An old Saw Till Article
I was talking with Chris Schwarz this morning and he brought up my saw till post. Apparently Popular Woodworking published an article on the OldTools saw till back in the August 2000 issue of the magazine. I wasn’t aware of this since I hadn’t even started in woodworking back then. I was attending the University of Southern California at the time and I was living in a two bedroom apartment with 5 other guys trying to save money - Los Angeles is expensive. It is pretty tough to practice woodworking under those types of living conditions – especially with a college budget.
According to Chris he saw the saw till on the OldTools list serve and persuaded Samuel Peterson to write an article for the magazine. Chris said he had to push pretty hard to get approval for the article since at the time Popular Woodworking and other magazines weren’t publishing much, if any, handtool content. This was one of the first handtool oriented articles that Chris was able to get published in Popular Woodworking. Samuel Peterson built the saw till and mailed it to Chris so that it could be photographed for the magazine. After the piece was photographed and the August 2000 issue was sent to the printer Chris repackaged the saw till and sent it back to Samuel Peterson. However, the saw till didn’t survive the return trip. The cross grain dovetails for the top rail were damaged in shipping – some solid evidence justifying some of my joinery changes.
Chris emailed me a copy of the original article and gave me permission to post it here on my blog. You can download the file here - Galoot Sawtill.
The article is only 2 pages long – and there is less than one page of text. Even so, a significant portion of the article is spent describing what a galoot is and attempting to justify the use of handtools. Popular Woodworking has sure come a long way in the past 10 years. Hopefully the rest of the woodworking community continues to follow suit. Thankfully we have people like Chris Schwarz out there helping to bring handtools back to their proper status.
-Phil
Phil and Melinda Hirz are passionate hobbyist woodworkers living in Cincinnati, Ohio. They are driven by their love of wood and the joy of making things with their hands.