Thank you for visiting the C&S Tools Blog! This article will be a show and tell about a couple of unusual saws of a type not well know outside Japan. For that matter, they are no longer common inside Japan.

The Bukkiri Gagari Saw

The three saws pictured in this article are of a type of Japanese handsaw called a “bukkiri gagari.”

Terminology

Let’s begin with the second word in the name, “Gagari,” (gah/gah/rhi) which refers to a larger rip saw intended for rougher work. Usually forged heavier and stiffer than standard handsaws, these were once standard tools in every Japanese carpenter’s toolbox, used for ripping boards and cutting joints in timber frames. The teeth are made large to quickly eat lots of wood, but when properly sharpened, given the right set, and used correctly, they will make smooth cuts indeed.

Your humble servant has only seen the word gagari written using phonetic “hiragana” characters which are derived from Chinese characters but do not have any inherent or historic meaning, so while I can’t guess where the word came from, in exchange for a delicious chocolate chip cookie (with a glass of cold milk, please) I might be so bold as to suggest it came from the rough sound large rip saws make when ripping thinner boards.

Likewise, I’ve never seen the modifying first word, “bukkiri” (book/kee/reeh), written using other than hiragana, but even without a cookie bribe I can guess that “bukkiri” is a modification of the word “bukkiru,” which means to “chop off” something, for instance the head of a fish or an especially-corrupt politician. In this case, I believe it refers to the pointed tang having been chopped off short. So a bukkiri gagari is a larger rip saw with a shortened tang and an angled “shumoku” handle.

The Shumoku Handle

The handle is especially unusual so let’s consider it next. The skewed handles in the photos in this article are called a “shumoku” (shoo/moh/kuh) 撞木 handle.

Shumoku is an interesting word. The Chinese character “Shu” 撞 means bell, while “Moku” 木means wood. In other words, a shumoku is a piece of wood for ringing bells. The image to the right is of a wooden mallet used to strike small tabletop bells during Buddhist ceremonies.

The shumoku in the video at this LINK is a tad larger, being motivated by a group of 17 jolly monks in a bell-ringing ceremony at Chion-in Temple (知恩院, Monastery of Gratitude, Jodoshu-sect) in Kyoto. Said to be the largest bronze bell in Japan, it seems to take a lot of work to make it sing!

I have no clue why this word is used for a saw handle, and those in the industry I’ve asked didn’t either. A mystery. Based on my long years of experience reading and writing in the Japanese language, it seems likely that the woodworkers that made and used this style of handle back in the mists of time gave it a name with a pronunciation similar to shumoku back in the days when few commoners could read or write, and centuries later when the came time to write the word using Chinese characters, someone decided to use the “bell wood” characters just to poke fun at the monks in their funny dresses (ツ).

Despite what those who like to portray the Japanese language as highly cultural and absolutely logical suggest, I can assure Gentle Reader it contains many instances of such strange “assignments,” just another reason why the written language is too often confusing.

Long, straight handles with oval cross-sections are more common in Japan, and certainly better known outside Japan. And the straight handle makes accurate cuts easier because one can readily sense if the blade wanders from a straight line in the cut. But, in some cases, the straight handle has three disadvantages. First, the handle’s length sometimes gets in the way when making long strokes in the tight spaces where carpenters are sometimes required to work, whereas a saw with a shumoku handle is shorter, and is easier to use from various angles, for example, when cutting a tenon or a housed dovetail from under a beam. Second, the straight handle depends on a high-friction grip by both hands to motivate powerfully, whereas the shumoku handle does not. And third, it’s more difficult to use as powerfully as the shumoku handle due to the angle of the user’s hands in-use.

Here’s are a Link to a video of a guitar luthier using a bukkiri gagari saw.

Two Examples of Bukkiri Gagari

The photo above shows two saws: the antique 320mm shakuni (1.2 shaku) bukkiri gagari as well as a longer 355mm “shakusan” (1.3 shaku) bukkiri gagari saw hand-forged and hand-sharpened for your humble servant by Nakaya Takijiro Masayuki, with teeth especially shaped for ripping hardwoods. A most excellent saw.

The shorter saw is over 150 years old, and according to the blacksmith’s hand engraving on the tang, was forged from “Tougo Reigo” steel, aka “Togo steel,” a British product made by the Andrews Steel Works and first imported into Japan by an officer who once served under Admiral Togo in the Japanese Imperial Navy and who borrowed the name of the famous military leader.

It’s a great saw, one your most humble and obedient servant has used frequently since purchasing it at a flea market in IIdabashi Tokyo many decades ago. I like the color it presents, the control it provides, and the compact size, but the teeth are little on the hard side as evidenced by a crack in one tooth. Togo steel is well-known for being on the brittle side.

The shumoku handle attached to the Togo steel saw is one your humble servant made from kiri wood with mulberry wood inserts and a black persimmon retaining wedge. The inserts keep the blade’s tang from wearing out the soft kiri wood, and the wedge makes it easier to remove the handle for transport. It’s fancier than necessary, but I had fun making it. Another way to secure a shumoku handle is with a dovetail wedge inserted from the side, but I don’t like the weaker nature of this style, nor the feel of the wedge in the hand.

Gentle Reader will notice that the straight tang of the shorter saw has been cut off (“bukkiri”) square by the original owner long ago, and that the back of the blade curves away from the cutting edge. This curvature is standard for rip saws.

The longer 355mm saw, by comparison, has a shumoku handle I made from tougher Japanese white oak with a more-or-less rectangular cross-section and is secured by friction alone.

The blade of the Takijiro saw is more-or-less straight, lacking the curve towards the end, and instead of the tang being straight it’s curved downwards in the direction of the teeth. This is not a standard blade converted into a gagari by chopping the tang short, but was planned to accept a shumoku handle from the time it was just a spark glowing in Takijiro’s forge, making it a dedicated, professional rip saw. Takijiro shaped this saw for me after one his master forged for a temple carpenter many decades ago, a craftsman I met at his workshop, and who gave me the opportunity to use, and fall in love with, his saw.

Please don’t tell my other saws I said this because they tend to be anthropomorphically jealous, and while saw cuts seldom make hearts bleed, they can make fingers fly.

Converting a Rip Saw to a Bukkiri Gagari

Gentle Reader can readily convert a standard Japanese rip saw into a bukkiri gagari by cutting the tang short and making a shumoku handle, as is the case of the shorter saw in this article. The longer style saw is not available new, although Takijiro has forged a couple of them over the years for our Most Beloved & Patient Customers.

While this article has been about dedicated rip saws, some craftsmen convert crosscut saws in the same way.

A safety warning is called for here, however, after all, they don’t call it the “nanny state” for nuttin. If you add a shumoku handle to a standard saw blade, be sure to at least cut off the pointy end of the tang. Otherwise, you’re likely to find your chest and/or arm leaking red sticky stuff compromising your color-coordinated woodworking togs, a simply devastating fashion faux pas.

Until we meet again, I have the honor to remain,

YMHOS

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