There are a lot of types of saws around, so let’s cover them.

Hand Saws:

• Wood saw — Buy the best one you can afford and treat it like gold, always making sure it’s clean (try turpentine) and put back in its cardboard sleeve when finished.  If you do a lot of finely-measured trim work, get one with more teeth.  If you’re primarily going to be cutting 2×4s in half, get fewer teeth.

• Keyhole saw — This is the one that comes down to a point.  Great for sheetrock.  Just grab the hammer, pound the saw into the wall and start sawing.

• Hacksaw — For cutting metal and making cuts more precise than a hand saw.  Big limitation is that it can’t make long cuts.  (It can if it’s near an edge, but cutting sideways is extremely imprecise.)

• Coping saw — For ultra-precise curves & cuts.

• Cable saw — The good ones are in the middle of a long length of rope with a small sandbag tied to one end.  Throw the sand bag over a limb, then use the cable saw part in the middle to saw it off.

Power Saws:

• Table saw — You’ll want one of these bad boys at some point.  There are two kinds; the ones with the big heavy bases and the ‘tabletop’ model that you can mount to a collapsible work table.  The latter works fine as long as you don’t try to put anything too big through it by yourself, like a 4×8 sheet of plywood.  It’s too ungainly for that, but with a few helping hands it’d be fine.

• Circular saw — Get some additional blades, like fine-tooth for precise cuts, wide-tooth for thick cuts, a special blade for plexiglas and the like, and a ‘throwaway’ blade when you’re going through something that you suspect might have nails or other blade-destroying objects embedded in it.

• Jig saw — For making fairly precise and/or curved cuts.  Buy a bunch of extra blades (they tend to snap fairly easily when stressed) and pick up at least one of the longest blades that fits the saw.

• Scroll saw — This is an electric coping saw, very handy at times.

• Miter saw — A small circular saw with a built-in miter box for precise angled cuts.

• Tile & Masonry — This is usually a table saw with a special blade.

• Bandsaw — You’ll eventually want to cut something metal with it, so spend the bucks and buy a metal blade so you won’t be tempted to use the wood blade when the time comes and destroy it.  (based on a true experience, heh)

There are also a handful of specialty saws out there, such as for cabinetry work.