Thread: Thos Ibbotson & Co dovetail saw

Hi Tom,

Nice find, and should clean up nicely, What is the black mark, looks like it might be burnt? or is it paint?

In "British Saws and Saw Makers" Thomas Ibbotson and Co are listed as making saws from 1836 to 1909, a mark that looks the same as yours in dated as 1900, so I would think you saw is from about that time, that means it's at least 115 years old.

Ray

That's a nice little saw. Not the prettiest, but it'll make a good user. I think you've done well...

Originally Posted by letaage

Can anyone tell me how I might proceed with the other original saw "screw" for want of a better description. It looks like a split nut but without the slots, you can see the shaft of the mating screw on one side. The screw I have managed to remove has a very coarse thread so I don't think I'll be able to find anything off the shelf to replace the damaged split nut.

Also, what kind of wood is the handle made from? Beech?

What about drilling two holes in the face of the 'nut' and using needle point pliers to act as a screwdriver?
I have made up a few nuts for my own use from round brass stock to act as replacements for damaged or missing parts. I don't know what others do, but I have rethreaded the original bolt with either 3mm or 4mm metric threads and tapped the new nuts to suit. Seems to work for me.
Looks like Beech.

Yep, looks like a good score to me.

The handle is (northern hemisphere) Beech, pretty stock-standard for any European saw of that era.

If the black mark is a burn, forgetabuodid, it will most likely be too deep to remove without scraping away a substantial amount of wood. The handle looks functional to me, none of the defects appears to be structural. For a user, I'd just clean it up & concentrate on getting those teeth sharp & even - that's the main issue.

If those are bolts, I can't see how they were tightened without slots. Perhaps they were sanded off, either after construction, or by an over-enthusiastic 'restorer'? Seems unlikely, as it would require a couple of mm to come off the cheek to completely obliterate the slots! Or perhaps they were rivets, which were not uncommon, and there is no square on the shank of the threaded one you've gotten out, which makes me suspect they were not bolts to begin with. Someone has punched out one of them, then threaded it & made up the split nut, perhaps? You should get a fair idea by how fine the gap between nut & bolt is - a very fine or almost invisible gap spells rivet.

In any case, you'll need to do something fairly heroic to get the remaining bolt out, & it's almost certainly going to leave one side or other unsightly. I'd try Burraboy's suggestion of drilling a couple of holes in the 'nut' - if it is threaded, it should unscrew reasonably easily, but if it just turns without moving out, it's a rivet washer & you'll need to punch it out.

Making a couple of split nuts is pretty simple, as long as you have some taps and a way of centering a hole reasonably accurately in a short piece of brass rod. Use a slightly undersized tap & die combination, brass is pretty forgiving, & the old saw bolts I've come across are pretty soft. If you have access to a metal lathe, making a couple of new bolts is a very simple, & certainly the easiest solution, I reckon.

On the other hand, is there any specific reason to remove the handle? If it's still tight & doesn't wobble when the other bolt is tightened up, why not leave it alone. I do admit, I prefer to remove blades from the handle when sharpening small saws, because it's usually awkward to get those narrow blades right into the saw vise, but you can manage without removing the handle, when necessary...

Cheers,

I agree with Ian, if firm on the plate, just sharpen and use it. At a flea market, I would pass this one by (I do have a few dovetail saws)... but if purchased, I think a new handle and new screws are the order of the day. There is a huge amount of info on this forum to make your own handle.

Cheers
Peter

Thanks for all the replies and good advice.

I want to restore this as a user so I am not too worried about looks. I'll have to wait for next month before the bank manager will let me buy some saw files so I can take my time with it.

The plate is a bit loose, it has a slight left-right wobble which I think is due to a hairline crack in the good cheek, so I am keen to get the handle off and fix that and the bit missing out of the other cheerk. If all else fails I can replace the handle but if it is really 115 years old I think I'd like to preserve as much of the original as possible. You can see the faint traces of what looks like copperplate handwriting on the side of the handle, my guess is a previous owner's name?

