The year of home education with my son Tom provided a good excuse to give this shapely Lancashire hacksaw an outing. Dabbling in metallurgy, looking specifically at malleable metals, we sawed discs from an old copper bolt and then hammered them into smoothly faceted shapes.
The saw's solid iron frame with turned rosewood handle captures an artistic side to toolmaking that is missing in today's cast-aluminium and plastic hacksaws. There's barely a straight line in it, having a subtle forward swell in the bow of the frame and a slotted curlicue to house the blade. This regional design of hacksaw seems to have survived until the 1930s by which time the adjustable hacksaw frame accommodating several sizes of blade proved cheaper. Before that, it seems that Lancashire hacksaws were made in 1 inch increments from around 3 inches up to 19 inches at least.
The vice is a Record Imp, a sturdy little metalworker with 2 inch jaws and a handy anvil, missing its original screw clamp but fixed instead to a piece of oak which itself can be clamped in the bench vice.
