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FEBRUARY / MARCH 2020 • MONTANA SENIOR NEWS COVER StORY PAGE 29
ramshackle shop downhill from the log- Crist saves letters of appreciation, like
frame home he built with his son. the note from a woman who lives near
He can repurpose rusty band saw Unionville, Mont., and whose return address
blades (12 inches wide and 40 feet long) included the line, “future world champion
from a Townsend, Mont., saw mill, to cross cutter.”
craft two-handled crosscut saws with “Wow, I am speechless,” Anna Baker, a
3- to 5-foot blades used for cutting big, professional carpenter, wrote to him after
rough logs. she received one of his crosscut saws as a
Crist came west from Minnesota, gift from Crist and a friend. “Your gift is so
through West Yellowstone, Mont., unexpected, so generous, and so incredibly
where he cut pulpwood in sum- beautiful! I am honored! Thank you for
mer, and then North Fork, Idaho, believing in me. I am thrilled to have the
where he worked in a sawmill and pleasure of sawing with your handmade saw
swept floors for the head filer, and can’t wait to compete again!”
the tradesperson who maintained
and repaired the mill’s saws.
Prior to becoming a pro-
fessional saw filer—or saw
doctor—he had to learn blade phys-
ics, geometry, and terminology. He
became familiar with terms like tooth
spacing, gullet, tooth height, hook
angle, tooth set, blade thickness, blade
width, pitch, rake, set, and slope.
He worked in the mill’s filing room
and was eventually promoted to head "There are not many people left who know how to
filer. His coworkers, who had to work sharpen saws," says Phil Crist. "The old tools are the
best. They don't make nothing that lasts any more."
outside, hung a sign over his door: Photo by Raymond Lombardi
“Phil went to Florida for the winter.”
Alongside it hung a license plate from Baker today admits that she has tem-
the Sunshine State. pered her dreams of becoming a champion
When the North Fork mill shuttered, crosscutter. She instead uses her col-
Crist relocated to work at another in lection of Crist-sharpened saws to cut
Missoula., where he again became head firewood for her family and competes
filer. When that mill closed, he moved to at the Red Ants Pants Music Festival’s
Seeley Lake in western Montana, end- crosscut competition near White Sulphur
ing his saw-filing career at the family Springs, Mont., in summer.
owned Pyramid Mountain Lumber Inc. She likes the physicality of sawing and
He retired in 2002 and now continues seeing the results—firewood.
working as a freelance saw doctor. Baker wonders why someone would
Crist advertises simply—by word join a gym to exercise “when they could
of mouth and on his 1993 GMC pickup, come to my gym and see something for
which sports cut-out wooden saws their efforts.”
lashed to the truck bed’s upright side Crist, meanwhile, fondly remem-
extender panels with his phone num- bers competing in lumberjack contests
ber painted on them. A big old plastic in Idaho—Salmon, North Fork, Crouch,
jar with a lid is his bank, into which Orofino—and Darby, Mont.
customers “deposit” fees for his work. “I won quite a few times,” he recalls
He has the mind of an inventor. He about the chopping, sawing, and climbing
created a fishing spear that has seven contests. “Mine [saw blades] were sharper
steel tines, along with barbs, to pierce than the others. Then a guy got older, and
wily 30-pound northern pike on Seeley the kids got younger. And I quit going.”
Lake when he’s ice fishing. Another of He recalls, though, cutting a 22-inch
his creations is a “frost” tooth, used diameter log in 11 seconds with a
for cutting frozen pine logs. two-person crosscut saw. Those were
He also invented a crosscut blade the good old days, when he guided elk
to use on dry wood. Crosscut blades hunts in the mountains near Salmon and
typically have two sets of teeth, the maintained 41 horses.
short rakers and the cutting teeth. This “I liked to get the hell out of there and
particular lay on top of a
blade has no mountain in my
raker teeth, sleeping bag,
because they looking up at
are not nec- blue skies,” he
essary for says. “It was bad
removing when an airplane
the wood- flew over.”
shavings Crist could
produced in wetter, green logs. have been dreaming then that an
Customers, including those old saw really does have nine lives.
who use hand saws for work in MSN
backcountry wilderness where chain-
saws are prohibited, like his work.
Photo by Raymond Lombardi Photo by Raymond Lombardi
