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This image is upsetting me. I mean, that just doesn't seem like a practical axis to get that job done. That guy is gonna start flopping around any minute now and then you're going to go find a vice or whatever to hold him. At that point just tilt him on the side and go lengthwise like a hot dog bun.
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!
Well, you go at an angle, obviously. Just lay him down on a board and do it at a 30 degree angle through the whole thing. I get that it's medieval times and we don't have bandsaws yet, but the principle is the same and we did know how to cut long things in half.
Either way you can't cut a board standing straight on its short end, let alone a floppy pleb. That's just physics.
I mean, arguably you could just cut in the other direction altogether and you're gonna get the job done just as well. I'm not sure why these guys need a guy split in half specifically in that direction, unlesss they are trying to get some very particular decorations going. Which I guess at that point in time is entirely possible.
That'll work, but adding a board as a platen is just the first step towards the saw mill proposal. It'll be easier and far better than just sitting him down and going at the poor bastard's skull, and for simplicity and speed that's the way. But if we have the time and resources, I say we do the saw mill thing because at the end of that we have both two halves of a guy and a functioning saw mill.
For pedantry's sake, my shitty jigsaw says I can cut a board just about any way it's sitting. Granted it's dumb, but it's possible. Sorry, the Wellakshuly devil got to me there.
And yeah, I gave up on trying to glean some meaning from client requests. They want a guy bisected and they've got the florins, they're gonna get two halves of a guy. The mistake I see there is that they've obviously tried to save money by hiring a cowboy outfit to do a professional job
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