Somedays you’re a historian, others a surgeon.

When you take the plunge into restoring old tools, there are some days that you feel a bit like a historian and a conservator, and there are others when you feel like a surgeon in a field hospital.

It’s inevitable in the hunt for fine tools at flea markets, that you will sometimes run into tools that have lived a hard life. Tools that have suffered unmentionable and unfathomable indignities at the hands of previous owners. These tools will look up at you with their sad tool eyes and beg to be taken home with you.

Sometimes, despite your better judgement, you do, and then you have to figure out what in the world to do with them.

Such is the case with this guy:

It evidently started out life as a Disston no.4 mitre box saw, probably included with a small Millers Falls, Langon, or Stanley set. From there on…