I am not too worried about the black mark, but it is not paint. It seems to have penetrated the wood some way in, so it is either a burn or stained. I think it is a burn because the handle shape has been slightly rounded over in that spot, but doesn't seem to have affected the handle in any other way.

I think that cutting the burnt mark out and filling it back in with new wood to restore the shape might weaken the handle at that point?

I was coming to the conclusion that the remaining screw might be a rivet, but the screw I removed actually does have a square section near the head which might indicate that it is not original (or vice versa) or has been threaded because the screw head and nut fit perfectly in the handle and both screws head are almost identical in size.

The closest thing I have been able to find online to these screws is here: http://www.fullchisel.com/blog/?p=74 This is almost identical aside from the longer thread.

I think I might replace both screws with new split nuts since it sounds like l am going to have to get medieval on the remaining screw to get it out. But it might be worth trying to thread some round brass stock (7/16ths) to create some replacement nuts if I can restrict the damage to just one side. I'm not much of a metal worker though!

Thanks again, I'll try and put some more pictures up as I go!

Tom

I think you might find it is a normal split nut that has been sanded down.
I think you will probably screw of the nut quite easily. (by drilling the small holes)

It was not at all unusual to install the bolts&nuts leaving the head a little proud and sand down flush to the wood.
I assume they might have down the same on the reverse ... but I haven't thought about it before.
(Not as far as removing the slots 'though, I don't mean)

I like the blank-head look myself.
I had a handsaw with a big 1"ish blank medallion and no other bolts which I used "normal" Disston type saw bolts on and sanded the domed heads down to flats (on the face side only). I still like the look of it, even though I was the one butchering at it.

Cheers,
Paul

OK, mea culpa, I didn't look closely at the bolt, & didn't spot that the shank is indeed squared. It looks like most of the non-threaded part of the shank is square - is that so? So if the other bolt is the same (as seems likely), you should be able to unscrew it without too much drama.

I have to gently disagree with Paul, though. Whatever you may think of the aesthetics of the 'bare' look, it just ain't practical, in my view. Apart from the convenience of being able to easily dissemble a small saw for sharpening, you will sometimes need to twitch up the nuts a bit, due to changes in the wood with seasonal moisture movement. It doesn't matter how old the handle is, wood is hygroscopic & remains so as long as it exists. Last year & into this year, we had the longest, driest, spell here in living memory. I had ferrules coming loose & falling off tools that are older than I am, & every saw I own was at least a little bit loose before it was over, and needed a half to full turn of the nuts to restore order. Keep the slots, is my advice!

You can make bolts & nuts with pretty primitive gear, as I said (I used to) but it's vastly easier with my small metal lathe. See how you go with preserving the originals, and if you get into trouble, I can probably make you some fairly convincing replacements at a reasonable cost.

Cheers,

Originally Posted by IanW

I have to gently disagree with Paul, though. Whatever you may think of the aesthetics of the 'bare' look, it just ain't practical, in my view. Apart from the convenience of being able to easily dissemble a small saw for sharpening, you will sometimes need to twitch up the nuts a bit, due to changes in the wood with seasonal moisture movement.

In my defence, they did manage to stumble along with the blank look for a hundred years or so.





Here's a link to an idea I was trying to remember to assist with installing or removing saw nuts ...
http://www.wkfinetools.com/tRestore/...sawHandle4.asp

Just thinking about the burn section, I reckon you could that section out down to 8mm or 10mm whatever and maybe use a router to clear out the section. Glue in a new section and shape it to match. We repair old wooden planes around the mouth, and repair broken horns ... so why not? especially for a user.

Cheers,
Paul

Originally Posted by pmcgee

In my defence, they did manage to stumble along with the blank look for a hundred years or so...

True, Paul, and they got along well enough without 'lecktrickery, and lots of other luxuries we effete moderns like, too!

