woodworking Woodworking is the skill of making items from wood, and includes cabinet making (cabinetry and furniture), wood carving, joinery, carpentry, and woodturning. History Along with stone, clay and animal parts, wood was one of the first mate ...

and

carpentry Carpentry is a skilled trade and a craft in which the primary work performed is the cutting, shaping and installation of building materials during the construction of buildings, ships, timber bridges, concrete formwork, etc. Carpenters t ...

, hand saws, also known as "panel saws", are used to cut pieces of

wood Wood is a porous and fibrous structural tissue found in the stems and roots of trees and other woody plants. It is an organic materiala natural composite of cellulose fibers that are strong in tension and embedded in a matrix of lignin ...

into different shapes. This is usually done in order to

join Join may refer to: * Join (law), to include additional counts or additional defendants on an indictment *In mathematics: ** Join (mathematics), a least upper bound of sets orders in lattice theory ** Join (topology), an operation combining two topo ...

the pieces together and carve a wooden object. They usually operate by having a series of sharp points of some substance that is harder than the wood being cut. The hand saw is a bit like a

tenon saw A backsaw is any hand saw which has a stiffening rib on the edge opposite the cutting edge, enabling better control and more precise cutting than with other types of saws. Backsaws are normally used in woodworking for precise work, such as cutt ...

, but with one flat, sharp edge. Handsaws have been around for thousands of years. Egyptian hieroglyphics exist depicting ancient woodworkers sawing boards into pieces. Ancient bow saws have been found in Japan. The cut patterns on ancient boards may be observed sometimes to bear the unique cutting marks left by saw blades, particularly if the wood was not 'smoothed up' by some method. As for preservation of handsaws, twenty-four saws from eighteenth-century England are known to survive.Olmert, Michael (1996). ''Milton's Teeth and Ovid's Umbrella: Curiouser & Curiouser Adventures in History'', p.178. Simon & Schuster, New York. . Materials for saw blades have varied over the ages. There were probably

bronze Bronze is an alloy consisting primarily of copper, commonly with about 12–12.5% tin and often with the addition of other metals (including aluminium, manganese, nickel, or zinc) and sometimes non-metals, such as phosphorus, or metalloids suc ...

saws in the time before

steel Steel is an alloy made up of iron with added carbon to improve its strength and fracture resistance compared to other forms of iron. Many other elements may be present or added. Stainless steels that are corrosion- and oxidation-resistan ...

making technology became extensively known and industrialized within the past thousand years or so. Sometimes cultures developed two main types of saw teeth: the cross cut saw teeth and the

rip Rest in peace (RIP), a phrase from the Latin (), is sometimes used in traditional Christian services and prayers, such as in the Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican, and Methodist denominations, to wish the soul of a decedent eternal rest and peace. ...

saw teeth. These cut into the wood using different mechanisms. Wood is composed of many long cells running length-ways. Thus,

crosscut saw A crosscut saw (thwart saw) is any saw designed for cutting wood perpendicular to (across) the wood grain. Crosscut saws may be small or large, with small teeth close together for fine work like woodworking or large for coarse work like log ...

s have sawteeth that are usually shaped, often with a metal file, in such a way that they form a series of tiny knifelike edges. The wood cells are contacted by the knife-edge of the tooth and cut. Rip saws, on the other hand, are usually shaped so that they form a series of tiny chisel-like edges. The wood cells are contacted by the chisel and 'ripped' apart from the bundle of other cells. It is common that people do not recognize the difference and use saws both ways. However, a rip saw is much faster than a cross-cut saw when cutting with the grain but leaves a very rough cut, often with splinters on the surface, and has more difficulty maintaining a straight cut when cutting across the grain. The cross-cut saw can cut in any direction but is much slower than needs be when cutting with the grain. The development of saws was also affected by several factors. The first was the importance of wood to a society, the development of steel and other saw-making technologies and the type of power available. These factors were, in turn, influenced by the environment, such as the types of ores available, the types of trees nearby and the types of wood which was in those trees. Finally, the types of jobs the saws were to perform was also important in the development of the technology. Among

Basques The Basques ( or ; eu, euskaldunak ; es, vascos ; french: basques ) are a Southwestern European ethnic group, characterised by the Basque language, a common culture and shared genetic ancestry to the ancient Vascones and Aquitanians. Ba ...

and

Australians Australians, colloquially known as Aussies, are the citizens, nationals and individuals associated with the country of Australia. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or ethno-cultural. For most Australians, several (or all) ...

, traditional hand sawing has generated rural sports. The Basque variant is called tronral.

References

External links

How to Sharpen a Saw Blade
, article on how to sharpen a handsaw yourself {{Woodworking Hand tools Saws Woodworking hand tools de:Fuchsschwanz (Säge)

See also

References

External links