[MR] Walking Beam Saws?

[Gary Halstead]

At 09:04 AM 5/31/01 -0400, Towey, Brian wrote:
<snip>

>  I'm interested in the history of the walking beam saw.

<more snip>

>I have seen a lot of SCA information on old lathes, but not on other "power
>tools."  Who here studies the history of carpentry?

Part of the answer depends on the type of saw you're talking about.  I 
haven't seen the treadle-powered jigsaw documented prior to the 18th 
century, although it was technically feasible much earlier.  This is 
probably because prior to that time there wasn't a demand for the sort of 
delicate fretwork the saw produces.

The jigsaw's big brother, the sash type sawmill, first shows up in the in 
art in the 13th Century in the notebooks of the French engineer Villard de 
Honnecourt (picture here: 
http://www.newcastle.edu.au/department/fad/fi/villard/album44.jpg), with 
the first literary mentions early in the 14th Century.  Sawmills of this 
type were common in Germany from at least the mid-14th Century.  The best 
book I've found on the history of sawmilling is:

Finsterbusch and Thiele. Vom Steinbeil zum Sagegatter: Ein Streifzug durch 
die Geschichte der Holzarbeitung. Leipzig: VEB Fachbuchverlag. 1987.

The text won't be much use if you don't read German, but the pictures are good.

More general information on Medieval woodworking can be found on my site 
(http://www.medievalwoodworking.com) or Master Findlaech mac Alasdair's 
site (http://www.his.com/~tom/).

Hope this helps.


YIS,
Ranulf of Waterford
mka Gary R. Halstead
www.medievalwoodworking.com