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| DragSaw |
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| Coil |
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| 2 piece spark plug |
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| Governor and throttle |
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The Dragsaw was the standard powersaw available prior to the perfection of the chainsaw. There were a variety of manufacturers but a number of things about the dragsaw never changed. They were usually mounted on a frame 6 to 8 feet long and designed to sit with one end up on the log and the other end on the ground. Usually they were equipped with some sort of dogs to hook them on to the log. and uniformly used a drag saw blade which was different from a crosscut saw blade in that the teeth were designed to cut only during the 'drag' stroke, hence the name 'dragsaw'. These saws where heavy, temperamental and not loved. The gas engines of the first half of the century were not very reliable or light. Often they were called 'one lung' engines, as they turned slowly so you could hear them chugging along. Often the engines were massive castings and water cooled. Carbarutors were of the crudest nature, and the breaker points were often external with the power provided by a hotshot battery and a coil for the sparkplug.
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| Gas Tank and Water Tank |
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| Vaughn is the street in front of Montgomary Wards mail order house in Portland |
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| Water cooled cylinder |
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| Master Clutch |
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| Coil powered with drycharge battery |
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The first 2 photos on the left are of different saws than the rest of the photos. Note that there are 2 tanks on the saw. The left one is the gas tank, and the right one is the water tank. There was a water jacket around the cylinder, and piping so the heated water could rise into the water tank and cooler water from the tank could sink into the cylinder jacket. Starting was accomplished by pulling on the flywheel.
The saws couldn't be used for falling, and were too heavy to move around the woods for bucking, but they would often be used for wood cutting. The production of cordwood required a lot of cutting, and the saw didn't have to be moved far between cuts making the application most suitable for a dragsaw. Around a logging operation that used a steam donkey, it was common to have a steam engine on a drag saw and use steam off the main boiler to power it. This got away from the cantankerous gas engine.
IF you had a big log well blocked up so you saw wouldn't pinch you could make a lot of stove wood in a day with one of these things. They did not require constant attention, so once one was set up and running, the operator could turn to splitting wood while the saw was cutting the next block. Where ever there was steam power used in the woods for logging, it was almost universally wood fired and a wood cutting crew was not far away. The waste steam was often discharged across the boiler stack in a manner so as to create a vacuum in the fire box so as to suck more air in faster. This 'supercharging' method meant that when the steam engine was working, the fire was forced to burn hotter making more steam. I've heard many a firemen say that the boilers on a steam donkey could suck a whole fire box of wood up while pulling in a single turn. The fire was properly stoked on cycle while the rigging was being hooked or unhooked so when it was time for the heavy pull, the fire could be forced to the maximum to maintain steam pressure during the inhaul.