Hand saw buying advice

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My 23" height was given from a drawing, I didn't think about it at the time. Luckily it seems OK!
 
........

28" ripsaw here half way through a 2" piece of mahogany. Confession time - I cheated here by passing the board over the table saw to give a 3" deep kerf all the way round, so only have to hand saw out the middle:

@*" View attachment 98239
Forgot to add: In assortments of old woody moulding planes some turn up which have a fixed fence and a narrow blade, obviously for cutting a slot at a fixed distance. Useful for glazed picture frames but may be intended as "kerfing" planes, to perform the operation as in the picture above.
That is - to thickness a board neatly with a hand rip-saw run a slot around the edge and across the ends, as guides for the saw.
I've never tried it but I've got a few of the planes and must have a go!
Would be really useful if you were doing all hand work only.
 
kerfing planes generally add time to the whole operation, as do specialty smaller saws with high gullets intended to start a line.

It takes about half a dozen cuts to learn to steer a saw on both sides of the cut and maybe another half dozen to be able to put a board in a vise and rip left handed competently (so you can go back and forth on a marked board to cut from both sides if needed).

The narrow blades were probably intended to waste rebate waste or set off a stop in the middle of a surface, or maybe take the place of a slitter in wood too hard for a slitter to work well.

The whole kerfing thing made a comeback when someone found plates of them and decided they should be used with a frame saw, but a frame saw can also be steered pretty easily and the kerfing plane just adds time to the operation. I doubt many people with kerfing planes are using them on a monthly basis.
 
I've stumbled on a pic of Jacob ripping a board.

Mendel_I_039_r.jpg
 

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