Saw blade

“ Keep the saw going up and down to insure freedom and plenty of room for the blade, especially in turning corners. When removing it from the work, do not attempt to twist the blade or let the frame hang on it, as the blades are brittle and break easily. ”

“ A convenient saw for marble is easily made on the principle of the frame saw. A bit of hoop iron forms a convenient blade, and is sharpened by being hammered into notches along one edge, using the sharp end of a hammer head. ”

“ The article to be ground and polished is passed over wheel after wheel, from the coarsest stone to the closest grained leather, until, if it be a blade, it becomes keen and dazzling, or, if it be a handle, it becomes smooth and glossy as glass. And now having seen the blades and handles separately prepared, let us pass on to see them put together.
“But your knife,” says the reader, “has more than blades and handle; it has a file and a button-hook, a gimlet, a corkscrew, a saw, and I don’t know how many more useful tools.” ”

“ A very serviceable knife with excellent cutting qualities can be made easily from a discarded hack-saw blade. The dimensions given in the sketch make a knife of convenient size. The saw teeth are ground off on an emery wheel or grindstone to a smooth edge parallel with the back edge. For the handle, take two pieces of hard wood, dressing one surface of each piece, and cut a groove as wide and thick as the saw blade. Place the blade in the groove and glue the two dressed sides of the wood together. ”

“ Again, many Southrons, and races that fought on foot, have used the curved weapon, although the converse, the adoption of the straight, pointed Sword by horsemen, is comparatively rare.
I now proceed to consider various points connected with the curved and straight forms of blade. The experience of the Sword-cutter has noticed that the shape of any pattern or model, whether of tool or of weapon, suggests its own and only purpose. This is what we should expect. A swordsman chooses his Sword as a sawyer his saw. ”

“ There are many kinds of saws, but the most useful one is what is called the “hand saw.” It has a blade or plate about 28 inches long; the teeth of which are so formed as to allow you to cut the wood crossways as well as lengthways. The handle of the saw is made so as to allow a full yet free grasp of the hand, either for a pull or a thrust.
The panel saw. This saw has a plate nearly of the same size as a hand saw, and is used for cutting very thin boards, which the rough teeth of the hand saw would not cut through without breaking them. ”

“ The thinner the blade, the less material will be cut out and wasted, and the less force will have to be applied. In order to have the saw as thin as possible, almost all the people of the world, except the Anglo Saxons, have saws that cut when they are pulled toward the worker. The blade is in tension while cutting and in compression only when being returned for a new cut. German carpenters use a saw like our turning-saw. English and Americans have developed the saw on the opposite principle, namely, that it should cut on the pushing stroke. ”

“ The expert workman (and he becomes expert because of it) makes the hammer do its proper work; and so with every other tool.
Fig. 3.
Fig. 4.
About Saws.—There are four well-defined kinds. First, a long, flat saw, for cross-cutting. Second, a slightly larger saw for ripping purposes. Third, a back saw, with a rib on the rear edge to hold the blade rigid, used for making tenons; and, fourth, a compass or keyhole saw.
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Cross-cuts.—The difference between a cross-cut and a rip saw is, that in the latter the teeth have less pitch and are usually larger than in the cross-cut saw. ”

“ This type of arrow we use for rough practice, shooting tin cans, trees, boxes, and other impedimenta. It makes a good shaft for birds, rabbits, and small game.
A second type of head we use is made of soft steel about a sixteenth of an inch thick. We cut it with a hack saw into a blunt, barbed, lanceolate shape having a blade about an inch long and half an inch wide, also a tang about the same length and three-eighths of an inch wide. ”

“ The sawing of the bone is an important matter. The bone should be rigidly held and sawed by a sharp moving blade, the saw carriage moved against the tightly held foot. The set of saw should be such as to avoid a ragged edge. ”

