Most of us probably first came across fretsawing in woodwork class at school. I fretsawed formers for my model aeroplanes as a little boy, with mixed results!
Besides cutting thin wood, fretsawing is also used by jewellers, though with different blades better suited to metal. We sell both the frame itself, the fretsaw, and fretsaw blades.
The more professional user may be a marquetarian, someone focused on marquetry. In Swedish the traditional title is "dekupör", the person who does marquetry and inlay work. In the 16th to 18th centuries, these craftsmen could also be called "leaf carvers" or "flower cutters".
The craft is now considered very rare and only a few practise it, but there are a number of Swedish craftspeople who have trained in it and make their living from it. Two examples are Andreas Björklund (Björklunds Intarsia), a trained cabinetmaker and marquetarian, and Lena Nordenståhl (Nordenståhls Finsnickeri), a fine woodworker and marquetarian.
If you want to see how marquetry could be used in the past, read Charlotta Ekholm's thesis on Johannes Fundberg, a cabinetmaker from Dalsland.
A little about our products for fretsawing: fitting the blade into the frame can be a problem.
The tensioning mechanism itself can drive you up the wall. The Knew Concepts saw solves the problem with a neat cam lever: first you quickly and easily fit the blade, then you flip up the cam and it is tensioned. On top of that, the saw weighs next to nothing, as the whole frame is laser-cut aluminium.
If you are a traditionalist, such a modern saw may feel wrong, and you may have a point, because it is a rather futuristic saw you are holding!
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