Day 37, A Stearns saw vise

Published on 2025-05-25 by Mark VandeWettering

Today's garage gem is something you don't see much anymore: a saw vise. This is a specialty vise which is designed to hold the plate of a saw upright and close to the teeth so that you can sharpen and "set" the teeth of a saw. It prevents chattering and helps with accuracy.

Overall view

It's obviously meant to be bolted to the side of a bench, and despite the mild patina of rust, works well. I have not bothered to do any substantial rust removal on it yet, as frankly I don't have a huge collection of hand saws that need sharpening. Still, it's an usual item, and I thought it was pretty cool and was glad that I could rescue it from landfill.

Patent date November 9, 1866)

To me, it looks like the patent date is November 9, 1866, but in trying to search for the patent, it appears that the patent date was actually October 9, 1866.

G. N. Stearns

It was issued to G. N. Stearns.

The patent number is 58,692.

Anyway, kind of a cute tool that I doubt I will use, but it's one of the oldest things in my workshop, and deserves a tiny bit of respect.

Hope you all had a good weekend.