The story goes that not long after my dad returned from serving in WWII, he bought a Mall chainsaw from a traveling salesman. It is a monstrous thing. This was several years before I was born.
From the time I started remembering things, or even paying attention (which took a while longer), the only time I remember that Mall saw starting was at the house just before we loaded it, along with hammers, splitting wedges, axes, a two-man crosscut saw and a one man 42-inch crosscut saw (the subject of this writing) onto a homemade sled. My brothers and I rode the sled. Dad pulled the sled with an old case tractor.
We would get to the woods and that Mall saw wouldn’t start. My dad would set it on a stump trying (pretending?) to get it started while us boys with the exuberance of 12- 10- and 8-year-old youth grabbed the old crosscuts and started cutting wood.
This usually took place on a Sunday afternoon. I think, now, it was all just a ploy to get us boys out of mom’s hair so she could have a peaceful Sunday afternoon. We didn’t get much done. Those crosscuts were dull, and no one knew how to sharpen them.
The years went by and I ended up with that old one man crosscut saw. It hung in my garage for 30 or 40 years. I’d try to cut wood with it on occasion, but I realized that it needed skills to sharpen that I did not possess.
Later on, my wife and I were touring the tourist trap Amish country of Ohio.
We stopped at a well-known hardware store to look around. I came across a booklet called the Crosscut Saw Manual. I bought it.
From what I learned from the book, I gathered up the special tools needed to sharpen and set crosscut saws.
Now on a Sunday afternoon in the winter instead of watching the Pittsburgh Steelers disappoint me (maybe also to get out of my wife’s hair), I load up that old cross cut in the cart and go cut a cartload of wood (the cart is none too big). The saw is a joy to use, kind of taking one back to a simpler time. Quieter at least. Also, it does what it was designed to do 100 or more years ago. Try that with a chainsaw! And all it takes to get it started is gumption! Of course, I have chainsaws that also often need “gumption” to get started.
Gordon Meeder
Midland, Pa.
