Saw, Woodworking

Description

Water-powered ripsaw with 30-foot moveable carriage. Shaker-made with possibly commercial hardware. Bench shows many modifications. Hole in bench table where second saw shaft once mounted. Was permanently mounted to building (rear legs added by Museum). Midway carriage supports are newel posts. Bench has moveable parallel rip fence with a calibrated gauge. Gauge is a modified metal square with peg holes drilled in it allowing adjustments to 1/8. Thumbscrew at rear of gauge for recalibration. Pre-machine threaded screws.

Notes

Shakers built this saw bench specifically to saw boards lengthwise, with the grain of the wood. A wooden fence was fastened to the top of the bench in such a way that whatever the distance set from the circular saw blade it remained parallel to the blade. This was necessary to keep the blade from binding while cutting. The distance from the blade and, therefore, the width of the finished board, was regulated by placing an iron pin in one of a series of holes drilled at 1/8" intervals in an iron plate set into the bench top. When the back of the fence strikes the iron pin, the width of the board was automatically determined. Boards were sawn from 1/4" to 13 7/8 inches wide. The saw is also fitted with a 19-foot, rolling carriage that allows the operator to saw long boards without the help of a second person to support the cut end of the board. It appears that the operator held of clamped a long board to the carriage and trimmed off the right-hand edge of the board to create a straight edge. A board of precise width with two parallel edges could then be sawn using the adjustable fence. This seemingly simple operation was very time consuming without such a saw. Straightening one edge and regulating the width of several thousand feet of flooring would have been a most tedious job using only hand tools.