There's just no substitute for pit-sawn material. It leaves such a distinctive mark upon board, plank, and timber that it simply cannot be replicated with machine, however sophisticated the process.
This is a post about the marks that saws leave behind…
…not handsaws or thwart (bucking) saws, that’s another post–but the big, ripping variety which turn trees into timbers and planks and boards. With a little practice, a discerning eye can learn to tell the difference between a board made by a portable band saw, one made with a chain saw mill, and one which is made by a water-powered sash saw. When you visit the recreated English Village at Plimoth Plantation, you will find boards made in a variety of ways–not all of which we wish to have prominently displayed or interpreted. That said, we are slowly but inevitably replacing the old boards processed with modern machinery, with new boards made using ancient techniques. See if you can spot the difference…
Above is a standard board lately come from the saw mill. Such “rough-sawn” material is the kind you can find at great local mills like Gurney’s Sawmill https://www.facebook.com/pages/Gurneys-Saw-Mill-Inc/224333047596021 Rough-sawn material from the mill has very characteristic arcs across its face, which are the product of a large diameter circular saw and some amazing deftness on the part of the saw’s operators. It’s the raw material for do-it-yourselfers making garden beds or building a shed. But here in Pilgrim-Towne, it makes our eyes bleed! There was no circular sawing in our period. Such saw marks in the pilgrim village are the equivalent of Myles Standish wearing Chuck Taylor High Tops–it just doesn’t fit the milieu.
Through the years, efforts were made to improve the overall appearance of sawn stuff in the pilgrim village. This led to various attempts at replicating pit-sawn material, using everything from portable band saws to chain saw mills. (I’ve even heard of some old gaffers taking a couple of teeth off of their band saw blades to simulate the irregularities of hand-sawn work, though I’m not sure whether or not this is apocryphal). While neither method leaves characteristic circular arcs, they are still not pit-sawn, and to the discerning eye, they leave marks which are just as anachronistic as Chuck Taylors on The Captain.
Occasionally, when we have a high demand for boards and planks, we will hire our friend Bob Reimels to band saw up some of our stock. This material, expertly processed by Bob, is never used in our new houses. It’s typically used for repair of the fort floor (a building sub-contracted in the 80′s and whose timber was processed via machines) and for palisade repair. We strive to keep such machine processed material to a minimum in our recreated village.
Bob Reimels at work. Note the pile of sawdust to his left.
The marks are shallow, closely spaced, and regular. They are also uniformly perpendicular to the material. Chain saw milling, on the other hand…
Chain saw milled oak.
The marks left by a chain saw mill, a filling-loosening, hand-numbing endeavor, are more irregular than a band saw and leave much deeper hollows between the upright marks:
Straight edge placed on chain saw milled board to reveal its deep, characteristic furrows.
There was a time when we’d fire up a chain-saw mill fairly regularly. We used it to saw out hundreds of rails for our palisade. As the user walks the saw along the timber, he will sometimes vary the the angle of the saw to the stock, to give it some irregularity, a-la the pit-saw. The weathering of the timber, as in the example below, tends to soften the mechanized appearance of chainsaw-milled stuff:
A rail holding up pale sans nails.
Materials from water driven saw mills, specifically sash-sawn stuff, have their own unique appearance, but they’re still not pit-sawn and such mills didn’t begin to show up locally until the 1630s. I visited Michael Burrey the other day and took pictures of some salvaged 18th century sash-sawn boards he had in his yard.
Michael Burrey with salvaged sash-sawn board.
These particular boards, reclaimed from an 18th-century house in Bridgwater, MA, were covered with limewash pigmented pleasantly yellow with ochre.
One of the tell-tale marks left by a water-driven sash saw is the distance between the raking vertical cuts–a half inch plus, in this case.
The vertical marks also tend to march along more consistently than on pit-sawn stuff. This method, however, is still a step removed from the sweat and dust of a saw-pit.
For a little primer on water driven sawmills, check out: http://www.ledyardsawmill.org/sawmill-history
Back to pit-sawing:
The deeper furrows on the left hand side are characteristic of steering while pitsawing. In this case, the tiller (top) man steered more than the pit man.
