Saw

A long time ago in China. it was told that craftsman – Lu Ban, accepted a project to build a grand palace, and thus needed a lot of wood as material. His students used axes to cut down trees from the forest, but it proved to be a slow and inefficient process.

It had slowed down the progress of the building. Although working hard from day to night, the wood supply was insufficient for the builders to meet the deadline of the project. Lu Ban was worried and he decided to monitor the tree cutting process in the mountains.

On his way to a mountain one day, he accidentally cut himself on a long grass. Lu Ban wondered how a soft, tiny grass was able to hurt him. He plucjed one of them and upon observing it, found that there were a lot of small sharp teeth along the leaf. Lu Ban realized that it was these small teeth that had hurt his hand.

Later, he saw a locust eating leaves with two sharp incisor teeth. It was able to finish a huge piece of leaf with ease. Lu Ban was curious to know how a tiny locust was able to eat so quickly using only two small incisor teeth. He caught a locust and observed its mouth structure in detail. He found that there were many small sharp teeth along the incisor teeth of the insect. This explained how the locusts were able to chew so fast on the leaves.

These two incidents had deeply inspired Lu Ban. After deep consideration, he created  a serrated cutting tool. He used a large bamboo to make a serrated bamboo stick.He obtained good results after trying it out on a small tree. The skin of the tree cracked after a few pulls using this bamboo stick. Groove lines appeared on the tree trunk after a few more pulls.

Ku Ban was happy. Hoever, the bamboo was soft and weak. Eventually, some of the serrated areas broke and became blunt. These cutting sticks needed to be replaced. This again slowed down the cutting progress and it became a waste to use so much bamboo. Clearly bamboo was not an ideal material to be used for creating cutting roots. They needed a stronger material to replace the bamboo.

Lu Ban thought of using iron as a replacement material for the serrated cutting tool. They immediately got a blacksmith to make a jagged iron piece. When it was done, they went back to the forest to try their new iron cutting tool. Lu Ban and his students pulled and pushed the cutting tool against the ree and to their surprise. It was easily cut down. Using this iron cutting tool proved to be fast and easy! According to Chinese legend, this was how the saw was invented.

Food for Thought :

Innovation requires excellent observation and imagination. A number of small things can create great inspiration. As in the text, the tiny grass and the locusts incisor teeth inspired Lu Ban’s creativity and hence the creation of a useful tool – the saw.

Short Stories on Discoveries, Inventions, Innovation & Creativity

AAET and UTAR, 2015

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