This "What's It" is a hammer set for setting the teeth of large saws. For those who saw wood, it is known that the kerf, or cut by the saw, is required to be slightly wider than the blade, so that it does not bind. To achieve that, every other tooth is bent out to the right, and the other teeth are bent out to the left. The top fence with the wooden screws on our whatsit can be adjusted to permit the tooth to be bent at the ideal 1/3rd from the point location. The vertical fence in the front can be moved both in and out from the body, and also up or down - this adjusts the angle of the bent tooth. More is angle needed for soft wood, less for hard wood. The target tooth was centered under the punch, and a hammer hit the punch and set the tooth.

We surmise that this tool might have come from either of two sources. Firstly, it might have been part of the Fisher homestead artifacts that Sheldon Fisher collected. The Fisher Homestead was near the Charles Fisher lumber mill that was in business in Fishers, N.Y. - only 2 miles from the Hall. That was the mill in which we think that the Hall lumber was sawn. The other idea is that it came from the construction crew that built the Hall. Current thinking is that it was the former, for two reasons. First, it is marked with an inventory number that Sheldon marked the Fishers artifacts. with Secondly, the primitive design of the tool suggests a time before commercial sawsets were available, which should have been available when the Hall was built in 1879.