There are quite a few typos in the pit saw article that detract from the great content!.
Ta, I must not be lazy with the spell chucker
The one thing I expected to find (the origin of the phrase "top dog" wasn't there though
(a top dog is the guy on top - the "bottom dog" got wet feet and a face full of sawdust - hence the desire to be "top dog").Red
Ah, the origin of "top dog" is much quoted as you say above. But the earliest references to the phrase "top dog" are associated with dog fighting, so I played safe. (see below)
I think that the articles will be updated and added to, these were an attempt to see if a could write a bit.
Quote from an etemology book re the sawyer/top dog phrase....
The problem with it as an explanation is that no one has found evidence to back it up. There are printed references to saw-pits and to this form of work going back to the early 15th century in England and the 19th century in America. None of these makes any mention of 'top dog' or 'under dog'. It is hardly likely that everyone, including Shakespeare, who referred to saw-pits in The Merry Wives of Windsor, would have ignored these colourful phrases had they been in use at the time. For example, this extract from the 1876 Yale Review describes saw-pits in some detail makes no mention of 'top dog':
"The saw-pit was a rude structure about seven feet high, made of strong posts set in the ground wide enough apart to hold one or two pieces of heavy pine timber, and the sawyers, one above and one beneath, sawed out one hundred feet per day."
In fact, there are no known references to 'top dog' or 'under dog' in the context of wood sawing until well after the practise was superseded by mechanical sawing.
What citations there are to these terms that date from the days that the pits were still in use all refer to fights of some sort, particularly dog fights.