Is this an ice saw ?

[Flartybarty]

Recently bought this on E*** because I needed a replacement vintage saw handle for one of my backsaws. At first glance I thought this had simply had a piece of steel added as a makeshift saw but on receipt, I can see that it almost certainly has the original sawblade. So what is it ?

Notes :
Coarse triangular teeth - v. blunt.
No set.
Steel is dark grey in colour - no hint of rust or pitting
Thick blade - no tapering to back.
Handle is probably beech but has either been stained or varnished at some point.
Overall length 21", width at toe is 2". Given the size of the saw, it is surprisingly heavy.

So - ?????????????

 

[Flartybarty]

Just a thought - could this have a zinc blade ?

 

[toolsntat]

Could be Zinc for salt and also had copper blades.
Cheers Andy

 

[Eric The Viking]

Is it my imagination or does it have gullets that alternate in depth? It seems there's a shallow one then a deep one and so on.

An ice saw is a fascinating idea - it never occurred to me before, but over time the ice in any ice house would end up jolly stuck together, irrespective of how it was packed. I know they had drainage, but the sheer weight of the ice would be enough to stick it together. You'd need some sort of saw, Hacking bits from a mass of ice would be very similar problem to quarrying Bath stone underground, except that you need much smaller blocks (and it would be a lot colder!), so something of that design would probably be spot-on - it would need a decently-wide kerf to stop the ice re-freezing at the back of the cut.

Reading with interest

E.

 

[Flartybarty]

Had a look in the Dictionary of Tools and I think it may, as suggested above, be a salt saw - hence the zinc blade. A steel blade would rust in no time. The saw has been resharpened at some point - hence the uneven gullets. Both ice and salt blocks would have to be sawn out - ever tried cutting ice with a knife ? So I suppose this dates from the 19th century at the latest. Judging by the handle, I'd say 1850-ish.

 

[AndyT]

If the blade is zinc and it's in the UK it's most likely to be a salt saw. Simon Barley describes them in BSSM page 699 and in his shorter "British Saws a History and Collector's Guide" on page 56. Salt used to be sold in large blocks, so a saw was a kitchen tool to reduce the blocks to a more convenient size. The saws he illustrates both have open handles, so yours would seem to be a superior variant. The teeth are symmetrical and coarse - I think yours may have been clumsily re-sharpened by someone hoping to cut wood with it. The BSSM illustration is from a Tyzack catalogue of 1922, which seems surprisingly late.

He doesn't say much about Ice Saws, except to note that they weren't offered by British makers in any catalogue he's seen. That's hardly surprising - harvesting blocks of ice from frozen lakes was never such a large scale enterprise over here as it was in the USA, so, as he says, any old saw could be pressed into service if needed.

Alvin Sellens' Dictionary of American Hand Tools shows four patterns of ice saw. There's a two handled, crescent shaped one, one like a small pit saw, one like a one handed tree-felling crosscut, and one like an ordinary hand saw. The teeth on all of them are huge - I'd estimate only 1 or 2 teeth per inch. They have no set.

There used to be a big trade in importing American ice. The Canal Museum in London has a huge brick lined pit behind it, where blocks of ice used to be stored for local distribution, having been brought by canal boat from ships in the London docks.

 

[Flartybarty]

Thanks for a very interesting post. So it does seem that this is indeed a salt saw. Much obliged to you and all who responded. When I've posted in the past with mystery tools, I've never been disappointed by the response.

 

[Mr.Mika]

This is an ice saw:

For ice fishing, or making a hole for swimming.

 

[Trevanion]

This is an ice saw:
[/quote]

I'm pretty sure that's some kind of Asian weapon of war, not an Ice saw! :)

 

[Flartybarty]

My wife says she remembers, as a little girl, seeing blocks of salt which came wrapped in blue paper, being cut up by her mother. That would be in the mid-1950's. (Yes, we really are that old!)