Category: Saws

‘In the Totomi Mountains’ by Katsushika Hokusai (1830-1833)
From the series – Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji

I gave a series of experiments one day in my lecture-room before the governors of the province and a large number of people who came in from mere curiosity. I wanted to show the officials my model saw-mill, having a small circular saw run by a diminutive steam-engine.

I told them it was a pity to see dozens of men and boys with long hand-saws sweltering and working the whole day in sawing boards from a single log, as I had seen them do in building my house, when a modern saw-mill could perform ten times the amount of work in half the time.

They watched my little machine as it cut rapidly through small sticks of wood, and then said it was very wonderful; but, if they were to establish such a saw-mill in Shidzuoka, it would be mobbed or raise a riot among the workmen.

Edward Warren Clark
Life and Adventure in Japan – 1878
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Image from ‘Ackerbau der Morgenländer’ (Agriculture of the Orientals) – 1772

“ The Indian carpenter knows no other tools than the plane, chisel, wimble, a hammer, and a kind of hatchet. The earth serves him for a shop-board, and his foot for a hold-fast; but he is a month in performing what one workman will do in three days.”

“ The sawyer places his wood between two joists fixed in the ground ; and, sitting carefully on a little bench, employs three days, with one saw, to make a plank which would cost our people an hour’s work.”

Robert Mudie
The Picture of India: Geographical, Historical & Descriptive, Volume 2 – 1830
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In China, the sawyer’s, the carpenter’s, the joiner’s, and the sashmaker’s trade are all exercised by the same person. There are no saw-mills, planing machines, or sash factories, and in sauntering about the streets of the cities, at the door of a shop, or new building, may be seen one or two men sawing boards from the logs, and inside other workmen manufacturing them into the different forms for constructing or finishing a house.
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Sawing planks and boards is his employment, at which ſome will earn three or four ſhillings a day. There are great numbers of them, which is given as a reaſon why we ſhould not erect ſaw-mills as the Dutch do, and by the help of which one man will do as much as fifty can by their labour. Thus the Dutch run away with moſt of the trade of Europe for planks and timbers ready framed for building ſhips and houſes, But ſurely a publick good ought to be preferred to that of any private men. And if we ſtill want hands, as ſome ſuggeſt, theſe men might find employment in other branches of buſineſs.

The General Shop Book: or, Tradesman’s Universal Director – 1753

—Jeff Burks

“Le travail” – Villagers depicted in various activities, with two men sawing a large plank of wood. French (1720-1765). Print by Anne Claude Philippe de Tubières, Comte de Caylus.