Thread: Paschal lamb

MA

Well done with the salvage operation. Not being well versed in things ecclesiastical I had to look up "paschal." I thought it might have been a saw maker with which I was unfamiliar. I suppose there is a carpentry context there somewhere .

I have not had good experiences with the modern Nicholsons. If you can source NOS, that is a very different matter.

Regards
Paul

Thanks Paul. J Taylor and Sons is the maker. I was trying to come up with a better title than "Another saw restoration"

Originally Posted by Mountain Ash

Thanks Paul. J Taylor and Sons is the maker. I was trying to come up with a better title than "Another saw restoration"

MA

I enlarged the pic so I knew it was a Taylor saw and remembered that they used a lamb or sheep. It is a better description.

Regards
Paul

MA
So your leaving Egypt, I thought you lived in the Mountains just out of site of Glen Waverley.
Now I’m just all confused again.

By the way lovely save on the saw,and a very modern take with a hole to hang the saw up on,very clever.

Cheers Matt.
We’re would we be with out Auntie Google.

Originally Posted by Simplicity

Cheers Matt.
We’re would we be with out Auntie Google.

We might find out soon if no agreement is reached.

Regards
Paul

Originally Posted by Simplicity

MA
So your leaving Egypt, I thought you lived in the Mountains just out of site of Glen Waverley.
Now I’m just all confused again.

By the way lovely save on the saw,and a very modern take with a hole to hang the saw up on,very clever.

Cheers Matt.
We’re would we be with out Auntie Google.

Thanks Matt. Hole could come in handy because I might just be running out of room in my current saw storage area . I can feel a saw till coming on.

MA, I guess I've never seen the logic of "clocking" screws - it's inevitable you are going to end up with screws/nuts that are either a bit less or a bit more tight than optimum. Furthermore, given the weather cycles in my part of he world, I find myself having to twitch up loose screws after long dry spells, so it would be an endless struggle to try & keep the slots aligned. However, we must each deal with our own particular forms of OCD as best we can...

If you put out an SOS for a replacement, there's a fair chance someone will have one (I don't unfortunately, but I could easily make one that would be convincing enough once it tarnished a bit). I'd have to make both bolt & nut 'cos I don't have a die as coarse as the threads on those old bolts, and the chance of being able to gear my little lathe to cut a thread to match the existing nut would be vanishingly small. However, I think the thread pitch would be of little consequence, once the bolt is in place, you'd never know (& it would be easier to "clock" the finer metric thread ). Those old saw bolts seem absurdly skinny to me, but I guess they were adequate, I haven't seen many broken. I've seen a couple partially chopped through by the blade hole because they were left loose, and the coarse threads do strip fairly readily, but there are a lot of very old saws with perfectly sound bolts still around. Brass is probably relatively less expensive these days, but to satisfy my form of obsessiveness, I make 4 or 5mm bolts for most of my saws, and only put 3mm on very small ones where the larger size looks a bit out of proportion.

I don't think the Beech tree has changed much, but they probably do harvest younger trees nowadys, & use every bit of wood that cane be recovered, so between that & not paying any regard to grain orientation, you'll get a lot of wood with barely visible rays. Your handle has come out of a nicely quartered board from the lower trunk where the rays are very prominent & it's also well-aged & has probably had a dose or two of linseed over the years that has worked its way well into the wood.

From the pics, I'm guessing your "Easter lamb" has a 300mm blade, with something like 80mm depth? If the original blade was the same size, and only 0.5mm (0.020") thick, it's not so surprising it got damaged, I reckon that's a wee bit light for a largish saw, meself. I'd recommend 25thou as a minimum in that size and 30 thou, which you've used is even more robust, though a bit heavy for anything less than about 10tpi imo. However, that's just opinion, there are no hard & fast rules. I've noticed quite a bit of variation in the plate thicknesses of old saws of roughly the same size that I've checked.

Out of curiosity, I've been playing about with some very fine plate (0.010" or 0.25mm) lately, which is taking "thin plate" to a ridiculous extreme. The couple of little saws I've made with it are sweet things for small, fine work, but would have a short life in the wrong hands, I suspect!

Cheers,

Hi Ian. The shame of it is that I don't always try to line them up but it always "seems" the right thing to do. The remaining two bolts seem to be holding nicely and the shaft of the broken one is still engaged so I should be right. The timber is even better in the flesh - I have seen the same in wooden plane bodies of a similar vintage that I have repurposed. I made myself some paste wax and adds a nice depth to my other regular finish.

MA

On a subjective level the English Beech always seems to have more prominent medullary rays and that characteristic "fleck," which I don't see in the American Beech handles.

Regards
Paul

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

.......On a subjective level the English Beech always seems to have more prominent medullary rays and that characteristic "fleck," .......

Well Paul, I'd hate to have a gun held to my head & be told I had to pick the right origin of any individual piece I was presented with (or else!). As with most woods, growing conditions & soil type will affect individual trees, but if you stacked enough examples of each side by side, I guess there would be a trend for each of the two species, but I eckon there'd be a lot of overlap. Such descriptions of the differences I could find are somewhat confusing. According to this site , the medullary rays are more prominent in American Beech, whereas this site says (among other things):

"The grains in American beech wood are much more honest and closer than the European beech tree.
The grains in European beech are also straight, but their texture has a much wider range of colors than the American, so the tree usually has a more natural glow."

Seems like a contradiction to me!

Somewhere I read that the wood of eastern European trees is creamier than their more westerly brothers & sisters, and at least the single example I have is consistent with that statement. I made this saw handle from a re-purposed stool seat, which had "made in Czechoslovakia" stamped on it: 1 Beech handle.jpg

It's the palest bit of Beech I've ever seen, but it was just as firm & worked the same as the (very small amount of) Nth. American Beech I've worked. Among some other small bits & pieces of Beech I brought home from Canada, the back board of my workbench is Beech I got from a small Mennonite mill near Guelph. It has very small medullary rays, in fact you have to look very closely to see that it is actually Beech, but the other bits & bobs of Beech have very obvious rays.

I think I'll be content enough just to recognise a piece as "Beech"....

Cheers,