Crosscut Saw

A crosscut saw, also called a thwart saw, is any saw built to cut wood across, rather than along, the grain, ranging from small fine-toothed saws for careful joinery to large two-person saws for felling and bucking logs, and made as both hand tools and power tools. Its teeth are ground and set in an alternating pattern so each tooth acts like a small knife slicing through the wood fibers rather than tearing along them the way a rip saw's teeth do, and some crosscut saws add raker teeth between the cutting teeth to clear the sawdust the cutting teeth loosen from the kerf. Many hand crosscut saws are also built with their wooden handle set at a right angle to the saw's spine, letting the saw itself double as a square for laying out right-angle cuts.