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  • From: Tvoivozhd <tvoivozd AT infionline.net>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] A saw blade odyssey
  • Date: Sun, 07 Nov 2004 12:38:13 -0800

Gene GeRue wrote:


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


Good story; good info. Thank you.

Dad taught me to make wood with a crosscut saw. I still remember him saying, "Don't ride it!" As I recall, we had a couple bow saws but they were only used to cut small stuff in a sawhorse. Anything of firewood size was cut with a two-man or one-man crosscut saw, which were hand sharpened with a file as necessary. I have three crosscut saws just in case but am your typical lazy American geezer; I prefer the noisy, smelly, gas-and-oil-guzzling chain saw.

tvoivozhd---the best measure of work output is energy input. Human muscles put out about one-quarter horsepower, and get tired. Midsized chainsaws put out 3.5 horsepower and don't get tired. So they will outcut James" bucksaw or the much faster two-man crosscut by three or four factors. However, I remember the days on the farm when all the wood was felled by a double-bitted axe (kept sharp) and blocked by a two-man crosscut (kept sharp), until we arranged with a nest-door neighbor to bring us his Model A Ford engine-powered cut-off saw which could do in an hour more than we could cut with a two-man crosscut in half a day. All a matter of energy applied---saws of any kind don't care what is the energy source, just respond proportionally with output according to energy input.





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