Bow Saws, a Common Man Bush Tool

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Tags: The Bow Saw,Common Man Bush Tool

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back in the woods Dave Canterbury at the Pathfinder school out here at the Pathfinder school classroom area I wanted to go burn video with you today about a tool that has been around since Egyptian times it's a very common man priced very easily found yet we seem to forget about them every day when we do our bushcrafting and our work in the woods for longer-term self-reliance and that is the bow saw bow saw buck saw sweets saw they're all synonymous for a saw blade that has a frame around it there are drawings and photographs for museums of bow saws basically made in the same fashion they are today

except it had a hoop of wood and the blade had two iron collars on it that the hoop was put into and that gave you that bow frame with a slaw blade underneath and that came from the Egyptian period so these are very very old

there were saw companies in the 18th century that that's all they did was manufacture saws both in London and in the US for the building trades so they've been around for a long time advantages to a saw like this are number one it takes a lot less energy to run this saw than it does an ax you can do it a lot more safely than you can swing an axe and it takes a lot less skill to manipulate a saw than it does an axe now a saw is not going to do all the things for you an axe will do but if you have an ax and a saw then you have a win-win situation because you can do everything from you know making campfire to building a log cabin if you have those two implements and it has been done with basically just those two implements so it can be done I wouldn't want to attempt it I wouldn't to spend the calories energy to do it if I had modern tools but it could be done if you had to now let me talk about these saws for just a minute these are two of these that are mine this one I usually keep on my four-wheeler and it is about a 16 18 inch blade this is the one that I use when I stuff it in the back of my backpack or my trashcan is inside my can and this one is a 12-inch saw these saws are limited as far as how big a tree you can process or cut down with them by the space between the blade and the frame there's a lot of these on the market now that are folding type gizmos that have an angular frame on them that they forms a triangle the problem with that is you have about this much space that you can actually cut a tree this big around then your short stroking and think all day long blowing calories when you could just be using the whole length of the blade so unless you've got that full bow on the saw you're really wasting a lot of energy with a folding type saw the smaller ones like this that are about 12 inches you can't buy hacksaw blades for them as well to make them even more multifunctional so you can use them to process carcasses to solve through bone and things like that and then you can also put the bigger blade on them obviously for trees but something like this it slides down the back of your pack frame does not take up much room

it hardly weighs a thing and it does a lot for you I would take one of these over a hands off I had a choice every day of the week because this is going to do a lot more for you than a handsaw if you're carrying a multi-tool that already has a small saw blade on it that's robust like a Leatherman then you carry something like this in an axe you got just about everything you need now you can't take this over an axe an axe is going to do too much for you that this won't do but if you've got the option to carry a little extra weight I would take this with me as well as an axe to save myself calories to be more safe especially during operations in close quarters or operating at night I saw is much safer than an axe I'm going to show you the proper way to use a bow saw to saw a log and process wood here right now so stay with me okay so what we got here is we've got about a three and a half inch piece of pine we've got it on a tripod we're wearing gloves if we were doing anything above our head like lemming or something like that before we felt a tree then we'd want to have safety glasses on as well the proper way to use a saw like this is to put the saw on the material and put your hand inside the saw that keeps you from hitting anything spread your legs out so that saw can't come down your legs let the weight of that saw do the work for you you can push down a little bit with your wrist once you get the kerf going and once you get used to using the saw but you always want this and that you're cutting off or your index out here in the air you want that this is the usable piece okay or this may be the waste piece it doesn't really matter but this piece right here is going to fall this piece is shorter than this one so this one has less weight I don't want to put this on a bind by hanging this thing up so what I need to do is I need to have this out here so that it starts to fall free and we'll separate the curve as it goes this takes a lot less energy I'm really letting us all the work and this point is wet by the way I'm taking full strokes on the saw all the way to my wrist I'm letting that thing hit my rest every time and I'm hitting my wrist going the other direction now it takes a little longer maybe with a nap with the nap with the saw with then we would with an axe but it's a whole lot safer then I can just move up on processing firewood I can move that log up and start to cut another piece if I'm making a ridgepole which this piece is plenty big enough for that I'm making a ridgepole same thing I cut off my waist in let it fall hit the ground and go from there okay so these type sauce are very very handy the bow saw the buck saw the sweet saw they're all the names are synonymous like I said but you can pick one of these up at any hardware store really for about less than 10 bucks and I think this one right here the smaller one I probably even paid less than that for at some hardware store or flea market you can find them very easy you can find replacement blades remember when you put this in your pack you should have some type of cover for the blade so it doesn't cut anything in your pack or cut you going in or out okay guys I was just a really short video on the use of the bow saw what bow saws are how long they've been around and how much they've been used and you know I'm a big believer my 21st century long hunter mentality tells me that if something's been around for thousands of years and it still works today as well as it worked a thousand years ago why are we still not using it obviously the only thing better than that's going to be a chainsaw and you're not going to have one of those backpack so something like a bow saw I'm going to carry now I have read different places that wouldn't frame buk saws they call them and I've shown a video how to make one of those in the woods you can make a buck saw the collapses pretty well it's got a nice wide frame on it the problem is it's very hard to get a buck saw to be stable enough to put enough pressure on that blade to really make it a good bulletproof saw these metal frames you're not going to destroy these things and if you wanted this thing to be multifunctional like I said you can get a hacksaw blade for this thing and if you had to make a bow drill fire there you go string your cordage right between that thing take the blade out and you've got your bow right there for your bow drill fire so it's a multifunctional thing that you can carry I guarantee you that thing doesn't weigh much over a pound if it weighs that much the heaviest part is the snap on the backside where the grip is that tightens up that blade I'm Dave Canterbury at the Pathfinder school I appreciate you joining for another video I hope you enjoyed this I thank you for your support

I thank you for everything you do for me for my school and for my family I'll be back through the video you