Thread: Rough Ebony Handled saws

Have a read here ... Groves and Sons LONDON - Saw Discussion Forums

I have two handsaws with plain bolt-heads ... but you can see the "Established 1770" and the "USE" medallion by googling "Groves and Sons medallion" and clicking "images" ...

https://www.google.com.au/search?q=g...w=1280&bih=929

Cheers,
Paul

Rob, that Groves saw is am impressive little thing - I've not seen a full handle in Ebony before, but have seen a couple of knife-handled saws with Ebony handles. Those rivets are pretty rough, and out of keeping with the sort of quality you'd expect on a tool with Ebony woodwork, so it would seem likely that it's either a handle grafted on from another saw, or the original saw bolts got lost for some reason, & this is some ruffian's 'fix'. If there are no extra holes in the saw plate, and they all match up nicely, I'd guess at the latter. It is potentailly a very nice saw & a bit of TLC would give it a new lease of life. A replacement set of genuine bolts & medallion would be very desirable, but extremely unlikely to be procurable, so the next best solution might be some replacements, made to fit.....

Cheers,

I can do you a close-ish relative ...

groves bs 001.jpg groves bs 003.jpg groves bs 004.jpg groves bs 006.jpg

and other pics (not mine) from the hard-disk ...

groves.jpg groves b.jpg

an 1850 example (not mine!)

groves 1850 (1) a.JPG

and getting completely carried away (not mine!!)

Groves 2 medals.jpg Groves 2 a.JPG

Paul

Ian , I will have a go at taking off the handle to see. I'm hoping it's the original and was a ruffian's fix .

I am feeling confident after seeing Paul's Haul of related saw pictures. Wowwoza me Doza!! where did you find all them ? on those first links ?

Some of those medallions are very nice, the good thing though is that three plain ones may be the right look for that handle. And new ones made to fit would not be to hard.

Rob

Barely a saw pic makes it onto my screen without being filed on the harddisk
(There's a very attractive one with Ian's name on it )

I don't know if RayG is well at the moment ... but he really knows this stuff ... and the other guys on his website.

My barely educated guess would put your ebony handle brass-back (nice btw) at about the same sort of time as my beech-handled one ... which I'm thinking might be roughly 1880+. There's all that stamping on the back, the front of the back is rounded, and the curves of the handle are starting to be a bit less elaborate and defined than some of the other examples (although some of that could be due to wear).

But given an ebony handle ... maybe the medallion might have been a bit upscale from a blank?
(I do like the blanks too 'though).

Cheers,
Paul

An australian tool seller is showing this one ...