Spoon Bits

Meticulously machined and brutally sharp, this classic tool has been re-imagined for modern manufacturing.

“This is the first Gramercy Tool manufactured entirely in-house. Besides the bits themselves, I had to design mill fixtures, furnace fixtures, grinding fixtures— for eight sizes and counting. My colleagues in the Gramercy workshop and I have a lot to be proud of. “ -TIM

Press: Popular Woodworking

Available: TFWW

Instructions for Use

Hardware Store Saw

The Hardware Store Saw is a general purpose short saw loaded with handy features.

Available: TFWW • Supersmith

Hi L####!

At this moment, I’d say that I’m the appropriate person to talk to and it’s no bother. I’m the lead product designer at Tools For Working Wood, and The Hardware Store Saw has been my baby for some time now. I’m thrilled that you’re including it in Popular Science.

Synopsis: The official name for the new tool is the Hardware Store Saw, and we’re manufacturing it under the Brooklyn Tool & Craft label. It will be available online at Tools For Working Wood, our Brooklyn showroom. Soon though, we hope you’ll also be able to pick one up at a number of US and Canadian retail locations, where BT&C shellac, nails, glue and other supplies are already available.

So, let me try to tell you why this thing is so great! I’ve attached some pre-production artwork as well as a few quick snaps of my saw I happen to have on my desk.

First of all, the BT&C saw is nine tools in one (if you count the metric and imperial scales separately). Nine in one! The benign feature glut is a little tongue-in-cheek but I happen to think it plays well with the mid-century period aesthetics (I’m pretty sentimental about this sort of thing). Apart from being an excellent saw with some very special teeth, the Hardware Store Saw can be used to lay out cuts and joinery, check squares, angles, and convert metric to imperial measurements. The blade also features a set of diagonal scales: an old school, low tech way to make sure dividers or trammel points are set to within 1/100th of an inch or 1/10th of a millimeter. I happen to think diagonal scales are fiendishly cunning.

The Teeth: A special arrangement of knifey, cutting teeth, ‘raker’ clearing teeth, and deep gullets punched at regular intervals all combine to create a novel saw that can handle a variety of cutting jobs quickly, and with minimal to no “set.” Unlike many clunky imports that feature over-set, induction-hardened teeth, the BT&C Hardware Store Saw can be resharpened easily, resulting in a vastly extended tool life.

The Handle: The saw has a comfortable yet sturdy handle which was formed through aggressive chamfering on a flat contour. This expedient but traditional method for producing an exceptional grip is called “octagon striping,” and we use it on Gramercy Tools for our finest hickory hammer handles. When the decision was made to use hickory for our saw handle, the natural choice was to employ more octagon striping, both for its tactile advantages as well as its hickory-specific good looks.

The Etch: A huge amount of design work, development capital, and technical expertise went into creating the blade graphics, which are permanently acid-etched into the steel. Acid etching is a traditional way to mark and decorate hand tools, but the Hardware Store Saw may have the most ambitious etch ever attempted on a production saw. This is due in no small part to the pebbled, shagreen texture that provides the background fill for the etch, which required multiple applications of precisely registered, acid-resisting masks.

The BT&C Hardware Store Saw is indeed a “saw for all,” for experienced woodworkers and novices alike. Good tools inspire and shape their users, and I would like anyone who buys this saw to feel a little something of the rush I used to get when picking out some gleaming new steel from a dusty local shop.

Thank you again for getting in contact. If you have any questions at all feel free to e-mail me or call me at xxx.xxx.xxxx. I look forward to speaking with you further!

Sincerely,

Timothy Corbett

Designer — Tools for Working Wood

Bow Saw

A nimble hickory frame rotates freely around a thin blade under enormous tension for unrestricted cutting in tight curves.

Available:

USA

Canada

EU

Japan (maybe)

“The Bow Saw was the first tool I designed for TFWW. We had a source for blades, so I started by modeling the little brass swivel pins that hold everything together. We offered the pins by themselves with a free set of plans so anyone could make one on the cheap, but of course we offered a complete saw in a gorgeous hickory frame.

“The frame is designed to rotate freely around the handles, so you can move it out of the way of your workpiece when cutting tight curves. The technique can seem a little counter intuitive, but mastery comes after only about a half-hour of practice. At the time of the first Woodworking In America event in Berea, Kentucky the saw had been on the market for a couple of years. A customer came up to the TFWW booth to say she’d had invented a Bow Saw technique for cutting dovetails. It involved twisting the handles so the blade had a 90° twist, then forcing it through the wood in a single stroke, thereby cutting the tightest of all possible corners. I think this was one of the most exciting moments in my career as a designer— learning that one of my tools had this life on its own and that people were developing their own, unique relationships with the things I cared so much about.“