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  • From: "clanSkeen" <sgian AT planetc.com>
  • To: <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Homestead] A saw blade odyssey
  • Date: Sat, 6 Nov 2004 14:48:06 -0500

In my distain for mechanized labor, I've often capitulated that someone with a chainsaw could cut a given pile of wood faster than I could with my hand saws. Today, I'm not all that convinced. Bowsaws and pulpsaws are excellent firewood tools but now of days, when no one uses them seriously, the toolmakers can get by with offering only crap sawblades. Last year I went to a very old mon'n'pop hardware store and there were half a dozen 36" bowsaws with blades made in Denmark. I bought one saw and took it to the woods. It was like magic. Efforless and ever sharp. I went back and bought the rest. The saws had probably been hanging there since the '50's with the original price. There were also half a dozen even more magnificient 42" Swedish pulp saw blades but to this day I have not been able to find a 43" handle ... the blades are also left over from the 50's and were about $6.25 each.

The Danish saw blades lasted all season, cut a huge heap of firewood, garden poles, cleared brush and being like all things mortal, only lost their edge this fall. They were put through really heavy use so a year's sharpness is excellent.

But I bought all they had and the person who originally stocked them in the store is likely long dead. I bought blades at Lowe's, Northern, Home Despot. Ace, and a couple of local hardwares. I can only guess they were made from melting down old rusty truck fenders. The edge and set went out of them in a matter of hours. What's to be expected, eh? They are made to trim a limb off the apple tree (dwarf apple tree) or nip down a stray sapling once or twice a year ... not cut two cords of firewood.

I found a blade stocked in several hardware stores this fall made in Portugal and gave it a try. Not bad but it dulled after less than 1/8 chord of wood. I researched as best I could and came up with one Swedish company saying its blades were acutally made to cut wood: Sanvik - sold in the US as Bahco. It took a while to get some but after UPS delayed forever I got them. Wow! A blade made of real tool steel with a real set in it. I don't know how long the edge is going to last, but I'm hopeful. As to the sharpness and set, it is effortless to cut a 6" or 8" staff of wood into stove lengths. Moreover the company offers the raker tooth blade and also a peg tooth blade, the latter for dry wood. Most of the wood I gather is dead standing and already hard and dry. Who'd a' thunk it but the blade without the rakers flies through the cut.

200K people within 40 miles of here and notone saw fit to cut wood to be had.


James





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