I heard some friends of mine that I haven’t seen in some time were having an estate sale, so I drove over to say hi and, well, to also see if they had anything interesting. Lately I’ve become interested in doing more work in my shop, and I’ve always had a bit of a fondness for old tools, even though I know almost nothing about them. I had a nice visit, and then dug around. In their old workshop, I found I found this trio of old saws, which they generously donated to me. They are a bit dirty and rusty, and I don’t know anything about old tools really, but I liked the shape of the handles and the wheat motif that was carved into the handles, and imagined that they were probably fairly old.

In fact, I think they are probably over a hundred years old. I took some photos, and will ponder what I’m going to do with them. At the very least they could stand a bit of rust removal and cleaning, and probably have some linseed oil rubbed into the handles.

As you can see, these are a little rusty and dirty, but it’s mostly surface corrosion, and they are in pretty good condition. I doubt you would really call them sharp, but they are not missing any teeth, and they are straight and even. One has a fairly loose handle, and the one pictured on the bottom has a split in the handle. The handles are secured to the saws with screws which are (I believe) brass.

This one is probably in the roughest shape. As you can see, the wood is split right through the medallion in the center, and there is a fair amount of sticky, gloppy looking stuff stuck onto the handle, specially near the base of the wheat motif.

Here is a not very good picture of the medallion. It’s fairly corroded, but I haven’t tried to clean it yet. My guess is that it says “DISSTON”, but I’m not 100% sure. I looked at this quick identifying chart, and believe it to be a Disston D-23 or one of the related models. Neat!

The next saw:

has another dirty/gunky medallion.

It is pretty clearly another Disston saw, also tagged with USA. I think it might be a No. 76, but I’m not sure. If so, it’s a bit more rare than the first saw, and while the blade is in kind of gunky condition, the handle and hardware appear much better. Overall the feeling of the saw is more modern, but what do I know?

The last is a different manufacturer.

Rather odd construction to my eyes. The slotted/split construction is particularly odd, and the curves are more exaggerated. Looking at the medallion:

Reveals a kind of nice motif with a crescent moon and five pointed star, and “SIMONDS MFG CO. WARRANTED”. I wasn’t able to find too much more information about this in a casual Google, but it’s a cool medallion.

Anyway, I doubt I am going to be using them for much woodworking, but I thought they were cool objects. I’ll probably try to get them cleaned up at least, remove the rust and figure out some way to display them. If anyone has more knowledge/expertise about old handsaws you can email me or drop a comment. I’d love to know more.