I’m David La Touche and I’ve been using tools for most of my life, both to earn my living and for the pleasure of the process of work. I started collecting split nut saws some five or six years ago. I’m not exactly sure why, but possibly because they were hand made rather than produced identically by machines, and were made in a time where comfort and extraneous beauty were as important to the maker and user as mere utility. These saws fit the hand and please the eye. In any case, these are tools that have built much of our present wooden world, being in common use until sometime in the first part of the 20th century when their numbers in use were surely overtaken by those of machine made saws, which were and are the calculated, pragmatic results of profitable business practice and are, while functional, fairly lacking in beauty or comfort for the user.
Over the past few years I’ve built this collection to contain examples by as many makers as I could obtain. When possible I obtained fine examples, but if I couldn’t find a fine one then a representative example, condition notwithstanding, was okay with me. There is still much information to be found in a damaged example, and often the earliest examples are damaged. Anyway, the intent of this collection is more to be encyclopedic than to be masterpiece-heavy. I can learn more from looking at 5 or 6 saws in differing conditions from one maker than from looking at one flawless example.
I’ve spent a good deal of time researching these old saws and most of my sources and methods are listed in the ABOUT section of this site. The slim factual information contained here about most of these early saws has been hard to find. Saw makers in the US of A only began to offer catalogs after the Civil War, although a few earlier broadsides have provided some information. New information, whether supportive or contradictory, is welcomed here, and any additional images as well.
I built this site to provide the information I’ve garnered to other folks who might share an interest in these things. I hope you find it useful and perhaps as enjoyable as I have.