looking for a saw

[WoodchuckCanuck]

Hi folks,

A person emailed me looking for a saw


If anybody knows of a source on where to get this saw in Canada, please post here. This is some of the details from the person inquiring:

It's a long blade usualy 4+ feet long with a rather long  upright pointing handle on each end so two people could  push and pull. The blades of the saws them selves were about 3-4" wide and  perhaps 5/32" thick, and quite ridgid.

[Tom]

Hey, Woodchuck,

I think what your fella is looking for is a "two man buck saw".

Jeff bought some old ones a while ago and was looking for handles on the Wanted topic in Commerce.  That's way down at the bottom of the Home page.  Some of the guys were giving him links to catalogues that sold the handles and the whole saw too.  I'm a long way from Canada but these catalogues sell across borders so maybe that thread will be of some help.  Here is the link.

http://www.forestryforum.com/cgi-bin/board/YaBB.pl?board=ads2&action=display&num=1010872119

[Jeff]

Woodchuck are they looking for a working saw, or a wall hanger?

[Cedar Eater]

I saw a demonstration of a longer version of that kind of saw once at that tourist sawmill near mackinac city. What a lousy job that was for both guys. One guy stood above the cant on a platform above a pit and pulled the weight of the saw up on the back stroke. The pittman stood below the cant in a pit and used his weight to pull the saw down on the cutstroke. He ate all the sawdust, but the upper guy seemed to do more work and risked falling off the platform if he got too tired. They managed to get some pretty good boards cut using volunteers from the audience as pittmen. That mill was very educational.

[Tom]

I'll say...........!  It wouldn't take me too long to learn that I didn't want to do that any more.

[Jeff]

Look familiar Cedar?

[Cedar Eater]

Yeah, that's it. Only when I saw it, the guy on the platform was younger and the pitman was a 10 year old boy. Was this picture taken at that mill on US 23?

[Jeff]

Sure was, Old Mill Creek.  It has a reconstruction of the water powered reciprocating sawmill that sawed lumber for Macinac Island and the straights area.  I have some pictures of that somewhere.

They used to saw almost through the log, then back it out, then saw the next board almost through and back it out with about 4 inches to go, and so on till the whole log was sliced into boards with one end still attached. They would then tie up the sawed end and float it across to the island just like a log, that way when they got there, they just bucked off the end and POOF! Boards!

[L. Wakefield]

   THAT has got to be the fore-runner of today's pre-cooked, individually packaged grits, Leg-o waffles, etc etc. I'm dying laughing at the picture and at the same time awed by the ingenuity..  lw