Pappy's Witte Engine-Powered Buzz Saw

Enlarge Image Image Gallery Detail from promotional materials for a buzz saw owned by William Easley

My Pappy, William H. Easley, was born on a farm in Boone County, Mo., in 1899. His brother, Edward, was born in 1901. When they were in their teens, they purchased a stripped-down Ford Model T for $10. They drove the car several years until my uncle got married in 1923. 

Uncle Edward didn't think that a married man really needed a stripped-down Model T, so he and Pappy traded it even up for a portable buzz saw powered by an 8 hp Witte engine. The saw was on a wagon-type frame with steel wheels and a long tongue, so a team of horses or mules could pull it. Pappy and Uncle Edward sawed wood for their families, several neighbors and anyone else within a ten-mile radius that needed their services.

Pappy told me that, at a time when wages were 50 cents a day, they charged $3.50 per day for two men and the saw. Pappy was the sawyer, Uncle Edward the off-bearer, and the person they were sawing for furnished enough help to keep wood carried to the saw. They sawed together from 1923 until Uncle Edward quit farming and moved to town in 1941. Even after he moved, Uncle Edward arranged his schedule so he could be at the farm to help on the day Pappy sawed his winter woodpile. Apparently the saw was causing trouble in 1932, because Pappy received some ads for new engines in the mail, along with a parts book and price list. The total cost for the seven needed parts, including a piston, came to $16.80. I don't know if Pappy ordered the parts or not, but I assume he did, since he didn't buy his first tractor until 1939, and something had to power the saw for those seven years in between.

I was born in 1942, and although the engine wasn't in running condition, in my earliest memories the Witte was still free, and a couple of neighbor boys and I would play on the old saw for hours. It became a tank, train, airplane, or anything else we wanted it to be. We would turn the large flywheels, causing the piston to open and close with a loud whooshing noise. After we got too old to play with the engine anymore, the piston soon stuck from lack of use.