Create Wiki · Contraptions
Mechanical Saw
The Mechanical Saw has two jobs. Facing up, it cuts items: logs into planks, stone into bricks. Facing sideways, it fells trees in one go. Mounted on a contraption, it becomes a land-clearing machine that collects the wood by itself.
Quick facts
- Category
- Contraptions
- Stress
- 4 SU per RPM
- Cutting
- Saw facing up; cutting and stonecutter recipes
- Speed
- |RPM| ÷ 24 work units per tick (1 to 128): 2.5 s at 24 RPM for a 50-unit recipe
- Output
- Opposite to the direction of rotation, onto a belt or the ground
- Trees
- Saw facing sideways: break the base and the whole tree falls
- Contraption
- Fells the trees in its way, wood goes into on-board chests
- Version
- Create 6.0.8 · Minecraft 1.21.1
Crafting table recipe
→ 1 Mechanical Saw
Cutting items
Place the saw blade up and throw an item on it, or run it along a belt. A log becomes a stripped log, then planks; stone follows the stonecutter's recipes.
Output direction
The cut item always comes out opposite to the direction of rotation of the blade. Reverse the rotation and it leaves on the other side: that is what lets you chain two steps.
In line on a belt
Placed between two belts, the saw processes each item as it passes, no funnel needed. In the loop, stone goes in on one side and comes out cut on the other.
Picking the result
When an item has several possible cuts, like stone, put the wanted item in the saw's filter. With no filter, it cycles from one recipe to the next with every item.
Cutting speed
Every tick, the saw advances its work by |RPM| ÷ 24, at least 1 and at most 128. A 50-unit cut therefore takes 2.5 s up to 24 RPM, 0.6 s at 96 RPM. A stack of more than five items is processed at once, but takes longer.
Powering the saw
The shaft enters the back of a sideways saw, or the side of an upward-facing one. It costs 4 SU per RPM. For cutting, a medium speed is enough; for trees, the faster it spins, the sooner the trunk falls. A saw on a contraption needs no shaft at all.
Felling a tree
Facing sideways and powered, the saw breaks the block it faces, like a drill. If that block is a trunk, the whole tree comes down.
Cutting the base
To fell the entire tree, the saw has to cut the last block linking it to the ground. Big 2 × 2 trees fall too, in a shower of logs.
On a contraption
Clearing as it goes
Every tree it meets is felled, and the wood goes into the contraption's chests or barrels if there are any, otherwise it drops on the ground. If a trunk holds out, the contraption pauses while it is being cut.
Build ideas
Common mistakes
Nothing comes out? The cutting saw must face up; facing sideways, it breaks instead of cutting. The wrong result comes out? Set a filter. A tree still standing? The saw did not cut the lowest block of the trunk.
What the loops do not show
The blade is drawn without its spinning animation, and the sawdust particles are not shown. Items thrown on the saw follow the game's item physics; those on the belt follow its speed. The falling logs keep their real trajectory.
On our server
On Create France, a small sawmill early on quickly supplies all the planks and shafts you need.
Related pages
Sources for the numbers (Create 6.0.8 code)
- Recipe: crafting/kinetics/mechanical_saw.json
- Stress: AllBlocks.MECHANICAL_SAW (CStress.setImpact(4.0))
- Cutting: SawBlockEntity.start / tick (recipe duration, 50 by default, × items / 5; speed clamp(|RPM| / 24, 1, 128) per tick; recipeIndex without filter), CRecipes.allowStonecuttingOnSaw
- Recipes: recipe/cutting/*.json (e.g. andesite alloy → 6 shafts, 200)
- Trees: SawBlockEntity (BlockBreakingKineticBlockEntity), TreeCutter
- Contraption: SawMovementBehaviour, CKinetics.moveItemsToStorage
- Simulation: WIKI/contraption_sim.py (carried blocks, movement times, ropes and actors recomputed from Create's code)
- Scenes: MechanicalSawScenes.processing, treeCutting, contraption
Original texts and animations by Create France, rendered from the mod's Ponder scenes. Create is a mod by the Create Team, not affiliated with Create France.