SAWING, IN A WAY, is antithetical to carpentry, which is mostly joining. Sawing separates, admittedly often for eventual joining, but not always. Firewood is sawn, and split -- divided, divorced.
Sawing offers none of the satisfaction of hammering, none of its violent thrill. Like digging, sawing is arduous. It delivers pain to the shoulder that reveals itself the next day when you pick up the toothbrush.
These days most men prefer power tools. Chain saws. Chain saws remind me of firearms. They embody violence. They are let loose on living wood; they are large, snarling curs. To say that handsaws, hacksaws, old-fashioned, two-man lumberman's saws are more humane is not silly anthropomorphism. Not entirely. But they are closer to us humans: they need our power.
They are like us in other ways. For instance, some handsaws can be made to sing. These days one never sees or hears a man or woman playing a musical saw, with its eerie siren song. That slightly absurd skill is from an earlier time and only a little more artistically elevated than the talent for the spoons, which aren't heard any more either. (I'm not urging a revival.)
I have four saws: an electric circular saw (which I don't like to use), an old hand saw, a hack saw and a bow saw. I don't own a chain saw, electric or gas-powered. As I said, they scare me. They seem less a tool than a weapon. I won't allow a nail gun on the property.
My favorite saw is the bow saw. It is so called for an obvious reason: it looks like a bow, a small, child's bow. Mine is gray. It was made in Taiwan, which is still officially part of China, the People's Republic of Slave Labor. It cost only $6.79, which makes it the cheapest saw you can buy. Slaves could not have made something this fine.
It's official name is Challenger 21. There is additional nomenclature that only confuses things: Model CBS-21. Who knows what that means? I sometimes think such numbering and lettering is put on to suggest that many failures preceded the perfection you are holding in your hands.
Deadly serration
Only the word Challenger is unambiguous, and apt: this saw fears nothing. It has teeth a Great White Shark would envy. They are spread evenly across a lethal 18 inches. It is a deadly stretch of serration.
So why should one celebrate a lowly bow saw? The saw, unlike the hammer, has no representation in mythology, no meaning beyond itself. Bows do, of course. They are heavy with symbolic importance. But Challenger is a saw before it is a bow, and should be dealt with as such and celebrated for its efficiency because nothing is celebrated in this country to the extent efficiency is. It is at the center of our ethos.
The bow saw is the wolverine of the tool box: it will attack anything. It is the Mickey Walker of the shed -- willing and eager to fight above its weight. It severs sap-saturated living trees -- oaks and pines -- the thickness of my wrist with a few fast strokes. A few more thrusts will dispatch those the size of my arm. Currently it has its heart set on a dead pine that rises 50 feet behind the house. The trunk of that tree is as thick as my own, and that seems to expand by the day.
The pine has to come down before it falls on the fence, or the house, or squashes a dog. I think the bow saw knows that. It knows of my distaste and fear of chain saws. It also knows that to have the dead tree taken down professionally would cost $200.
So it waits, hanging on its nail in the shed, knowing that eventually I'll come, booted and gloved, to call on every bit of its $6.79 worth of ferocity.
Timber!
Richard O'Mara is a writer for The Sun.
Pub Date: 5/15/96
