling saws that he has collected over the years. Peter’s father Sandy originally worked over 50 years ago in a sawmill (Eddie Mearns sawmill?) in Old Rayne and also over at Castle Fraser.
“I looked carefully for any maker’s marks but they are all gone except the plain tooth one is stamped Kaye, Hull who were well known tool makers there. It came from someone at York.
One of the handles on the wide gullet one is branded FC so it may have been “liberated”. I got it at a house clearance near Kielder with a lot of other old tools. That and the other shorter lance tooth one (came from Langholm) are very thick gauge metal and hard to file compared to the very long one (pub wall, Newcastle) which you can more or less bend in a circle.
The hardest thing was freeing the seized nuts but they all came good with a bit of heat and soaking in vinegar.
The hand saw with the sets of crown teeth has a Disston Philada USA button on it, whether that matches the blade manufacturer is not certain.”
This is a nice collection of hand saws and no doubt each has a varied history. The top one at the back as Peter says has a Disston maker’s mark on the handle button and the crown tooth saw blade itself could well be by Disston also. Almost certainly a cross cut or bucking saw which could be used by one or two people.
The second saw from back and the one in the front have very similar perforated lance teeth in sets of four, gullet size and raker style which could indicate manufactured by Sandvik or in another Nordic country. Any information on makers of this style of hand felling saws would be very welcome.
The plain or peg tooth cross cut saw, third from back, as indicted by Peter is made in England by Kaye and would have often used in lumber mills and yards.
The fourth from the back with perforated lance teeth in sets of two, wide gullets either side of the raker has every indication that this is an American made felling saw. It would be interesting to see how the blade was ground. Some American makers and certainly Disston used a curved grinding process to thin down the blade along its back. By using a curved process all the teeth from middle to both ends were of the same thickness gauge and similarly the back of the saw was of a significantly thinner gauge being the same all along its back edge. This of course eased the effort to pull the saw through the cut of a large tree being felled.
The saw setting tools are certainly of interest. The saw tooth stripper and height setting tool has a maker’s mark E C Atkins and Sons with IND PLS IND on the other side and very similar to the ubiquitous Sandvik model. Is this American or British? The other hand saw tooth setting gauge looks a well made tool and is certainly American as ‘Syracuse NY USA’ can be seen. The actual maker is more difficult to make out but is something like ‘ EC Stearns and Sons’
Peter further comments:-
“The Atkins jointer / raker gauge is indeed American, I got it sent off eBay from the US as I’ve never found one in UK. The file goes in the reverse to joint the teeth to preserve the radius, and there is a screw to bend the file, a worn file is said to be best so not to cut too much, and it is best if the tang is broken off. It came along with the EC Stearns heavy duty tooth setter and some other saw sets, it is possible to find the original patents and designs for that online. Sadly one wingnut was damaged but still useable and a nice tool.
My dad told me it was Sandy Mearns he worked for at Old Rayne. The saw mill was in Old Rayne itself, if you go up past the hall and strike first right it was on the left, where there are some newish houses now.
He was telling me about cutting beech trees at Castle Forbes with the crosscut saw - he always had to take the bark off with the axe first presumably to avoid dirt blunting the saw?. He was always surprised how quick they could go through. They had a petrol paraffin Major tractor, he recalls the water having to be drained every night for the frost and then having to fill pails from the Don in the morning. They burnt all the hagg. I remember a lad I was at the school with (Kevin Cameron) said his Dad (?Jim, recently deceased) worked with mine in the wood, and he worked a horse. Dad didn’t remember the horse so may be mistaken identity.
They used big Swedish axes for snedding when he started but they were 14lb or something, then they found they got on better with short lighter ones and it was less hard on you, although he badly cut his foot with it once. Dad said he remembered having to sharpen the axe often when snedding the big outside spruce trees, where the roset inside of the branches was set like glass. They also had an early Danarm chainsaw of which he always wanted one.
He also told me something about the way “aul Mearns” used a long stick if they were felling leaning trees over a fence, the stick somehow pivoted and lifted the butt as it fell, and dropped it alongside the fence so not to snap it. Sounds highly dangerous to me, he also recalls having to run if a tree had a wasp’s byke in it”.
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