There are really no viable ways to replicate pit-sawn material using machines. And that’s just as well. It is indeed labor intensive, and it takes a real investment of time to bring a novice up to speed, but once we’ve developed some proficiency, we can actually be fairly productive.
Joist, summer beam, and floorboard have a meeting. Note the edge of the joist is hewn while the bottom face is sawn--part of a larger hewn piece sawn into scantling. The summer beam has been planed after hewing.
Pit-sawn marks can vary greatly, depending on who’s sawing. The tiller man (top man) will sometimes angle the saw back towards himself as much as 20 degrees. Other sawyers will saw almost upright. Marks can also vary when sawyers are going through a knot, or if they are steering the saw. Our pine saw has a greater set than our oak saw, and that tends to leave a rougher surface. Compare the bottom pit-sawn face of the oak joist in the picture above to the pit-sawn pine floor boards.
Split grain angle at top right.
Perhaps the single most distinctive characteristic left by pit-sawing is the angle of split grain (above) when the sawyers come to the end of their kerf. The timber is supported above the pit by bauks which, of course, cannot be sawn through. We saw until the saw is just about to touch the bauk then angle the saw to continue cutting down the end grain of the log while not sawing through the bauk. Self-preservation was not invented in the 20th century!
I’ve often wondered if this split grain at the end of a sawn board or timber is one of the “irregularities” that Moxon meant the adze to take off in his chapter on house-carpentry:
“It is most used for the taking off the Irregularities on the framed Work of a Floor, when it is framed and pin’d together, and laid on its place…”
(Mechanic Exercises or the Doctrine of Hand-Works by Joseph Moxon)
Occasionally, a split–or riven–pale will look almost circular sawn (below) from the ripple effect of its natural grain. Grasses and weeds will also sometimes leave graceful, arcing marks across the face of split stock making it look uncannily like it had newly come from the mill. Don’t be fooled!
Weathered or knot.
We’ll be in the pit again over the next few weeks sawing out rafters, purlins, sills, and other scantling for the new Francis Cooke House. Not only are we getting that much closer to framing the house, but we’re also producing that many more appropriate saw marks in the pilgrim village.
And for a musical diversion for those of us of a certain vintage, hit the following link and all your questions about planks–and the 70′s–will be answered:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=F1z76mqjzBQ
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
Work basket from Dunbar Gardens
Mingus! Paws up!
Great work on our new, period-appropriate willow work basket, Katherine Lewis of Dunbar Gardens! We plan on using it to lug many pounds of edged tools all around the 17th-century and we know it’ll be up to the task! http://www.dunbargardens.com/ We’ll post more basket action shots in the future. Props also to Malka Benjamin who made some serious, yet comfy straps!
Tags: pitsawing, Plimoth Plantation, sash saw
It is truly a foreign land from which you write – ‘Chuck Taylors’ indeed – not a clue, but I found salvation and clarity in the other land of Google which also guided me on Myles Standish (I am ashamed to say ) the plantation is a most fascinating project and should I find myself across ‘the Pond’ I shall be sure to visit…..
A
Angus, be sure to let us know if you make it out this way. We’ll have some Chuck Taylor high tops waiting for you!
Thanks for an interesting post.
I have been researching saw-mark evidence in early buildings and was interested to see the sash saw evidence on an 18th century timber. This is something that I will now be looking for in buildings over here. Presumably the marks are made by a reciprocating saw blade and the timber is only driven forward on the down-stroke of the blade and does not move as the blade returns.
The focus of my research in England has been on the see-saw or trestle sawing method, which used a large frame saw. Clear evidence for the method is found (in Herefordshire, England)in buildings that predate 1530. Trestle sawing leaves 45 degree saw marks in from each end of the timber and a trianglular snap-off (sometimes a parallel snap-off) at the midpoint. Using tree-ring evidence I have found that there is an abrupt change from trestle sawing to pit sawing in the period 1530-40, which was, I believe, due to the introduction of the more productive pit-saw. The pit saw was an important innovation as it allowed larger trees to be converted.
Let me know if you ever find 45 degree saw marks – it could mean that you have something that is really early !
Duncan James,
Insight – Historic Buildings Research.
