In Shop Blog, Techniques, Tools

We may receive a commission when you use our affiliate links. However, this does not impact our recommendations.

With Chris in Germany, I’m afraid this post will be sorely lacking in metaphors involving wee creatures (I simply haven’t my boss’ flair for metaphor). I do, however, recall hearing about the great fly invasion.

This new DVD, “Sawing Fundamentals,” was shot on location in Warren, Maine, at the Lie-Nielsen studio. And, like the swallows’ return to Capistrano every spring, so the flies return to Maine (I prefer similes). As Chris, Conor and the crew were filming, they had to stop every few minutes to commit mass muscacide.

Despite the killing spree, Chris and crew managed to produce a seamless 57-minute DVD that teaches the basics of sawing , how to choose the right saw for the job, how to grip it, the correct sawing stance and more. Plus, Chris shows you the three classes of saw cuts: third class , for rough stock prep; second class , for accuracy when appearance is not important; and first class , where appearance is critical.

“Sawing Fundamentals” is now available in our bookstore
($25), and as with all of Chris’s Lie-Nielsen DVDs, his proceeds will be donated to charity , in this case, White Water Shaker Village.

– Megan Fitzpatrick


Product Recommendations

Here are some supplies and tools we find essential in our everyday work around the shop. We may receive a commission from sales referred by our links; however, we have carefully selected these products for their usefulness and quality.

Recommended Posts
Showing 14 comments
  • Megan

    Adam,

    I’m easily led astray. Or perhaps I started it. Sorry!

    The DVD focuses primarily on sawing techniques, some of which are applicable to Japanese saws. But for the most part, the instruction is geared toward the use of Western saws.

  • Adam

    Not to derail the humor, but I do have a question apropos to the sawing book 🙂

    Does this book have any discussion on the usage of Japanese style pull saws?

    many thanks,
    Adam of Oakland

  • Megan

    Ed, I shall swallow my lumps for not having fully thought through the comparison. I can be a bit of a bird brain.

  • Ed Furlong

    Megan:

    While I love simile as much as the next tool-hugging pseudo (il)literate, I must point out that the simile is strained, if not the quality of sympathy. Pardon this brief interlude while I let my (birder) geek flag fly.

    The swallows of Capistrano are Cliff Swallows ((Petrochelidon pyrrhonota), and this year actually did not return to Capistrano, instead nesting north of San Juan Capistrano. In in their return, the swallows of Capistrano migrate thousands of miles from from South America. In contrast, the muscids of Maine, as elsewhere, overwinter as eggs and when the weather warms, rise from the fetid mud of Maine in which real Mainers revel.

    Seriously, keep up the good work–Chris needs a literate, witty foil and you are doing a great job!

    And since you like quotes, I leave you with this, from the Cliff Swallow entry in Birds of North America online:

    D"oubtless the Lord—to paraphrase Lincoln’s aphorism—must love the Cliff Swallows, else he would not have made so many of them."–William C. Dawson (1923)

    Ed

  • Megan

    That’s a fair cop.

  • Peter Baines

    I must say, I do prefer recounting the knights of Nimph over the swallows – shruberies et al – but if we are to get into it, and IMHO, t’ther film is funnier. Is there anything funnier than "arms for an ex lepper"

  • david brown

    It’s a simple question of weight ratios. A five-ounce bird could not carry a one pound coconut!

  • Gene

    And are the swallows laden or unladen?

  • Rick Roberts

    Alliteration also.

  • Ed

    Would that be an African or European swallow ?

  • Mark

    Actually, having taken Chris’s sawing class in the past, I’d highly recommend this DVD even not having seen it yet. You’d think that sawing was something of a no-brainer but there really is sound methodology to getting a cut that doesn’t cause you to ask why you didn’t just go to the table saw.

  • Mark

    There better not be any smoting with my hand saws. Those things are expensive!

  • Megan

    “He…with a spere smote the noble knyght in to the foundament soo that his bowels comen oute there” (Caxton, "Chronicles of England"). Let the scatological sawing jokes commence!

  • Jeremy Kriewaldt

    I am going to have to get this because it may answer two major questions:
    1. What is a fundamental?
    2. How do you saw one?
    This has been bugging me as long as the questions:
    1. How do you reduce a circumstance?
    2. Having reduced your circumstance, how do you live in it? Where’s the door?

    Sorry for bad puns (but if you won’t supply metaphor, … 🙂

Start typing and press Enter to search