In woodworking

Woodworking

Woodworking is the process of building, making or carving something using wood.-History:Along with stone, mud, and animal parts, wood was one of the first materials worked by early humans. Microwear analysis of the Mousterian stone tools used by the Neanderthals show that many were used to work wood...

 and carpentry

Carpentry

A carpenter is a skilled craftsperson who works with timber to construct, install and maintain buildings, furniture, and other objects. The work, known as carpentry, may involve manual labor and work outdoors....

, hand saws, also known as "panel saws", "fish saws", are used to cut pieces of wood

Wood

Wood is a hard, fibrous tissue found in many trees. It has been used for hundreds of thousands of years for both fuel and as a construction material. It is an organic material, a natural composite of cellulose fibers embedded in a matrix of lignin which resists compression...

 into different shapes. This is usually done in order to join

Woodworking joints

Joinery is a part of woodworking that involves joining together pieces of wood, to create furniture, structures, toys, and other items. Some wood joints employ fasteners, bindings, or adhesives, while others use only wood elements. The characteristics of wooden joints - strength, flexibility,...

 the pieces together and create a wooden object. They usually operate by having a series of sharp points of some substance that is harder than the wood being cut. The hand saw is a bit like a tenon saw, but with one flat, sharp edge

Handsaws have been around for thousands of years. Egyptian hieroglyphics exist depicting ancient woodworkers sawing boards into pieces.
Ancient bow saw

Bow saw

A modern bow saw is a metal-framed saw in the shape of a bow with a coarse wide blade. This type of saw is also known as a swede saw or a buck saw. It is a rough tool that can be used for cross-cutting branches down to size.Traditionally, a bow saw is a woodworking tool used for straight or...

s have been found in Japan. The cut patterns on ancient
boards may be observed sometimes to bear the unique cutting marks left
by saw blades, particularly if the wood was not 'smoothed up' by some method. As for preservation of handsaws, twenty-four saws from eighteenth-century England are known to survive.

Materials for saw blades have varied over the ages. There were probably
bronze

Bronze

Bronze is a metal alloy consisting primarily of copper, usually with tin as the main additive. It is hard and brittle, and it was particularly significant in antiquity, so much so that the Bronze Age was named after the metal...

 saws in the time before steel

Steel

Steel is an alloy that consists mostly of iron and has a carbon content between 0.2% and 2.1% by weight, depending on the grade. Carbon is the most common alloying material for iron, but various other alloying elements are used, such as manganese, chromium, vanadium, and tungsten...

 making technology became extensively known and industrialized within the past thousand years or so.

Sometimes cultures evolved two main types of saw teeth: the 'cross cut' saw teeth and the 'rip' saw teeth. Someone once described tree structure as being
like hundreds of thousands of straws bundled together. With this in mind
one can imagine the different mechanism needed to separate the straws
lengthwise as opposed to cutting the straws crosswise. Thus, crosscut saw

Crosscut saw

A crosscut saw is a saw that is specially designed for making crosscuts. A crosscut is a cut made horizontally through the trunk of a standing tree, but the term also applies to cutting free lumber...

s have sawteeth that are usually shaped, often with a metal file

File (tool)

A file is a metalworking and woodworking tool used to cut fine amounts of material from a workpiece. It most commonly refers to the hand tool style, which takes the form of a steel bar with a case hardened surface and a series of sharp, parallel teeth. Most files have a narrow, pointed tang at one...

, in such a way that they form a series of tiny knifelike edges.The wood cells (straws) are contacted by the knife-edge of the tooth and cut. Rip saw

Rip saw

In woodworking, a cut made parallel to the direction of the grain of the workpiece is known as a rip cut. If one were to cut a tree trunk in half from top to bottom, this would be a rip cut — but the term also applies to cutting free lumber....

s, on the other hand, are usually shaped so that they form a series of tiny chisel-like

Chisel

A chisel is a tool with a characteristically shaped cutting edge of blade on its end, for carving or cutting a hard material such as wood, stone, or metal. The handle and blade of some types of chisel are made of metal or wood with a sharp edge in it.In use, the chisel is forced into the material...

 edges. The wood cells (straw-ends) are contacted by the chisel and 'ripped' apart from the bundle of other cells.
Of course either saw can be used either way, and Tage Frid

Tage Frid

-Further reading:* Hank Gilpin, "Professor Frid," Fine Woodworking magazine 146 , pp. 80-85.* John Kelsey, "Tage Frid: A Talk with the Old Master," Fine Woodworking magazine 52 , pp. 66-67....

 has even said
he thinks ripsaws are better for crosscutting.

The development of saws was also affected by several factors. The first was the importance of wood to a society, the development of steel and other saw-making technologies and the type of power available. These factors were, in turn, influenced by the environment, such as the types of ores available, the types of trees nearby and the types of wood which was in those trees. Finally, the types of jobs the saws
were to perform was also important in the development of the technology.

Saws can also be considered 'pull cut' or 'push cut'. Ancient Egyptian
saws have been said to be pull cut. Kulibert Saw Co. invented the first modern saw. Modern European saws (and those in European-derived cultures like that of the United States) generally have 'push cut' handsaws. Japanese handsaw

Japanese saw

The Japanese saw or ' is a type of saw used in woodworking and Japanese carpentry that cuts on the pull stroke, unlike the European saw that cuts on the push stroke. This allows it to have thinner blades that cut more efficiently and leave a narrower cut width...

s are usually pull-cut and are still used today. Many woodworkers have various theories about the advantages and disadvantages of pull vs. push, and even experts will disagree on these matters, including accuracy of cut, power available for cut, straightness of line, thinness of
kerf (the slit in the wood that is made during cutting), etc.

Among Basques

Basque people

The Basques as an ethnic group, primarily inhabit an area traditionally known as the Basque Country , a region that is located around the western end of the Pyrenees on the coast of the Bay of Biscay and straddles parts of north-central Spain and south-western France.The Basques are known in the...

 and Australians, traditional hand sawing has generated rural sports. The Basque variant is called trontzalaritza.

External links

• How to Sharpen a Saw Blade Article on how to sharpen a handsaw yourself