"Charlie Self" wrote in message
...
George Cawthon writes:


Sawmills don't have a lot of use for crosscut blades. There are several
companies specializing in large blades for sawmills, but they're rip
blades,
not crosscut, AFAIK.

Charlie Self
"Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than
Christianity
has made them good." H. L. Mencken
And they use rip blades to cut the ends of the board off or to cut
shorter boards?

Buzz saws also use crosscut blades, 30 inch maybe larger.

No, but in general, the sawmills around here don't cut the boards to
length.
They cut the LOGS to rough length with a chainsaw.

What is a buzz saw used for? You say it crosscuts. I've been hearing about
"buzz" saws my whole life and have yet to see any saw identified as
such...or
for that matter find any kind of ID of such a saw in a wood or woodworking
source. Woodweb has one reference to a guy cutting 16" slabs with a "buzz"
saw.

I used to buy firewood from a sawmill in upstate NY where the owner cut
wood to
length on a 30" blade, though at that point in my life, I didn't know
enough to
check what tip grind and other features that saw had. You might call that
a
buzz saw. I'd call it a portable crosscut saw, with one helluva long
support
table to the left.
Charlie, you've got the concept right! I'm posting a couple pictures on ABPW
referencing this thread. Any of these general types were called buzz saws,
and were used primarily for cross cutting wood into stove/furnace length
before chainsaws came into general use. In those days felling was done with
ax and 2 man crosscut saws, "limbing" with an ax, and logs to length with
the 2 man crosscut. Limbs were then cut for firewood with the buzz saw, logs
brought to manageable size with wedge and sledgehammer, then cut to length
with the buzz saw.

The buzz saw was one dangerous piece of machinery!(DAMHIKT)

--
Nahmie
The law of intelligent tinkering: save all the parts.