These are examples of vintage crosscut saws
This April I went on a trip to Missoula Montana, to attend a crosscut saw filing(sharpening) class held at the Ninemile ranger station. In case your not sure what a crosscut saw is, well it is what people used before the chainsaw, in about 1880 people started using crosscut saws extensively for logging and that’s when production boomed, they continued making them until the late 1940s. Now they are considered antique, and they are quite rare. Now that leads me to why I went to this class, these saws are expensive, and complicated, I didn’t have the skills, knowledge, or tools to sharpen them at the time, I simply could not risk messing up my saw, and after I took the the class, I know I would have did something wrong if I didn’t take the class. It is very hard to learn how to file these saws without professional help and because of the complexity, its easy to ruin a 100 year old saw. I want you to understand that even the differnce of several thousanths of an inch of the saws shape can drastically affect the cutting ability of the saws. I highly recommend that you attend this class if you wish sharpen your saw. I had a very good experience with the class, and I learned exactly what I needed to know to sharpen saws in the future. The class comes with several manuals, including the crosscut saw manual by warren miller and the DVD, the croscut saw filer by warren miller, both are very useful to understanding the filing process and the details of these saws.
This is what you will see coming into the station, you can see the mountains in the background with the white and green buildings
This is one of the entrance signs
Now the actual class like I said was very nice, the buildings were clean, the whole place was very comfortable, it was well run, there was everything we needed, all the tools, and even a log was mounted up for testing, the animals were quite charming, there was an assortment of horses, some donkeys, and some cows. I guess I forgot to mention that the ranger station is actually a ranch. The location is absolutely superb, there’s pastures around the station, and forests of ponderosa pine just beyond that. The station is actually a historical site, the buildings were built by the CCC long before the chainsaw, even so, the station is very well kept.
This is a ponderosa pine
And after the whole entire class, the most exiting part came, we got to test out our saws, and we felled two trees. This was very enjoyable, it was great to see them in action, also we got a few pointers on how to use the saw, and felling. Its wasn’t a saw use course, and don’t expect to know how to use a saw in every circumstance just by taking this course, but still, we got some valuable information.