Classic Boat – August 2019

CLASSIC BOAT AUGUST 2019 93

THE BLACK PRINCE

STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHS
ROBIN GATES

Plastic is falling into disrepute faster
than a winch handle to the seabed.
But cast your mind back to the 1950s
and 1960s, when plastic was the new
wonder material, mouldable into
shapes unimaginable with wood, and
it seemed plastic was a boat too
good to miss. Established designers
of wooden boats were not slow to the
new material. The Laurent Giles o…ce,
for example, gave birth to a slew of
plastic Westerly cruisers, notably the
traditionally-styled Centaur, a firm
family favourite since 1969.
Where wooden boat building
endured, plastic nonetheless inveigled
its way into the boatbuilder’s
aŽections through his tools – in
handles. Perhaps the most elegant,
came from Spear & Jackson, reaching
perfection in the Black Prince
handsaw launched in 1965. Surely the
sleekness, the all-blackness of this
22-inch cross-cutter would quicken
the pulse of even the most warrior-
like of today’s eco-woodworkers.
In its day, the Black Prince was
lauded as a masterpiece of aesthetic
and functional design, and in its

humanoid curves and pouting

aperture I can see how it appealed to

the critics. Breaking with the weighty,

ornamented wood of the past, here

was a hollow polypropylene handle

shaped like an abstract form from

Henry Moore or Barbara Hepworth.

The designer was sculptor and

silversmith Brian Asquith, a graduate

of the Royal College of Art. By

attaching the handle to the blade

during the moulding process the two

parts became one, dispensing with

screws or rivets and creating a bond

that was virtually unbreakable.

The blade was of induction-

hardened steel, said to remain sharp

four times longer than normal, and

finished with a distinctive fused-on

coating of black Teflon, minimising

friction and rust. Like plastic, Teflon,

a brand name for polytetraflouro-

ethylene (PTFE), has since garnered

its own share of controversy.

All said, this is a good eight-

points-per-inch saw, aggressively set

and cutting fast, but you wonder

what Spear & Jackson were thinking

when, immediately after celebrating

200 years of sawmaking with the

beautiful rosewood-handled Double

Century, they launched this tool

confirming the worst fears of the

traditional woodworker: plastic

handle, unsharpenable, and coated

like a non-stick frying pan.

NEXT MONTH: Shoulder plane

Clockwise from

above: The

handsaw built

like a frying pan;

the tenon saw

uses nuts and

bolts; freshly

sawn oak tenon

Traditional Tool