Two Scottish surgeons invented a small hand-powered bone saw with a small chain, and it was used to remove diseased bone. As painful as that sounds, it’s widely credited as being the first use of what we know today as the chainsaw. This Vintage Titan Chainsaw can be found listed here on Facebook Marketplace in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and the seller is asking $280. Here is the original listing, and thanks to “Generic member” for the tip!

Talk about a great winter restoration project! If this were local, I’d snap it up in a heartbeat. It’s much better than restoring another kid’s bike, although I still have three or four tiny motorcycles waiting for their turn on the bench. Believe it or not, this is the very first chainsaw featured on Barn Finds. That’s hard to believe since we’re all about old gas/diesel/fuel-powered engines here. I wonder what else would fit in that category?…

I’m sure that a similar muffler could be found somewhere; this one has seen better days for sure. The history of using a saw with a rotating, spinning cutting chain to cut trees or other wood products goes back to the late 1800s. 1883 saw the first Wild West Show with Buffalo Bill Cody, in of all non-“western”-sounding places, Omaha, Nebraska. It was also when the Brooklyn Bridge opened. 1883 was the year when Frederick L. Magaw of Flatlands, New York, patented what is believed to be the first chainsaw for use on wood. More patents and models came later from other inventors and companies, as in 1905, for use on giant redwood trees.

The first portable, handheld chainsaw came about in 1918 in Canada, and in 1927, a gentleman named Emil Lerp invented the first gas-powered chainsaw. Andreas Stihl, a name most of us have heard of, invented his first chainsaw in Germany in 1926, powered by electricity! Remember, in that era, even automakers hadn’t 100% agreed on a source for powering vehicles, and electric-powered chainsaws are still a thing, mainly battery-powered ones. I have an old Wards electric chainsaw.  There isn’t a ton of information on Titan chainsaws, other than that Stihl chainsaws were popular in the U.S. up until the late 1930s when Germany invaded Poland, and then they were banned. Companies scrambled to fill the need for handheld chainsaws, sometimes known as “widow makers” for the incredible danger involved in using them and the lack of safety features.

Robert Gillespie of a Seattle company called Mill & Mine Supply came up with the Titan Chainsaw, and it was, at one time, the biggest manufacturer of big timber chainsaws. There were single or twin-cylinder models, and this is a single-cylinder. The ad doesn’t have a lot of information, but they say it has a 32″ bar (the part where the chain wraps around and spins to cut the wood), and they say the bar can be changed out for an auger or other attachments. Very cool! It isn’t currently running, but I’m sure most of us could have it running again in no time. Are any of you into restoring or collecting non-automotive things like chainsaws?