I said I didn’t want to go down the rabbit hole. Yet here I am.
I’ve ordered a 30″ bowsaw blade from Amazon (link).
It’s not what I wanted but it’s cheap and it’s what I can find. I’m reasonably sure it’ll work even if it looks less than cool. I’ll keep the more massive old blade until I can get it sharpened and in the meantime consider the saw “sporterized”.
There will be an after action report once Amazon delivers and I test the saw.
I started wondering about the age of this critter. I suspect chainsaws are what put bucksaws in the retirement home. Chainsaws got serious maybe sometime around WW2? So that indicates bucksaws went full Betamax around 70 years ago? (It’s just a guess.)
As an antique it’s worth jack shit. People hang ’em on walls in restaurants and stuff and it’s worth well under $50 as a wall hanger. Nobody gets worried about “provenance” if it’s just a decoration. Thus, I don’t know how old it is.
I did find this:
The Saw In History says “Fig. 22 shows an excellent type of this saw [bucksaw] in it’s modern form.” I take “modern” to mean “when the book was published” and that’s 1916. Mine isn’t exactly the same. I’m sure I’ve got the Walmart version that’s a little planer and it’s possibly slightly newer. Nevertheless it looks like 102 year old technology. Cool.
I’m all for preserving at least the knowledge of, and ability to use, old things. Hmm…. suddenly I feel like shooting some of my older rifles. No! What am I saying? Time to bring out one of my muzzleloaders and blast away at the 80 yard target (an old barrel). I’m sure the saw will approve.
Adaptive “Rabbit Hole” Curmudgeon
If you’ve got a bunch of old bow saws hanging on your wall, wouldn’t it be easier to make the experiment with an already knackered blade before cutting down a new one?
Just sayin’
I just want to cut wood. I presume installing an already sharp blade is much less laborious than filing down all gazillion teeth on the old bucksaw blade.
that’s why i said bow saw, not buck saw.
At some point in this story you said that you had the habit of buying a new bow saw whenever the previous blade was old, rather than a new blade as the price difference was so small. Ergo, you have a bunch of old bow saws with old blades. You could, therefore, experiment with putting a new bow saw blade on the buck saw without parting with any cash. If it works, great, buy a new blade. If not, think again.
It’s a great plan except my bow saws are 20″ and the bucksaw is 30″. In the name of science I got a 30″ blade for something like $12.
While I was at it I got another 20″ blade to replace one of my dull 20″ bow saw blades. It was about a ten spot to buy it.
There’s nothing worse than grabbing a saw and finding out it’s a rusty POS. $10 for a bowsaw blade to reduce the chances that’ll I’ll wind up grabbing a dull one is money well spent. Dull saws are a leading cause of pissed off Curmudgeons.
No sign of delivery yet. It’ll be several days.
Oh, no!!! Surely you didn’t buy THAT one. There’s no way that could possibly work with your saw. It’s just all wrong.
Just kidding! That should do the job quite nicely.
It’s like picking a scab. You just can’t leave the subject alone, can you?
Still, it keeps you out of mischief, I suppose. >};o)
Yep, I get obsessed but it keeps me off the streets.
And away from the squirrels.
Just sayin’…
[Sheepishly looks at his feet and mumbles.] “Yeah… that too.”
Dude, go for the 36 inch Bahco saw and buy some extra blades. No need to buy a new frame and 20 21? inch bowsaws are too damn small.
I already made the purchase but you are correct that you can never have too many saws and bigger is better.
This is the same Dave as before. I would have replied to your reply to my reply but I can’t. There is no link to reply. The same has happened to your reply to Mark Matis’ reply to your reply to Phil B.
Do you have some kind of cut off to save the threads getting too deep? (Is that what the new blade is for?)
(If you’d bothered to include info on the relative lengths of the blades in one of your original posts, we might have saved a few electrons 😀 )
Dave
There’s a cutoff at 3 levels of commentary. I don’t know why. I could try to alter the settings but I fear to anger the Gods of wordpress.
I didn’t include measurements of the bow saw at first because didn’t think it would matter. I began this little rabbit hole excursion thinking a bow saw and a buck saw were totally different animals. Wrong! They’re not exactly the same but they’re functionally similar. I also assumed it would be easy to get onto the ‘net and buy a replacement for the removable bucksaw blade. Wrong! Apparently I’m as likely to get a replacement beefy wide OEM style bucksaw blade as I am to get a bottle of original 1891 recipe coca-cola.
As for the wasted electrons… it’s the journey, not the destination. Also, all electrons at Adaptive Curmudgeon are fully recycled. We remove depleted electrons from old MySpace sites, refurbish them, and give them a new life as squirrel stories, obsessing over homestead minutia, and incoherent rants.
Actually, with the ruler in your initial photo:
http://adaptivecurmudgeon.com/2018/03/01/old-timey-saw-blade/
you DID “include measurements”. That’s how I knew the bow saw blades I recommended would work.
Good point. What can I say, I thought I’d omitted useful information. Rabbit holes get convoluted.
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/f8/40/eb/f840ebec3da50c73dda8df90aafaafdb–post-card-squirrels.jpg