Sawhorse

In woodworking, a sawhorse, also called a saw-buck, trestle or buck, is a trestle structure used to support a board or plank while it is being sawed; a pair of sawhorses set apart from each other can support a plank between them to form a simple scaffold, and a shorter version is sometimes called a pony. The name comes from the frame's resemblance to a horse, and in boatmaking a curved cross-beam version was called a sea-horse, a term that entered the Northumbrian dialect through Norwegian settlers around the fourteenth century. The basic form has changed little for centuries: a 1556 illustration in Georgius Agricola's De Re Metallica shows a millwright using a pair of sawhorses to support the beams he was shaping, their tops apparently made from a halved log with legs mortised or dovetailed into place. Modern sawhorses are usually built from dimensional lumber, though wood, plastic and metal versions are all common today, and many fold flat for storage.