What type of saw did Leonardo da Vinci design to use water power for cutting wood?

Leonardo da Vinci designed a hydraulic saw powered by moving water to cut wood.

His notebooks contain detailed studies of waterwheels, cranks, cams, and reciprocating machinery. In the hydraulic-saw concept, flowing water turns a wheel, and the wheel’s rotation is converted through mechanical linkages into the back-and-forth motion of a saw blade. The arrangement could automate work that otherwise required repeated human effort.

The design belongs to Leonardo’s broader investigations of industrial machines. He studied how water could supply continuous power for mills, pumps, hammers, and cutting equipment. The saw’s significance lies in its transmission system: a rotary waterwheel drives a reciprocating blade through a crank and linkage.

It should not be confused with a modern circular saw, whose toothed disk rotates continuously. Leonardo’s hydraulic saw used water as its power source and a reciprocating cutting action. His drawings document the concept, but they do not prove that every proposed version was built and operated commercially.