Spear & Jackson rip saw

[Sean Richards]

Picked up a nice big rip saw last week

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saw plate was dead straight with absolutely no pitting whatsoever but covered in varnish or linseed oil. A very gentle cleaning revealed a super clean plate with quite a nice etch

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she is a 3 1/2 point but looks like it is going to take a lot of filing to sort the rake angle out to something a bit more useful. I am guessing made sometime between 1930 - 1950? Anyone have a better guess?

Oh and first post here so hi!

Sean

[James Owen]

Sean,

Welcome to the dark side of woodworking!

Very nice score.

Unfortunately, no idea of when it might have been made.

[Jim Matthews]

Was the plate black?

How did you remove the coating?

jim
wpt, ma

[Mike Allen1010]

Sean, welcome to the Cave!

Thanks for posting the pictures of that beautiful Spears and Jackson rip saw. A 3 1/2 point per inch is a rare configuration in my experience, but one that will come in very handy if you have to rip any oversized stock. From the pictures, it looks like it might be 28" long, if so even better as a user.

As you mentioned, it's probably going to take a bunch of files to reshape/sharpen those teeth to working condition, however, once you get that done it should be a great user.

Good luck and welcome again to the Cave!

Mike

[Andrae Covington]

Grandma, what big teeth you have!

Not a lot of info out there for dating Spear & Jackson saws. I have seen photos of #88 saws that are similar, but different handles. I wonder if the A of 88A indicates the thumbhole handle?

[David Weaver]

That'd be 2 1/2 teeth per inch, huh? I'd suspect someone put the rake on the teeth like that because it was too hard to start and use with no rake or close to no rake.

It'll come into the rake you want pretty quickly, though. I'd try it out around 10 degrees before I ran it all the way to 5 or less, but I could be wrong.

I'd love to have found that saw - it looks in spectacular shape. No clue on its age, though.

Welcome to the creek, btw.

[Sean Richards]

Was the plate black?

How did you remove the coating?

jim
wpt, ma

Plate was very dark and clearly coated with some sort of finish - I am guessing varnish or linseed oil.

Grabbed the first container of solvent I saw in my paint cupboard (which happened to be brush cleaner - so acetone or MEK I guess) which dissolved whatever was on there and gently wiped it all off with the finest scotchbrite pad I had. Total clean time about 20 minutes.

[Sean Richards]

That'd be 2 1/2 teeth per inch, huh? I'd suspect someone put the rake on the teeth like that because it was too hard to start and use with no rake or close to no rake.

It'll come into the rake you want pretty quickly, though. I'd try it out around 10 degrees before I ran it all the way to 5 or less, but I could be wrong.

I'd love to have found that saw - it looks in spectacular shape. No clue on its age, though.

Welcome to the creek, btw.

Definitely thinking about starting with 10 deg rake - needs a bit of jointing first but the tooth line is pretty good.

[john brenton]

I'm also jealous. Anything under 5 ppi is pretty hard to find, and the teeth look good enough to where even a slight adjustment on the rake angle would be good enough. Score.

[Jim Koepke]

Sean,

Welcome to the Creek.

What a Gloat to start with. Hard one to follow.

No thoughts on the saw other than beautiful.

jtk

[Jim Koepke]

No thoughts on the saw other than beautiful.

And that is not good enough for me. Googling > spear and jackson dating < and a few other items lead me around the WWW.

Found that the earliest proof of a closed handle on a saw happens to be a headstone with a date of 1747 according to one published source.

http://toolemera.com/bkpdf/Story%20of%20the%20Saw(2).pdf

Still not enough to go on. I do have an S&J saw from the 1950s or 1960s. It looks nothing like your saw. Mine definitely shows the "improvements" of time. Mine may be one of the lower cost models.

I also Googled > spear and jackson mermaid <

There were a few saws with an etch like yours, but they had different style of handles.

I need to do a few other things now, but it looks like there is enough to keep one busy for a day or two looking at this.

jtk

[Peter Evans]

Nice saw, from the handle style I would suggest 1920s. I have an early 20th century 28" Disston No 12 with 3 1/2 ppi (original factory ppi, is marked as such on the blade - but is 5 1/2 ppi near the toe for starting), and filed with only a small rake. Pretty hard work for an old bloke, but roars through the wood. From memory I have a few English 19th century 3 1/2 ppi rip saws - so not uncommon.

If you want an expert opinion on UK saws put up a message on Backsaw.Net http://www.backsaw.net/index.php?option=com_jfusion&Itemid=58&jfile=forumdisplay.php&f=5; despite the website name, hand saws are part of the discussion.

Cheers
Peter

[Joshua Byrd]

I'd read about it somewhere - perhaps in an old S&J catalog reprint - that the 'Spearior' designation was post-WWII. Surfing around using 'Spearior' as one of your keywords will yield lots of info, but here's a link to a thread on another site. The fourth post in there yields a lot of good info for you.

http://www.woodworkforums.com/archive/index.php/t-115512.html