Christmas Rescue Mission

My dad has managed restaurants for most of my life. Growing up, I learned a lot about real life sitting in the backrooms and listening to the cooks and waitresses banter over their cigarette breaks. It's amazing how invisible a 12 year old boy sitting quietly in the corner can be. Buy me a beer sometime and I'll tell you some stories.

For the last several years my dad's worked for a chain that likes to decorate the walls of their dinning room in a variety of interesting errata. You have been in them before, they have trombones and old Schwinn bicycles stapled to the walls, along with a hundred other random pieces of wonderful crapola. Much to the dismay of myself and other hand tool woodworkers you can occasionally see a great old wooden plane or a handsaw alongside the flotsam and jetsam. Keep your eyes open, it's like a Where's Waldo puzzle.

Once in a conversation I complained to my father about these potentially great tools being wasted screwed to the walls and I jokingly told him he should let me come in at closing one night and liberate them, freeing them back into the wild where they can make sawdust and be happy. For Christmas this year Dad had a surprise for me. The store is undergoing a remodel, a change in concept, and is losing the junk stapled to the walls. Who knows where the items would end up after they were taken down. Some of them directly into the trash. So my dad took a minute and pulled these two beauties from the trash.

The saw in front is a very standard "Warranted Superior" with a Disston sway back design to the blade

It has a good deal more chip carving in the handle than the other similar saws I own. I think what shocked me a little was that the blades are not brown with rust, they've been painted that color, There is obviously some rust underneath, but to start restoring these I need to use some paint stripper. What makes me laugh is that they didn't even take care with the paint job. Just sloppily spraying over the saw nuts and medallion.

The steel of both saws is in good shape and both blades are straight.

This is the saw that kind of excites me, (I know, I know, I'm a geek), but the handle has one of the most comfortable grips I've ever wrapped my fingers around. I couldn't begin to guess at the model or make but I know it's a little unusual. You don't see many with a steel side plate like this. You can tell it's been well used over the years with rivets in the place of lost saw nuts. It is missing a few teeth as well, I'm not that worried about it.

All in all it is very nice to have a chance to rescue these beauties from being lost to nick-knack infinity. I hope to have the rehabbed soon and back to happily making sawdust.

Ratione et Passionis
Oldwolf