My comments re removable bolts were directed at small saws, and mainly for the convenience in sharpening aspect. You rarely, if ever, need to remove the handle on large hand saws (though the one in your pics could do with removing & replacing ), and if you live in a constant climate where handles expand & contract very little (i.e. only within the elastic limits of the wood), you probably won't need to tighten them, either.

As for patching the scorch, I certainly wouldn't bother, myself. Unless very carefully done, there's a real risk the cure will look worse than the disease. Broken horns, or damage that's likely to cause discomfort in use is another matter - I'd most certainly try to 'fix' that!

Cheers,

Interesting ... here's a Fulton Works, A Richardson saw from Boston maybe 1840ish (from Ray's backsaw.net)
http://www.backsaw.net/forum/index.p...uning-saw.711/

Beautiful handle ... and the bolts are like this on both sides.

and these ones were peened, maybe ...

Apparently with german saws they (sometimes?) used an unthreaded post and "washers" and peened over the brass.

To tighten a loose handle, hit with hammer.

http://www.backsaw.net/forum/index.p...dware-n-y.696/

So I bit the bullet and drilled a couple of indents into the remaining screw head, and what do you know, it screwed right off. So as the images show it was indeed an un-slotted saw nut like the other hacked up nut using a screw with a (mostly) rectangular shaft and not a rivet!

IMG_20150503_190730.jpg IMG_20150503_190856.jpg

It was actually quite loose, it came off really easily so in hindsight I think it will be good idea to replace them with a set I can I easily retighten. I was thinking of buying some of these (7/16" is the right size for the saw):

http://www.blackburntools.com/new-to...lts/index.html

With the saw plate off I gave it a bit of a clean (scrape, rust remover, wet and dry sand to 1200 then polish) it tidied up nicely!

IMG_20150503_195346.jpg

I started to give the handle a bit of attention with a clean and a light sanding and the "black spot" seems to have not penetrated too deeply. It's not going to disappear with out cutting it out but it's not so prominent now so I'll probably leave it. However the handle has been misshapen in that area:

IMG_20150503_203048.jpg IMG_20150503_203122.jpg

I was wondering if it could be due to wear from a previous left-handed owner? Or maybe reshaped for comfort somewhere in its long life?

The next steps are to fix the cheeks on the handle and apply a finish to the handle.

The complete, but craked, cheek came off during sanding, which will make it easier to glue back in place. I've got myself a small piece of beech (a small cutting board made from beech!) to glue in the other side then shape to match. Any advice on that process?

Then I need to tidy it up and apply a finish. I have had some success with BLO and shellac on another back saw I am working on, a 10" W. Tyzack, Sons & Turner No.120 . I haven't got any photos of that one, it is similar to this one, but not in quite as good shape:

http://lumberjocks.com/Brit/blog/30858

I have only to give it one last sanding with 0000 steel wool and a wax polish and it's done but it has turned out very well so I think I'll go that way again.

Stay tuned...

That handle is a bit more beat-up than I thought from your initial pics! I'd take the chicken-run & just make a new handle if it were mine - it seems like more work than trying to repair it. However, you probably haven't made as many saw handles as I have, so that might seem like the harder road to you. In any case, you've got little to lose by having a go at repairing the old one. The bit that just came adrift might glue back ok, but I've had mixed (mostly bad)r esults trying to glue wood that has been split for a long time. Even when I assiduously clean the surfaces, I seem to get a poor glue bond. On the side that's missing, I'd make a clean surface with a sharp chisel, and glue on my fresh, oversized bit of Beech, trying to match the grain directions as closely as possible, then saw/rasp/plane.sand it to shape. The new wood is going to stick out like a sore thumb, unless you are a dab hand at matching stains.

Since you are going to so much trouble to preserve the handle, why not use the original bolts? It's dead easy to hacksaw a shallow slot in the other nut. Give it a go, and see if you can tighten both bolts down without runnng out of thread, or the thread slipping. After a bit of a polish up, & I reckon they'll look more at home than new ones.....

Cheers,