Any info on Phoenix hand saws?

[Adam Woznicki]

Last week I bought a couple saws for the nuts, and potential scraper material.
This one had larger nuts that I thought might fit the missing one on my Adkins.

I'm curious about the maker and date. The nut is stamped Phoenix.

I think I can cut this one up for my first scrapers without feeling bad about it.

Estate sale find. This and a Simonds with good handle for 50¢.


Adam

[Jonathan McCullough]

Phoenix is a name you come across from time to time. It could be an individual saw manufacturer, but I suspect that it is a brand name on a real saw manufacturer's saw. About the only thing I can come up with is an association between Shapleigh hardware ("Diamond Edge is a Quality Pledge!") and a Phoenix Insurance. The saw plate could be anyone's, but doesn't resemble a D-8 as much as an Atkins or Simonds.

[Adam Woznicki]

Thanks for the Phoenix Insurance lead, but I don't think goes anywhere.

All of the Phoenix Insurance logos have the Phoenix head facing the other direction.

More info:
I can barely read the scroll in the etching, and it says "spring steel warranted"
Are there any other saws that have that?

[Jonathan McCullough]

From what I can gather from old books, "Spring steel" and "warranted superior" or Warren and Ted Superior as it's humorously referred to, are conventions from the turn of the century. The turn of the nineteenth century that is. Most of the steel for making saws was imported from Great Britain in the form of thin plates. Henry Disston got pretty fancypants in his descriptions of the stuff, but what distinguished the various saws was more a matter of tempering, taper grinding, hammer tensioning, and polishing. But as a consumer of saws in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, you didn't see any of the work that went into the various saws, so the cheapest were labeled "cast steel," then "spring steel" (basically the same stuff) then extra superduper London fine spring steel, etc.

The warranted part comes in because in the early nineteenth century, a lot of American saw manufacturers were quite capable of making very bad saws. If you don't temper them right, they'll break like glass apparently, or flap like a noodle. So the manufacturers warranted that the saw would operate, and replace the saw if it didn't. In the competition to distinguish themselves from lesser competitors, the "warranted" assertion became so standard and pervasive that even saws in the 1950s and 1960s still had saw nuts warranting superiority.

My best saw has a "warranted superior" sawnut on the handle, so it doesn't really confer superiority or inferiority, IMHO. The only way to judge a saw is to clean it off, sharpen it, and put it to wood.

[Randy Reitz]

I have a Phoenix medallion on an old saw I bought to practice sharpening on. As I cleaned it I found an etching for "Empire Saw" out of Jamestown, NY. I then quit because I didn't want to mess it up.

I don't know if they were the only ones who used it or if it was a house brand from one of the other manufacturers. I vaguely remember something I found at the time that made me think the medallion was used by more than one brand at the time, sort of like "Warranted Superior", but I can't find anything to back that up today on either Google or Bing.

[Lowell Smith]

Hand-saw makers of North America

lists a Phoenix Company in Hitchcockville, CT that produced saws from 1853 to 1901. They became Chapin-Stevens Co. in 1901.

That's all I could find in this book.

[Ray Gardiner]

Hi Adam,

It's most likely made by EC Atkins, they used the Phoenix Medallions with the eagle as a secondary product line, sometimes misspelt "Phenix"

Does it look like this one.

http://www.backsaw.net/pics/AktinsPhoenix.jpg


Regards
Ray

[Jim Koepke]

Last week I bought a couple saws for the nuts, and potential scraper material.
This one had larger nuts that I thought might fit the missing one on my Adkins.

I'm curious about the maker and date. The nut is stamped Phoenix.

I think I can cut this one up for my first scrapers without feeling bad about it.

Estate sale find. This and a Simonds with good handle for 50¢.


Adam

So, did the saw nuts fit? Were you looking for the medallion or just a nut?

I sold a small collection of saw medallions not too long ago on ebay.

There is a picture of them here:

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?p=1318386

The one in the upper left corner is the Atkins. It is upside down.

Not sure if I Have any more of those.

jim

[Adam Woznicki]

Thanks for the info everybody.

Its so great to have a place like this, most people think I'm nuts for buying rusty old hand tools instead of just using power tools.


Ray
The medallion looks close enough like that. I posted a pic in the first post.
I guess I can chalk it up to Atkins.

Jim
The nuts fit. I just needed 1 nut, not the medallion.
The only problem is , the Atkins nuts are silver,(nickel plated brass?)
and the ones on the Phoenix are brass. I can live with that till I run across another one.