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The Sven-Saw was born on a Boundary Waters portage in 1960, when Richard Swenson and his brother met a canoeist limping out toward the Ely hospital, his foot badly cut by an uncovered axe. Swenson, a Honeywell-trained engineer, decided there had to be a better way, and by 1961 he had patented it: a folding saw whose Swedish steel blade stows completely inside its own aluminum handle. At the 1962 Seattle World's Fair he sold his first six saws to REI's Jim Whittaker, who became the first American to summit Everest a year later, and the Sven-Saw has been a canoe country and backpacking staple ever since, with nearly a million sold.
The 21 inch model is the original: under 14 ounces, folding to a slim 23 inch package, and ripping through a 6 inch log in about a minute. The 15 inch version joined in the 1980s, designed by Swenson to fit his own deer-hunting pack, and remains the backpacker's pick at 11 ounces. Both run tempered Swedish steel blades, the only part not made in Minnesota, inside red anodized aluminum frames whose triangular geometry gives the most rigid shape a saw can take, with the bright handle doubling as insurance against leaving it in the leaves. Replacement blades keep a decades-old saw cutting like new, a natural companion to the bushcraft kit.
Swen Products remains family-owned and refreshingly unambitious in the best way, stating plainly that it does not intend to take over the world, just to make the best possible folding saw sustainably for as long as possible. Handles are machined by Minnesota shops founded by Swenson's old Honeywell colleagues, final assembly and shipping run through Opportunity Partners, a nonprofit providing employment to people with disabilities, and one percent of sales goes to outdoor-access nonprofits. For camp firewood, trail clearing, and every survival kit that respects its own weight limit, sixty-plus years of Boundary Waters portages are the only review that matters, and our full axes and saws collection carries its heirs and companions.
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