I’ve been working on my saws. My first victim was that rusty old Jackson backsaw from the last journal entry. I followed this dude’s instructions and ended up with a significantly derusted version:

It was fairly pitted, but I intentionally started on a saw that wasn’t in such hot shape. I applied a lot of wax, so it should saw very cleanly once I bang out the kink at the end and get the teeth in decent shape.

Having this as encouragement, I decided to attack the “Warranted Superior” saw that had been sitting around for a while with the handle off. I got that saw very soon after moving to San Francisco for $2 from a couple of old ladies who were selling stuff out of their garage on weekends. The blade of that guy was in really nice shape, with very little rust, so I didn’t expect the derusting to take very long.

However, after scraping a bunch of rust off with the razor blade, I came across the etching. I thought I was on crack or something when I first read it, so I used a little bit of care to raise it to be able to see it for real:

This saw is a Winchester #16. Or is that a #46? Huh? Apparently, these are somewhat collectible; they were not made for long (according to this, in any case). Who really made this saw? Beats me. We know that Stanley and Sargent made the Winchester planes.

Now I don’t know what to do. Should I sell it? The blade is in stellar shape, but the handle isn’t so hot; the top horn is a little broken, and the finish was crap. I’ll probably just continue on with the restoration, dunno. The teeth are rip profile, but it’s been improperly sharpened with crosscut fleam.

I realize that I have not been posting all of my goodies lately. This isn’t because I haven’t gotten any new tools lately, it’s that I’ve gotten too many and it would be hard to keep up. But I will make an attempt to post one every now and then.

Probably the most significant thing I got lately was this saw vise:

This might sound like the lamest tool in the world to post about, but only for someone who doesn’t have a saw vise. It is shown here holding my run-down old Jackson backsaw, which won’t be run-down for long, now that I have a saw vise. It weighs 12 pounds, god only knows who made it and when, and it cost me a whopping $10 on ebay. Thank goodness it doesn’t seem to have a manufacturer’s mark; otherwise, some lamebrain would have probably tried to get all collector on it (I had already bid on a few Disstons but they quickly got out of hand).

It’s really hard to use mere words to describe how useful something like this is. No, really. Before, I was wondering how difficult sharpening saws was going to be. Now, I don’t, because this thing really holds those bad boys in tightly. It couldn’t have come at a better time, because a few working saws are the next order of business for me. I bought a few files today in anticipation.

And it actually clamps to the bottom of my WorkMate. Though I’m not sure this is a great feature.