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MONTANA SENIOR NEWS • FEBRUARY / MARCH 2020
PAGE 28 COVER StORY hing
Teac
Old Saws
New Tricks
PHIL CRIST REFASHIONS
VINTAGE BLADES INTO
PRACTICAL WORKS OF ART
filers, and the lexicon of crusty old timers friends who ask you where
BY BILL LOMBARDI who worked the deep woods and perfected you shot that bull elk last
the wry sense of humor he employs today. hunting season.
You can’t teach an old saw new tricks. Ask Crist when he was born, and he Crist has collected
But Helena resident Phil Crist can—he says, “Septober nineteen hundred and time-worn sayings and
does it all the time. froze to death.” (He was born in Park tools that date back more
After decades in the woods and sawmills Rapids, Minn., southwest of, fittingly, than 100 years, like spider
of Minnesota, Idaho, and Montana, Crist, 81, Paul Bunyan State Forest.) and raker gauges. He uses
has invented more than one way to refash- them to earn what he calls his
ion old saws into not only works of art but “beer money,” even though he
practical implements used by generations of doesn’t drink beer.
snowmobilers, four-wheelers, backcountry “There are not many people
horsemen and women. Idaho outfitters, left who know how to sharpen
Idaho Fish & Game, the U.S. Forest Service, saws,” Crist says. “The old tools
and Montana Conservation Corps even use are the best. They don’t make
them to clear trails, cut limbs, and win nothing that lasts anymore.”
competitions. Crist’s garage and workshop
Whom do you call when a tree has fallen contain ancient-looking tools
across a wilderness trail, and your crosscut and machines that could have
blade is dull? Or when you need to win a Crist's garage and workshop contain ancient-looking come from the Cast-Iron Age, or
hand-sawing competition? tools and machines that could have come from the before microwaves were invented.
Cast-Iron Age. Photo by Raymond Lombardi
Crist, of course. They’re used to measure, cut and
He is the go-to regional saw builder and Where do you hunt? “Popcorn forty.” sharpen blades for the bow, hand,
sharpener, who cut his teeth under the tute- These retorts, passed down by his father, crosscut, hack, pole, pruning,
lage of his grandfather and father—barely are meant to confuse the interlocutor and ripcut, band, chain, chop, circu-
educated men who taught him the dying art obfuscate the details that might reveal who lar, miter, radial arm, table, and
of sawyers, feller bunchers, skidders, blade you are and prepare you to answer those other saws that he refurbishes in his
