Google Books - wow! First Circular Saw Blade 1810?

[Project88]

Two posts in one, I've been on a time management course sorry

Part 1.
Just looked for the first time at books.google.com (note no www) Wow. If you have not tried it, have a go and type "woodworking" in the search box :shock:
You will be presented with extracts from over 4000 woodworking books, some of them fairly large chunks of the complete books.

Part 2.
Having just been surfing the above, I came across the following from; Making Authentic Shaker Furniture, by John G Shea. On page 22 there is a photo with the caption;
"First circular saw blade invented in 1810 by Sister Tabitha Babbitt of the Harvard Shakers"
Not sure why but this does not feel quite right :? Anybody out there have evidence to challenge the statement made in the book.

Cheers,
John.

 

[wizer]

Just been flipping through Taunton's 'Small Workshops' Isn't it funny how the americans see a 2 car garage as a 'small workshop'. Try half a car sideways size workshop! :roll: :wink:

 

[PowerTool]

Having just been surfing the above, I came across the following from; Making Authentic Shaker Furniture, by John G Shea. On page 22 there is a photo with the caption;
"First circular saw blade invented in 1810 by Sister Tabitha Babbitt of the Harvard Shakers"
Not sure why but this does not feel quite right :? Anybody out there have evidence to challenge the statement made in the book.

Cheers,
John.

A quick google says that she used a notched tin disc fastened to a spinning wheel to cut a piece of slate - so appears to have been the first,but not in the context we would normally think of.

Andrew

 

[Dad]

Just been flipping through Taunton's 'Small Workshops' Isn't it funny how the americans see a 2 car garage as a 'small workshop'. Try half a car sideways size workshop! :roll: :wink:

And thats 2 american cars...

 

[Project88]

Bit more Googling and the about.com site comments;
"In 1777, Samuel Miller invented the circular saw in England, the round metal disk type of saw that cuts by spinning and is used hand-held or table-mounted. Large circular saws are found in saw mills and are used to produce lumber. In 1813, Shaker-Sister, Tabitha Babbitt (1784-1854) invented the first circular saw used in a saw mill. Babbitt was working in the spinning house at the Harvard Shaker community in Massachusetts, when she decided to invent an improvement to the two-man pit saws that were being used for lumber production."

Cars and garages, ha. I live in a new'ish house with an integral garage and only when the garage was completely empty (and that was a long time ago) could I just fit in a Peugeot 205, nothing bigger !

Cheers
John.

 

[Alf]

Ah, a perennial favourite of the Old Tools List, this one. F'rinstance here, here and even Jeff Gorman here.

It's a fairly obvious idea, once you have the means of powering it, so I think lots of people "discovered" it but Sister Tabitha makes the best story. :lol:

Cheers, Alf

 

[Scrit]

There's no proof that Miller actually built his machine, however, the first recorded use of a circular saw in England appears to be in the woodworking shop of William Walter Taylor (1734 - 1803), a Southampton carpenter and manufacturer of ship's sheave blocks, who in 1781 had a saw in use. According to the Hampshire Repository of 1801 his circlar saw "proved of ineffible use in expediously cutting timber for any purpose". I'd therefore say the Shaker claim to be the first is potentially somewhat inaccurate. [Source: Sims]

It is also a the case that circular saws were in use in the Royal Navy's Portsmouth Block-Making Department which was installed by Marc Brunel (Isambard Kingdom's father) between 1803 and 1805 this installation pre-dating the good Sister's work by some 8 to 10 years. Part of this workshop machinery from Portsmouth, built by Henry Maudsley, can today be seen in the Science Museum, South Kensington. To get some idea of the scale of this operation a 74-gun battleship of Nelson's navy required over 900 sheave blocks and the navy's annual consumption in the period was in the order of 100,000 blocks a year. It required just 10 men to run Brunel's equipment, whilst Taylor had employed some 110 men - this translates into the block manufactory paying for itself within 3 years, although in the Great British Tradition blocks continued to be made on this plant for a few years more, the last regular production of blocks being during 1963, after which the equipment went to South Kensington. It is perhaps interesting to note that Brunel had attempted to sell his idea for an automated sheave block manufactory to Taylor, but had been rebuffed. Following the opening of the Naval Dockyards facility Taylor's business went into terminal decline and he lost his last Admiralty contract in 1805

Here resteth the case for the British claim....

BTW windmill and water powered frame saws had largely supplanted the pit saw in many parts of Europe by the late 18th century having been recorded as coming into use in Norway (1530) and Saadam, Netherlands (1596), although there are unconfirmed reports of their use in Germany as early as the 14th century. It appears the the slow take-up of this technology in the UK was probably fear of the injury that they might inflict on the hand sawyer's trade and in fact an Act of Parliament specifically forbad their use for a while, whilst one attempt to introduce the technology, by Mr. Houghton at Limehouse in 1768, was actually destroyed by the mob!

Scrit

 

[Alf]

...whilst one attempt to introduce the technology, by Mr. Houghton at Limehouse in 1768, was actually destroyed by the mob!

Ah, the good old days... Anyone up for a day out to visit Festool? :wink: :lol:

 

[Roger]

That damned mob gets everywhere....... just no sense of humour at all

 

[filsgreen]

Just been flipping through Taunton's 'Small Workshops' Isn't it funny how the americans see a 2 car garage as a 'small workshop'. Try half a car sideways size workshop! :roll: :wink:

half a car sideways, you're lucky
Phil