A little history of circular saws

The circular saws are mainly used to cut wood. But other than this the saw is used to cut metal, masonry and plastics using purpose oriented circular saws. It essentially consists of a metal blade or disc with saw teeth on the edge of the blade. There is a machine to spin the blade in modern circular saws. Traditional circular saws are operated by hand but nowadays larger circular saws are well operated using electricity. The most popular circular saw is the hand operated portable circular saw.

About the invention of circular saw many theories are popular. Tabitha Babbitt, an American tool maker, is very prominent among them. She is the first one to invent the circular saw to be used in saw mills. The motive behind her invention was to help her fellow workers. She felt that the male co worker’s efforts to run the two men operated pit saw was not functioning properly and half of their effort was getting wasted. She made the first circular Saw in Albany, New York in 1813. She was never interested in patenting her inventions.

Samuel Miller’s name also is associated with the invention of circular saw but there is no well established evidence to support this claim. He is from Southampton, England. Walter Taylor is another personality from Southampton who gave significant innovations in developing great circular saws and other equipments. Descriptions show that he built and developed a saw mill and he used circular saws in that mill. Another popular claim gives the credit of invention of circular saw to Holland. There is no precise evidence or descriptions to establish this claim.

The modern electrical circular saw was invented by a French sugar cane farmer named Edmond Michel, way back in 1921. Those days, slashing the thick sugarcane stalks with machetes were a hard and back breaking task. To increase the sugar cane production he took a decision to make a tool using the principles of machetes. The rest is a history. He fixed the regular machete with the motor of “Beach” malted mild mixer. He kept the driving end facing forward and installed a 15” x ¼” shaft at the bottom of the machete, near the chopping edge. He then installed a wheeled worm gearbox at the tip of the machete to give a right angled drive. He mounted a 2” circular blade at the end of the gearbox’s shaft. Near the handle he fixed a toggle switch also. This is how the first electric handsaw was invented.

But this handsaw worked very at a snail's pace so he fixed a wood piece of “U” shape and mounted the mixer motor and installed all the things as before using the same principles. It was quite a success and was able to work more efficiently. Later he formed a company with Joseph W. Sullivan. On July 1, 1924, his new company named the Michel Electric Hand Saw was formed. Later they re-designed the saw and got patent for their product. One of the saw named “Skillsaw” produced by them is still popular. The amazing thing about this saw is, its price didn’t change significantly till now.

Later many types of circular saws were developed. The prominent types among them are sidewinder saw and saws developed exclusively for military applications.