Oxfordshire Woodland Group

The Frame Saw course held by Running Deer CIC and led by Henry Russell in Devon over the weekend 6/7 September 2014 was a resounding sucess resulting in a group of aspiring green woodworkers and carpenters making 4 medieval style frame saws for use in the hand conversion of timbers in the woodland

The course was attended by Herbert L Russell who was sponsored by The Oxfordshire Woodland Group. Herbert has very kindly donated his completed frame saw to The Oxfordshire Woodland Group for use in the OWG / SOAG experimental Living Woodland Archaeology project where timbers including cruck blades will be converted in a Chilterns saw pit.

Ken Hume Executive Trustee - Oxfordshire Woodland Group

When using the frame solo care has to be taken not to bash the bottom of the saw against the ground when sawing over a trestle as this will damage the side strake tenons.

Controlling saw blade wander is a problem and when considering sawing a long log e.g. say 16ft + then a small deviation at the outset can turn into a major deviation if the saw blade position cannot be corrected. There is some discussion about this on the popular woodworking web forum.

By scie -sawing i.e. ripping the log towards the centre from both ends can effectively halve the length of the log and hence help reduce deviations but also can result in a discontinuity at the "break" point.

Clearly medieval sawyers must have been very skilled and adept at using this type of saw.

Chilterns