Alan DuBoff
>Adam wrote:
"18th c dt saws were as thin as the new saws are (and thinner than Disstons)."

Trying to find these saws can be difficult, they are few and far between, and when they do come up for sale on ebay they get bid up high. There are not a lot of these saws so even to find one takes some time and looking, in my experience. I only have a few old dovetail saws.

I don't like the boutique reference either, but I completely agree with you that the new saws are just better saws in general. I could be bias also as I make my own saws...but even other maker's saws to me are much better fit/finish than the older vintage saws I've seen. Especially in the split-nuts, modern split-nuts are much better than older ones that are often so thin it is easy to destroy them getting them out. One Beardshaw that I have was riveted and the heads peened, and the flat sides (head) fell out sometime over the past 200 years...this saw also has pins peened through the back, not sure if that is original, but the way they are peened makes me think they could be original. I digress, but suffice to say that old split-nuts can cause problems when trying to tighten them up snugly on the old saws, r&r the handles, or even remove the blades. That is probably the biggest caveat emptor on old saws, aside from the brittle steel that is found on some plates. The metal was not nearly as consistent as modern 1095 spring steel, in my experience. This was more so in the early part of the 19th century and older. Steel got pretty good about mid 19th century when Bessemer's process of using oxygen to force the impurities out of pig iron surfaced. At least in the saws I have from those eras...Few if any of my saws are 18th century, maybe only one, possibly two...but I can't imagine those 18th century saws being any more consistent than the early 19th century ones, and those were no consistent by any means.