Fred Page":36qbu9tp said:
Just for your information Buck & Hickman catalogues are fetching reasonable prices on the second hand market
I think they always have, haven't they?
Fred Page":36qbu9tp said:
It must have been a rough and ready means of setting - I don't think anybody would use the method these days - after all, set equals energy equals sawdust.
Rough and ready wasn't an option; skill was the watchword I think. From The Village Carpenter by Walter Rose:
"The sharpening of the saw was no mean act of skill, no duty that could be entrusted to another. The sawyer's regard for his saw cannot but be something of a mystery. To one accustomed to the handling of many tools, it is difficult to understand what it must be like to use a single tool from morning to evening, from end to end of the week. But it is easy to believe that such continual use would be reason enough for his devotion to its welfare., his meticulous care to keep it ever in perfect condition. Constant use, together with such tireless care and attention, and I know not how much inherited knowledge - for our sawyer's forefathers had been woodsmen before him - all this, together with the native sense and experience of many other simple men, sawyers and toolmakers, working towards a common end, had perfected and established the shape of the teeth of that saw: the log serrated edge, with each tooth keen and correct in line with its neighbours: each with its gullet before, in which, as in a pocket, the dust created by the tooth's onslaught on the wood was conveyed and discharged into the pit below. Our sawyer's duty was to follow and maintain that tradition, proved correct by centuries of usage. This he undoubtedly did without question, yet it remained to him to regulate the cut of those teeth in proportion to the combined strength of himself and his mate. Only a little too much slant to their edge and the saw would bite too readily into the wood, beyond their power to force it downward. Continual practice and care taught him how to maintain the exact proportion, the ability of the saw to cut an amount just equal to the expenditure of their strength."
See? It's easy really... :roll: According to The Wheelwright's Shop (which has an even longer passage on the subject, including set, but who's author doesn't have the same love of the thing that Rose evidentally had) while the top sawyer was busy exercising all these centuries of knowledge his mate would exercise his elbow and nip off to the pub...
Cheers, Alf
:lol: Sturt was an extremely unwilling boss, IIRC? Certainly his education-driven opinion of the craftsmen in his employ can leave a slightly bitter taste in comparison with Rose's view through, ha hum, rose-tinted eyeware. Between them they probably strike the truth of the thing pretty well. But Rose makes for nicer reading I reckon. 