“ The object of this is to make the teeth cut a wider kerf than the thickness of the blade, and thereby cause the saw to travel freely. A great many so-called "saw sets" are found in the market, many of them built on wrong principles, as will be shown, and these are incapable of setting accurately. ”

“ The points of the teeth should always point towards the handle of the frame. The frame is held with the handle down. The saw does the cutting as it is pulled downward. In working the saw, the blade must be kept perpendicular to the face of the wood. The blade should never be forced against the wood, as that will cause the wood to tear, and leave a ragged edge. ”

“ SAW, a tool for cutting wood or other material, consisting of a blade with the edge dentated or toothed and worked either by hand or by steam, water, electric or other power (see Tools) . The word in O. Eng. is saga and appears, in such forms as Dutch zaag, Dan. ”

“ In selecting saw-blades be careful to buy only those with sharp and regular-cut teeth. Saws are graded by number for hand-sawing. Numbers 0 and 1 are the best sizes, unless for very delicate work, when finer ones should be used. The larger blades have coarse teeth, which are liable to catch in the work and tear it. ”

“ It was communicated at the time by letter with a diagram to a personal friend now living, and of the highest respectability, from whom we have a certificate, and copy of the drawing. The knives or cutters, for lack of more suitable materials were made out of hand saw blades cut into suitable form, and riveted to a bar, vibrating through an opening or slot in the guards. ”

“ The confusion of weapons was as great as that of garments and peoples. There was not a deadly invention that was not present—from wooden daggers, stone hatchets and ivory tridents, to long sabres toothed like saws, slender, and formed of a yielding copper blade. ”

“ When the pieces of bone, ivory, pearl, tortoise-shell, horn, or other substances, which are to form the outer surface of the handle, are roughly cut to shape; when the blade has been forged and ground, and when the steel for the spring is procured, the whole are placed in the hand of a workman, who proceeds to build up a clasp-knife from the little fragments placed at his disposal. ”

“ One end is either grasped with pincers, or thrust firmly into a block of wood that serves for a handle. The other end is heated in the furnace and gradually beaten out until the peculiar shape of the blade is achieved, with the characteristic hollow on the one side and convexity on the other. If the blade is to be a simple and unadorned weapon, there follow only the tempering, grinding, and polishing. But many blades are ornamented with curled ridges projecting from the back edge. These are cut and turned up with an iron chisel while the metal is hot and before tempering. ”

“ From the back it is thinned off gradually to the edge, which has a curve of its own, quite different to that of the back, so that the blade is widest as well as thickest in the middle, and tapers at one end toward the hilt, and at the other toward the point. The steel of which the blade is formed is of admirable temper, as is shown by the fact that my specimen, which, to my knowledge, has not been cleaned for thirty years, but has been hung upon the wall among other weapons, is scarcely touched with rust, and for the greater part of its surface is burnished like a mirror. ”

“ Starting from small dimensions, we have gradually increased its size, weight and strength and cutting qualities till now we shoot a head whose blade is three inches long, an inch and a quarter wide, a trifle less than a thirty-second thick. ”

“ Then he stripped the sheath from the spearhead, and held the shining blade to the centre of his forehead; as he did so the enchantment fell from him, and the strange power hidden in the blade filled him with a new fearlessness and strength. ”

“ The wood of which the shaft is made, though very elastic, is very brittle, and a novice in the art is sure to break several of his spears before he learns to throw them properly. Unless they are rightly cast, as soon as the blade reaches the ground the shaft gives a kind of “whip” forward, and snaps short just above the blade. ”

“ This composite weapon, uniting the club with the celt or hand-hatchet, and appearing in Europe with the beginning of the Neolithic period, plays a remarkable part in history, 89ancient, mediæval, and even modern; whilst its connection with the Sword is made evident by the ‘glaive.’ [308] The expansion of the edge and of the flanges developed two principal forms. For cutting wood the long-narrow was found most serviceable: where brute force was less required, the weapon became a broad blade with a long crescent-shaped edge. ”

