Carpenter/woodworking tools

[Medicus matt]

Large saws for processing timber

How common was this really? I'm asking because any extent saws I've seen haven't had a blade longer than 16". Processing timber by splitting and then finishing with an adze or broad axe is actually a pretty quick process.

Some examples of big saws in action from Adam's "Roman Building", the first being from a depiction of a funery procession from Pompeii and the other being a line drawing of a relief from France.

[attachment=1:3kq9hum9]<!-- ia1 pitsaw.JPG<!-- ia1 [/attachment:3kq9hum9]
[attachment=0:3kq9hum9]<!-- ia0 pitsaw2.JPG<!-- ia0 [/attachment:3kq9hum9]

[jvrjenivs]

These are the pictures I was referring to. Thanks for bringing them up Matt. Didn't find them on the web and didn't have a scanner at hand.

[M. Demetrius]

The saw in the top center would have to be in the neighborhood of a meter long, I reckon. And it looks to be either a pretty wide blade, with a cord at the top of the handles for tensioning, or perhaps some kind of frame saw. The former seems entirely possible, though that would be a pretty big iron blank. Hard to know.

The lower guys are making boards from a log the same way it was done way up into the 19th Century. Very interesting. Thanks for those pictures.

[Medicus matt]

The lower guys are making boards from a log the same way it was done way up into the 19th Century. .

And into the 20th. My grandfather's first job after he came home from the 2nd Boer War was as 'bottom' man in a sawpit in London.

I think the first one is a frame saw; it's similar to other roman examples I've seen depicted, albeit on a larger scale.
[attachment=0:3uofduxt]<!-- ia0 saw3.JPG<!-- ia0 [/attachment:3uofduxt]

[Apollyon]

What units would the measure stick be divided into? A Roman foot was what, about 11 inches US? So what submeasure would they have used? Tenths? It's apparent from the small, accurate measures that they must have used for boxes and furniture, that they had something repeatable.

I'm curious about subdivisions of the digit. Did either of the works cited depict or describe subdivisions of the digit? What about subdivisions of the inch?

[P. Clodius Secundus]

The saw in the top center would have to be in the neighborhood of a meter long, I reckon. And it looks to be either a pretty wide blade, with a cord at the top of the handles for tensioning, or perhaps some kind of frame saw...

Frame saws with blades held in tension by a twisted cord with a stick/lever through it were familliar to the Romans and have been used continuously since. Ammianus used them as a point of reference to describe the construction of and assembly of the base of the Onager (one-armed catapult). Curiously, many scholars including Eric Marsden cite that reference as evidence that Ammianus didn't know what he was talking about. He said that the cross-tension of the twisted cord held the machine together so the sides wouldn't fly apart, implying that no other hardware was needed. It's an amazingly simple and effective design. That's why the basic frame saw survived for thousands of years virtually unchanged. It works just as well on catapults, but nearly every reconstruction or drawing I've seen uses bolts, screws, nails, or other hardware to stabilize the frame.

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

I've seen modern renditions of these saws in use in a book. Cannot recall if it is an Osprey or not.
The guy on the bottom, really has the shitty end of the stick, so to speak. All the sawdust would end up in his face.