Crosscut Saw Thread

I had no idea that J Sells were Disstons. You guys had gotten me looking for them and when I found these I thought they were just a pair of J Sells our on some cut-off Disston No. 127 handles. But the handles are tight, one won’t even wiggle, and they seemed original. So I did a search for Disston No. 127 and they are J Sells!?!?
This is probably old news to all of you...
So how bout the J Sells with the long finger guards are they like Disston No.128 or something like that?
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The surface rust on these is pretty light, they will clean up really well.
 
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Fmont said:
I did too! I had seen mention of Disston when I was looking into J Sells. I just thought that Disston made a version of their own.

A quick Google search shows the patent belonging to one John Sells, applied for in 1909 and granted in 1910.

https://patents.google.com/patent/US956196
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Intriguing. Try a google search for Disston No. 127. It turns up J Sells.

Could they have bought the brand/patent from him? I suspect there is an answer to be discovered here.
 
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Here is a side by side of the two styles.
The ones with long guards have markedly longer handles.
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You can see the ends were not cut short. They are stock.
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They both have the same patent date.
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Are the short ones for falling and long ones for bucking? (I did take the short ones off of a 10’ Falling saw.)
 
Fmont said:
There you go. Amazing, this internet thing.

View attachment 1191240

Eta: Look at the handles, his own design. Short guards on the felling, long on the bucking. Fantastic.
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I don’t know how you found it but that is great. I have a photo of him playing violin from the The Loggers Book in Time Life, Old West Series.
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A couple of my posts disappeared? I have no idea why. Weird, maybe mod thought I was doxing a long dead saw filer and inventor.

I have that book too, and if I'm recalling it was very close to the time you got yours. I stumbled on it in an antique store in Ohio. It's incredible.

This J Sells seems to have been a pretty prolific fellow.

btw All I did was Google "John Sells logging" and it was on the first page!
 
So I was watching a few videos from the Townsend's YouTube channel, where they are know for their cooking and lifestyle videos... About pre-revolutionary America.
I was thinking about the tools they used and what a saw from this time period would look like.

Lo and behold there's one not to far from me in a museum. Most if the saws pictured I believe are mid-1800's but I think the crosscut saw is either very close or an original to the 18th century, given its like essentially to saws in tapestries and such.
(I wonder if we can figure out when rakere were invented)

It's a plain tooth, this much was expected, but instead of having a smooth radius to the belly, the belly starts off roughly flat, and then the radius starts. I'll include a link below, iv seen a few felloeing saws but I had no idea what they were until I saw them here as well
https://www.history.org/Almanack/life/tools/tlsaw.cfm
 
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Fmont said:
Do you know if that's how they started out or if that is from years of filing?

I am absolutely mesmerised by the things pioneering peoples all over the world came up with. That spirit of ingenuity resonates with me and I'm sure pretty much everyone else here.
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i think it might be because it's mirrored on the spine but probably not as exaggerated
 
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