Arron
17th June 2004, 10:15 AM
I was browsing a web site and came across a picture of a stair saw. This is one of those wonderful old tools that seems to be just about forgotten.
With my brain firmly out of gear, I decided a scaled down version would be just the thing for cutting dovetails and tenon shoulders so I made this one. When using a tenon saw I can usually follow a line OK, but I often cut the lines just a little too deep, or too shallow, or end up with a kind of hillock in the bottom of the cut. The fence saw gets over this problem as the bottom of the saw back acts as a fence controlling the depth of the cut.
In reality its use for dovetails proved to be somewhat limited because the blade of the saw is obscured by the body when you begin the cut. Also, I had overlooked the fact that the tails are cut on a slant, so the effectiveness of the fence is limited.
With my brain firmly out of gear, I decided a scaled down version would be just the thing for cutting dovetails and tenon shoulders so I made this one. When using a tenon saw I can usually follow a line OK, but I often cut the lines just a little too deep, or too shallow, or end up with a kind of hillock in the bottom of the cut. The fence saw gets over this problem as the bottom of the saw back acts as a fence controlling the depth of the cut.
In reality its use for dovetails proved to be somewhat limited because the blade of the saw is obscured by the body when you begin the cut. Also, I had overlooked the fact that the tails are cut on a slant, so the effectiveness of the fence is limited.