page_title: Saw pit
section_title: History of the saw pit
hierarchical_section_title: Saw pit / History of the saw pit
caption_attribution_description: English: This is a photo I took myself using an Olympus C8080W digital camera. It was taken at Donnelly Mills, south west western Australia.
context_page_description: A saw pit or sawpit is a pit over which lumber is positioned to be sawed with a long two-handled saw by two people, one standing above the timber and the other below. It was used for producing sawn planks from tree trunks, which could then be cut down into boards, pales, posts, etc. Many towns, villages and country estates had their own saw pits. The greatest user of sawn timber in past centuries was the shipbuilding industry.
context_section_description: A very early water driven Roman sawmill was in use in Hierapolis, the Hierapolis sawmill. Sawmills may well have been developed in the medieval period, as one was sketched by Villard de Honnecourt in c. 1250.  There are claims that they were introduced to Madeira following its discovery in c. 1420 and spread widely in Europe in the 16th century.  
  The 'modern' sawmill was invented or perfected by the Dutchman Cornelis Corneliszoon (1550–1607) who applied a pitman arm onto a wind mill, which converted a turning motion into an up-an-down sawing motion. Cornelis took out a patent on his sawmill on December 15, 1593, and on the pitman arm device on December 6, 1597.  Early sawmills adapted the whipsaw to mechanical power, generally driven by a water wheel. The circular motion of the wheel was changed to back-and-forth motion of the saw blade by the pitman arm or rod. A pitman is similar to a crankshaft, but in reverse (a crankshaft converts back-and-forth motion to circular motion).
  Several early sawmills in England were burned by sawyers who were fearful of losing their livelihoods. However, the increased efficiency of the sawmill, and the back-breaking nature of the saw pit work, resulted in saw pits generally going out of use in the United Kingdom at the time of the industrial revolution. Old OS maps circa 1860 often show the location of saw pits, but by the start of the 20th century very few remained and most are no longer in use. Roy Underhill tells the tall tale, or tongue-in-cheek story, that, after the development of steam-powered sawing machines, saw pits were unnecessary, and therefore were cut up and sold as post-holes.
caption: Tree trunks ready for sawing.
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