You young people try to do everything the easy way. Sometimes it's harder to stay true to tradition but you are forgetting that our ancestors have their reasons for the way they did things and staying true to these processes builds character and that flopping around and asking a boy servant to fetch a vice is part of what makes the experience special.

Well, it's probably a necessity. First, that saw blade doesn't look long enough to get a enough action to cut a man in half like that. Even if his legs were apart and you only measured from head to hole, there's still probably not a while lot of room to maneuver the saw which is gonna make this grim work even worse: it's also gonna be hard.

Second, it's gonna be harder because you have so much blade in constant contact with your material. I mean, you're not gonna cause any saw burns or nothing, but you're definitely gonna piss off your saw bois. This was a time before power tools and friction makes you sore.

Now I'll admit it's gonna be harder to keep a straight line all the way down, but we had already talked about the need for a clamp, so why not set up a fence alongside it? I mean, if we're optimizing we might as well go for quality, too.

Hell, might as well go all the way. Drag the whole setup out to the mill and (assuming this isn't already a saw mill) build a contraption that reciprocates the saw using the mill to power it. Now, not only do you have the means to easily cut a man in half, you then also have a saw mill.

I suppose, too, it could act as a deterrent for future... Um... What was the condemned is guilty of? Sex out of wedlock? Stealing bread?

Oh! We should put a conveyor at the start of it! I bet we could strap a whole sinners' family to it at once!

They just didn't draw the other stuff love whatever was holding him still.

Old art like this left a lot out just because it would clutter it up