Recently, I sent our old sawbuck to the knacker’s yard.
Back in 2013, I built a new, lighter, foldable sawbuck to replace one I’d built years before from scrap wood around the “homestead.” The first one had served us well, but had grown rickety beyond repair (see A New Foldable Sawbuck). This project represented a change in philosophy, away from making do with what’s on hand, toward investing in new lumber for better, longer lasting construction.
The old sawbuck in its younger days (Photo: Mark A. Zeiger).
Even after I built the new sawbuck, the old one served us in many ways as an auxiliary for a few years. Eventually, though, it sat longer and longer as a sorry eyesore.
Finally, I decided to disassemble it. That often-repurposed lumber still offered one final use, as firewood. I pulled the nails, threw the small pieces into water heating buckets (see Keeping Clean on the Homestead) and cut the longer pieces into stove lengths. In all, it provided about three showers and one winter day’s worth of heat for the cabin. That’s not a bad last service from a faithful old tool.