“ In some points, indeed, they go beyond us; for the most ignorant Fan savage would never think of blunting the edge of his weapon by sheathing it in a metal scabbard. Their sheaths are beautifully made of two flat pieces of wood, just sufficiently hollowed to allow the blade to lie between them, and bound together with various substances. For example, the sheaths of one or two daggers in my possession are made of wood covered with snake-skin, while others are simply wood bound with a sort of rattan. ”

“ There are other ways of lightening the blade besides grooving. A favourite fashion in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the golden age of the Sword, was to break the continuity by open work, which allowed free play to the ornamenter’s hand. It was also supposed to render the wound more dangerous by admitting the air. As will afterwards be shown, certain Eastern and mediæval sabres were hollowed to contain sections or pennations, which sprang out in small lateral blades when a spring was touched. ”

“ The method of hafting these implements, employed by savages, shows that they were used for a variety of purposes; in some, the edge is fastened at right angles to the handle, to be used as an adze, whilst in others the same tool is fastened with the blade in a line with the handle, to be used as a chopper or battle-axe. ”

“ Mechanical invention has not been able Manufacture of Swords by Hand-work. to supersede or equal hand-work in the production of good sword-blades. The swordsmith’s craft is still, no less than it was in the middle ages, essentially a handicraft, and it requires a high order of skill. His rough material is a bar of cast and hammered steel tapering from the centre to the ends; when this is cut in two each half is made into a sword. The “tang” which fits into the handle is not part of the blade, but a piece of wrought iron welded on to its base. ”

“ Nearly all the rapier-shaped blades which have still to be noticed may be regarded as probably those of swords rather than of daggers. That shown in Fig. 317 is in my own collection, and was found near Londonderry. The method of attachment to the hilt by two rivets fitting into notches at the sides of the base of the blade is the same as in some of the shorter weapons already mentioned. ”

“ If a native had handled the weapon no such accident could have happened, for the drawing cut, depending only on the keen edge and the way in which it is applied, could not possibly have chipped the blade, no sudden shock being given by it to the highly-tempered steel. ”

“ Each weapon is cut from wood. The blades of the axes and the cutting edges of the swords are dressed down and finished with sandpaper and the steel parts represented by covering the wood with tinfoil. When putting on the tinfoil, brush a thin coat of glue on the part to be covered and quickly lay on the foil. If a cutting edge is to be covered the tinfoil on one side of the blade must overlap the edge which is pasted on the opposite side. The other side is then covered with the tinfoil of a size that will not quite cover to the cutting edge. ”

“ It lay flat upon its back beside the desk-chair; the arms were wide outstretched, and a dagger handle of ebony, or some other black wood, protruded from the left breast, into which the blade had been driven to the hilt. Surprisingly little blood had found its way through the wound, since the blade must have been reposing in the stilled heart—a well-aimed, deadly blow, signifying a cool and sinister intent. Death could not have ridden more swiftly on a thunderbolt ”

“ The above-quoted description, though short and superficial, is sufficient to indicate some of the chief difficulties of the swordsmith’s art, and it sets one thinking, too, as to the various uses to which cutting instruments are put, and gradations of hardness, from the high temper of razors and certain chisels to the low temper of hunters’ and sailors’ knives, which should always be of rather soft steel, for they are sharpened more easily, and the saw-like edge is better suited for cutting flesh, ropes, etc., than a very fine edge would be. ”

“ The laborer who clears trees and bush from land uses a broad and heavy blade. It is some eighteen or twenty inches in length, and may be three inches wide at its widest. The traveller will carry a machete which is like a heavy sword, and may be straight like a rapier, or curved somewhat, like a cavalry sword. ”

“ The words of a great poet, which I had heard at school, came into my mind: “Men better do their broken weapons use, than their bare hands;” and the suggestion that this wise saying afforded, I now took to myself. It occurred to me, then, to examine the blade. The haft I held in my hand, but the blade still remained in the angle of the box, where it had broken off. ”