I decided that since I had the momentum, and that since I had the drawing ready, that I would start a new saw handle, this time in apple. It will be for one of my small tenon/carcase saws, but I’m not sure which one yet.

First, I cut a piece of the board and fit the pattern:

Then I milled the board. Here’s one face flattened:

The entire board is mostly clear, but the pith runs near the center. So when I cut the piece out, the pith is on one side. This is, in theory, not a problem.

At this stage, it was evident that apple is unlike any wood I’ve worked with in the past. The grain is kind of wavy, but it’s not a problem with sharp tools. The grain is also very fine, and when planed, it is very smooth.

It was also unusual because I did not mill the board four-square. Rather, I made the faces trapezoidal, just taking care to get the edges square to the faces, and that the thing was of course of uniform thickness. Once that was done, it was easy to transfer the pattern to the wood.

I still used a coping saw to cut out the pattern, but I used a few other saws to mark out sections. This made sawing easier.

It still wasn’t super-fast, but again, I don’t have power tools. But I did finish sawing today.