Sunday, June 18, 2006

Fathers Day


Hi Folks.
A pleasant (but busy-again!!) day. Popped out to a car boot sale first thing. Got lucky with some saws again. Four for the princely sum of £6.50.
First up-a Spear and Jackson dovetail saw. Bit of a mess but a bit of TLC will have it smiling. Be handy for practising the sharpening on, anyway. Especially at 50p......
Then a 24 inch panel saw. Hadn't heard the name before, LH Turtle ring a bell??? Bit of a kink in the blade but might be redeemable. £2.
Next a 26 inch rip saw. Thos Flinn?? Beech handle, four rivets instead of bolts? £1. Spent a hour cleaning it up and re-sharpened it. Cuts like a demon now, quite proud of myself!
Finally, a bit of monster. A 28 inch Sorby with quite frightening looking teeth. A real scary looking thing with the handle stamped everywhere with the owners name. Frankly, if I sharpened that I would be a little shy about slapping my name all over it ;)
So not a bad haul-worth it just for the Flinn. I've put some more pics on my temp website http://philsville.googlepages.com/carbootsaws180606
Cheers
Philly

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Happy Father's Day.

Louis Henery Turtle was a merchant in London form 1885 until 1964. Who made his saws isn't mentioned, but you may be able to track it down. Info from Schaffer/McConnel's book.

It looks to me like a Spear & Jackson with the medallion position and the handle. Looks like a saw fom the latter portion of the historical dating. Maybe 1940s to 1950s sometime.

Worse thing, and this could just be the picture, is that it looks like someone overheated the blade trying to get the kinks out. Hopefully they also quenched it, and retempered. Looks like they might have also stretched the saw plate. But she is a nice looker.

The Sorby's great! I have one real similar.

Take care, Mike

Philly said...

Thanks for the info, Mike. I need to get my hands on some saw reference material! ;)
The Sorby looks great-what would you use it for??
Cheers
Phil

Anonymous said...

Hi Phil--one last forum and blog entry for me tonight!

Mine is a rip and assume yours is as well? I also have some CC saws with about the same ppi.

I use mine when I am ripping short sections of secondary woods such as soft Maple, Poplar and even sorta OK Cherry. Well, I have used my S&J for Mahogany as well, it is one tooth more per inch.

Any harder and I need to use another saw, progressively finer for increasing hardness of wood.

Once I get hard wood equal to and harder than hard Maple and have a plank to rip--it's time for the BS. I might be dumb, but I'm not entirely mad [g].

The CC saws that are that coarse I use to rough dimension boards all the time. Just did some Bloodwood boards today for a jewlery box.

Take care, Mike

Alf said...

Somebody made their saw till a wee bit too small then...? :~) The Sorby looks very nice; stamped blade, nicely sunk medallion, definitely a bit of age to that one. I've a wee 18" panel saw of similar vintage - well actually I replaced the blade so I could use it, but the original blade is kicking about somewhere. Beautifully comfy handle.

Funnily enough I was falling over the larger brothers of the S&J back saw over the weekend - at least 4 or 5 or 'em.

And finally, Hand-Saw Makers of Britain is available from secondhandtools.co.uk if you fancy it.

Philly said...

Thanks Mike-yes, mine is a rip. I love the way the teeth get larger along the blade. ;)
The BS certainly makes for an easy life, especially when it's as hot as it is at the moment.
Thanks Alf-might just be ordering that book. Interesting stuff on that site, too. The Sorby is definitely not a new one ;)-seller told me it was late 1800's, which sounds about right.
Most of the back saws I come across are in a much worse condition than the hand saws. Fortunately I have enough DT saws to sink a small ship.........
Cheers
Phil
(thinking of changing my name to "Mr Saw"......)

Anonymous said...

I've already passed this info to Phil, but for Mike and Alf's benefit there's some history about Louis Henry Turtle and Turtle's shop in Croydon on Turtle's website at www.turtlescroydon.co.uk