Log sawing device, easy and fast (1880)
Frankly it does look more efficient than the old two-guys-and-a-crosscut-saw way.
Always remember to wear your top hat and 3 piece though, when sawing logs.
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6 replies
https://patents.google.com/patent/US219635A/en
That's a pretty cool invention. I didn't even know about these things, imagine riding a see saw except you're also peddling a bike to saw a log. Crazy.
For sure. It seems like a solid idea. Well not the tophat part, but the rest. Much better than just your arms.
I never knew of them either. But I don't know if that's because they never caught on, or because I don't know shit about 1800's lumberjacking. I wonder if maybe steam power destroyed the market for these. But feels like it could've had a niche. A water or steam powered sawmill beats it, but you have to get the logs there. You could set up one of these on-prem to segment logs too big to easily move to a mill. But I'm speculating. Maybe it was too narrow a niche, or came too late, to find a market?
I feel like part of it is its an awful lot of moving parts that are all put under pretty heavy load. And you can only cut logs that are horizontal with adequate level ground around them. A regular old saw is a bit slower im sure but it would be cheaper, more versatile and more reliable. So I guess this product occupied a niche between hand saws and sawmills that wasn't all that big.
Dunno, sounds like they were marketing more towards farmers/homesteaders that were cutting lots of firewood and fence posts.
They were probably popular enough but yeah steam and especially gasoline engine powered equipment made those obsolete. Seems like a useful tool, they could be taken apart and brought into the woods so you could also get the pieces cut up to be easier to haul out by whatever pack animals or team or yourself.
Couldn't tell you for sure how popular they were but popular enough the guy who patented it has his own Wikipedia article.
I think that's what happens when you have to describe the product to the graphic designer via telegraph.
I'll double you if cats can run the machine