An electric hand saw is important for cutting trees and woods. In woodworking and carpentry, hand saws, also known as "panel saws", are used to cut pieces of wood into different shapes. This is usually done in order to join the pieces together and carve a wooden object. They usually operate by having a series of sharp points of some substance that is harder than the wood being cut. The hand saw is a bit like a tenon saw, but with one flat, sharp edge.

Handsaws have been around for thousands of years. Egyptian hieroglyphics exist depicting ancient woodworkers sawing boards into pieces. Ancient bow saws have been found in Japan. The cut patterns on ancient boards may be observed sometimes to bear the unique cutting marks left by saw blades, particularly if the wood was not 'smoothed up' by some method. As for the preservation of handsaws, twenty-four saws from eighteenth-century England are known to survive. 

Materials for saw blades have varied over the ages. There were probably bronze saws in the time before steel-making technology became extensively known and industrialized within the past thousand years or so.