Hello Duncan, thanks so much for weighing in!
Would it be possible for you to send along a couple of pictures of the single trestle-sawing method examples to our work email? We are at: artisans@plimoth.org I can’t recall seeing any such examples over here, but now we’ll certainly be on the lookout. Your observation about an abrupt change from trestle to pit in the mid-16th C. is a fascinating one. Do you do your own dendrochronology? Have you been able to survey a number of examples? If you’re publishing this work, by all means let us know!
We have worked with both large frame-saws and trestles. The trestle work we have done has been with smaller stock spanning a pair of trestles. I can’t recall ever sawing at a 45 degree with a single trestle, though I’d like to try it. From a practical standpoint, the pit-saw is much more efficient, as you’ve noted. (One example: Without a detachable “box” handle at the bottom of the pit saw, the frame-saw blade must either be removed from the frame to jump the kerf, or the timber itself must be lifted and angled to receive the saw; using a single trestle and sawing to a midway point from both ends seems eminently more practical when using a frame-saw).
Let us know if you come upon any sash-sawn work there. Meanwhile, we will be looking for angled marks and trestle-work over here.
Great stuff, Duncan–thanks again!
FRank Demers who used to own the Stanley-Lake Hous in Topsfield says he also saw watersawn oak roof boards in one of the garrison house brick houses in North Andover.
Hi Bob, it’s good to hear from you. Peter F. says hi, though I may have misquoted him…Thanks for the info. Watersawn oak? I would very much like to see those. Oak, as you know–especially non-quartersawn oak–moves like crazy. They must have been quite liberal in their use of nails! It’d be great to visit that house or at least see a picture. Sounds like a field trip. Do you know if it was a board and batten roof? Thanks again–
Fantastic post! Thanks for giving so much insight into what we see at Plimoth. I really enjoy your writing style, and the photographs are a big help. Also enjoying reading the comments by readers.
John
We appreciate it, John. It’s great to get feedback and to start up discussions. Thanks for taking the time to write–
Great post: informative, well illustrated and constructed. Basket beautiful, would like to know more.
Thanks France. The link at the end of the post will take you directly to Dunbar Gardens. They do some really fine work in what appears to be an idyllic setting! As for the basket, we’ve based in on a couple of images we have from the period, and Katherine used traditional methods in its construction. It’s sturdy-strong, and carries a boatload of tools!
Fantastic stuff. Best post yet.
Thanks George!
Hi Rick, Dad has in fact bent a tooth on purpose on the band saw to try to replicate the saw marks you desire… Not a myth, it is a fact. Best regards to you and the whole crew, keep up the good work! Jen and the Gurney’s Gang
Jenn, thanks for the heads up. I would love to see that process! Do you remember if that was that something The Plant gang had asked Paul to do, or are there other non-traditional clients out there? Enjoy your break from the mill!
Another great post. I’ve read that the hardest thing about pit sawing was keeping the sawers out of the pub, They’d go at lunch time and not come back! And I guess this is the wrong place to ask if you know where the phrase “Top Dog” comes from?
Hi Kev, I’ve wondered about that phrase myself–thanks for asking. It seems to me that a few years ago, some of my work buddies had a definitive answer about that phrase’s origins, but I cannot remember what we decided. I did a quick search of the Oxford English Dictionary–the source of all knowledge and wisdom–and it doesn’t seem to be pit-saw related.
Two excellent written sources on pit-sawing are: Sweat and Sawdust: Pit-Sawing in Wales, by William Linnard, and Roy Underhill’s “Pitman’s Progress” chapter in his book, The Woodwright’s Companion. Unless I missed it, neither mentions that phrase in reference to the top-man. They are both a few years old, but each has withstood the test of time, as they say.
As for “top dog”, the jury’s still out…
Wow, nice post and these photos are really awesome. Thanks for this post.
Thanks so much for all the feedback! It’s really great to see such interest in pit-sawing, et al. Pit-sawing deserves its own post in the near future!I’m heading out to Amish country over the next few days to see the country’s smallest 4th-of-July parade, but upon return, let’s continue this conversation! Meanwhile, keep those cards and letters coming, as they say– Cheers!