The _Band Saw_ is an endless belt of steel having teeth formed along one edge and traveling continuously around an upper and lower pulley, with its toothed edge presented to the timber to be cut, as seen in Fig. 244, which represents a form of band saw made by the J. A. Fay & Egan Company, of Cincinnati. A form of band saw is found as early as 1808, in British patent No. 3,105, to Newberry. On March 25, 1834, a French patent was granted for a band saw to Etiennot, No. 3,397. The first United States patent for a band saw was granted to B. Barker, January 6, 1836, but it remained for the last quarter of the Nineteenth Century to give the band saw its prominence in woodworking machines. That it did not find general application at an earlier period was due to the difficulty experienced in securely and evenly joining the ends of the band. For many years the only moderately successful band saws were made in France, but expert mechanical skill has so mastered the problem that in recent years the band saw has gone to the very front in wood-sawing machinery. To-day it is in service in sizes from a delicate filament, used for scroll sawing and not larger than a baby’s ribbon, to an enormous steel belt 50 feet in peripheral measurement, and 12 inches wide, traveling over pulleys 8 feet in diameter, making 500 revolutions per minute, and tearing its way through logs much too large for any circular saw, at the rate of nearly two miles a minute. A modern form of such a saw is seen in Fig. 245. Prescott’s patents, Nos. 368,731 and 369,881, of 1887; 416,012, of 1889, and 472,586 and 478,817, of 1892, represent some of the important developments in the band saw. [Illustration: FIG. 245.--MODERN BAND SAW FOR LARGE TIMBER.] When the band saw is applied to cutting logs the backward movement of the carriage would, if there were any slivers on the cut face of the log, be liable to force those slivers against the smooth edge of the band saw, and distort and possibly break it. To obviate this the saw carriage is provided with a lateral adjustment on the back movement called an “off-set,” so that the log returns for a new cut out of contact with the saw. Examples of such off-setting are found in patents to Gowen, No. 383,460, May 29, 1888, and No. 401,945, April 23, 1889, and Hinkley, No. 368,669, August 23, 1887. A modern form of the band saw, however, has teeth on both its edges, which requires no off-setting mechanism, but cuts in both directions. An example of this, known as the telescopic band mill, is made by the Edward P. Allis Company, of Milwaukee.