Friendly Saws™

I decided to call this delicate little collection of sweeps and curves the Friendly Kestrel™ concept handle, as it represents a pure expression of a design language without the constraints of having to withstand regular and possibly untrained usage against a range of potentially very uncooperative types of wood in a range of possible grain orientations from ideal to nightmarish eldritch horrors.

Much like a concept car rolled onto a show floor which may be capable of starting up and being driven by a driver who knows where all the potential breaking points are beforehand, in the hands of an otherwise capable driver (or sawyer) who doesn't know how to avoid those problems it can't be treated as a product you could sell and then expect positive feedback or returning business after everything blows up.

No, this was made to express my bird of prey inspired design language in a manner which emphasizes being swoopy and delicate to the eye, minimizing everything without going fully miniature, which made me check and learn that the smallest falcons in the US are called kestrels.

As I worked to emphasize graceful curves and delicate spans, I sought to make sure it felt every bit as light and precise to hold as one would expect from looking at it.

While I am happy with how it came out, sadly too much strength was lost in the pursuit of sleek elegance to ever imagine it as a tool I could just hand someone who wants a saw which lets them work to the best of their abilities.

The Friendly Peregrine™ handle pattern is designed for just that purpose, while carrying the same sort of stylized falcon features as the Kestrel, the more muscular curves were informed by aesthetics but driven ultimately by the pursuit of ergonomic and mechanical excellence.

Unlike the Kestrel where I am always aware of every potential bit of weakness in the grain, with this pattern there is no sense that you might accidentally split the blade slot and lose an entire cheek or have the lower portion of the grip snap loose in your hand. I consciously use a very gentle approach with the more delicate concept pattern which is not needed for the Peregrine.

Indeed when combined with the aggressive tooth line I put on this plate and the heft of the spine it almost feels as if it is too excited to race down through a piece of wood, so much so that I need to remind myself to take it easy to avoid plunging past the marked out depth of a pin again... or cutting delicate little tails and almost severing one completely by making the same mistake on both sides!

Still, while I have saws with lower TPI and other saws with fairly aggressive teeth, this plate and handle combination remains almost alarmingly quick and thus the only sensible thing to do was call it the Friendly Peregrine™ and run with it.

The extreme material removal of the Friendly Kestrel™ pattern was actually something of a pre-production stress test for the shaping that went into this pattern. While there I was only seeing how far I could carry the aesthetic theme while still being a (carefully) usable saw, the visual appeal was balanced here with a desire to preserve grain alignment with the forces involved in regular use and the over-arching requirement of a comfortable and relaxing feel in your hand.

A relaxed three-finger grip puts your thumb and index fingers in line to fine-tune the side-to-side tilt and left-to-right angle as you point the saw, while the hang angle helps smoothly transform the forces from natural arm motion into rapid and easy cuts... or easily rapid ones if you feel like it.

The same design language in a shorter saw plate with a somewhat overbuilt handle gives what I've been calling the Friendly Goshawk™ as seen above.

This has a much more approachable tooth line which combines shorter less aggressive cuts with a bit of extra handle material to preserve the grain orientation and strength through the neck and cheeks into the spine and plate.

These features work to reduce the chances of a new sawyer incurring small fractures in their handle until it suddenly fails mid-cut. Having the extra material present means if you do start to hear and feel the tell-tale creaks and pings of a developing crack it won't mean you're just a cut or two away from the heartbreaking sensation of a handle snapping as you cut.

The Friendly Osprey™ emerged as an experiment in repurposing materials to make a viable saw out of a tarnished paint scraper blade I cut teeth into, a section cut from a computer case I folded into a spine, and wood from a dismantled dresser drawer front produced a handle. Though only after some time spent coping and rasping and scraping and sanding and drilling and fitting the blade and spine and bolts.

It maintains the general design features of a comfortable relaxed grip and fairly high hang angle tuned so the forces involved in a natural sawing stroke are lined up with the grain in the neck and cheeks (and if you're lightly pinching the sides with your thumb and index finger, you're pointing where the forces transfer into the spine and plate) to greatly reduce the necessary material needed to withstand regular use without problems.

...of course none of that would matter if not for a feature you may have noticed about Friendly Saws™ and their handles: the cheeks are connected by uncut back and chin sections around the spine mortise and blade slot.

Why?

Well, every time I tried making a handle I encountered the usual problem of how to get the spine back in there, so I chopped out material and did all the tweaking and finishing and started using it... but they always felt so... floppy.

After getting a little Zona saw with an inch of extra spine that was formerly used to mount it in a straight gents type handle I had an idea.

I decided to try simply drilling and chiseling out a mortise for the extra spine and then seeing if I could slice out a blade slot just barely as deep as necessary to get the mounting holes snugged back into the cheeks far enough to fit the bolts I was using.

This wound up being the first time I got to worry about issues like aesthetics or ergonomics instead of fighting the frustratingly inevitable onset of blade flop. So, as none of the stock I had was thick enough to rely on the portion of the cheeks connected to the neck for this task I began experimenting until I was satisfied with the mechanical properties of the handles and their connection to the plate and spine.

Unable to leave it at that I started tinkering and improving my methods, and then after an experiment with a very thin piece of stock inspired by several miniature saws I started playing with the shape of the neck and chin to fancy things up a little bit.

Later I noticed there was something about it that reminded me of a bird of prey, a falcon in particular, and suddenly I had better names for these handle patterns than "Dovetail, Junior, Mini, Tenon" and so forth, and here we are.

The missus was asking me to put together an album she could link to for others and so she could... pinterest it so here it is I suppose.

Thanks for reading if it was actually interesting and if it wasn't here's a cute little bunny and a cute little spider for your time.