A few years ago I bought an old rusty vintage hand saw at a local garage sale for 50 cents. I figured I would do something cool with it someday. What I decided to do was to make a welcome sign for our house. Using craft paint, I painted “the Leucht’s (est. 1998)” across the rusty blade. Right now it’s hanging in the garage, but we’re thinking about a couple other possible locations for it.

Before painting, I needed to sketch it out and figure out the size of the letters that would look good. So I started with chalk, which is easy to erase and try again until the proportions were just right.

The next step was to create a pattern or template, because painting letters freehand is not for the faint of heart. So I got on my computer and tried a few different fonts to find ones that I thought looked pretty good. It took a few cycles of trial and error before I got printouts that were close to the correct dimensions.

Once the templates were ready, I used chalk again to transfer the outlines of the letters onto the blade. I just chalked up the back side of the template pretty good and then used a pencil to outline each letter which transferred a thin chalk outline onto the saw blade. Then I just painted between the lines. Easier said than done, I know. It takes a pretty steady hand and a lot of patience.

These old antique saws almost always contain stamped metal medallions or label screws that identify the manufacturer. These medallions can also sometimes be used to determine the age of the saw. Here is a close up photo of the medallion on my saw.

It says “H Disston & Sons, Philada” which is Henry Disston and Sons, a highly regarded handsaw manufacturer in Philadelphia. A quick Internet search revealed that this particular medallion design was used between 1896 and 1917! This saw is over a hundred years old! That’s pretty cool!

Here are a few links that I found helpful or interesting:

• A Thorough Study of Disston Saw Medallions
• Comprehensive Saw Medallion Reference Source
• Antique Hand Saws on Pinterest
• Old Hand Saws on EBay

Thanks for your interest!

Kurt