Thread: Trying hand-cut dovetails - dovetail saw western vs japanese?

Originally Posted by woodPixel

So what does a miserable pleb like me do?

Im feeling a bit sad now. Ive three new Veritas saws on the way with files... and everything I read here says if I touch it, I'm doomed.

Woe is me!

I'm sorry if I gave the impression that sharpening your saws is impossible! Rip profile is pretty easy to master. Forming teeth from scratch and adding the fleam takes quite a bit longer. Touching up fleamed teeth (literally, one light, even stroke of the file is usually all that's necessary), on a new saw after you've used it a bit & you think the gloss has gone off, is not that hard. You have the 'factory' angles to follow; just get/make a decent saw vise, get yourself comfortable in good light, take your time, & you'll be tickled pink at the result.

I was talking about starting from scratch, or fixing up a saw that someone has made a mess of - that's probably better left 'til you've got a little bit of experience under your belt. You should get a lot of use out of your new saws before they need any attention, and typically, I find I can get at least two, sometimes three light sharpens before re-setting is required (you'll know when you've reached that point because it will start to bind). For some folks, that means several years of use before things get too taxing.

If your courage really fails you, there are a few places left that can sharpen a saw, and anyway, as I've said before, even a not-so-well-sharpened saw still cuts better than a dull one!

Cheers,

Originally Posted by IanW

But I'll stick my neck out & state that anyone who says there's not enough difference between crosscut & rip to make it worthwhile has probably never experienced a properly-sharpened crosscut saw, &/or has only ever sawn soft, dry, wood! This is certainly true for handsaws, where we're talking about 6-10 tpi beasts and some serious sawing, not just lopping off a softwood stud or an occasional tenon shoulder. When it comes to finer teeth (15tpi & over), you have a case. If your sharpening skills are a bit shaky, you are almost certainly better off sticking with crosscut profile on small teeth. You will get a bit more breakout than with an appropriate crosscut, but most of the time it won't matter (but they should still be kept sharp). As Luke once said, 'sharp trumps all', & I think that should be every woodworker's mantra.

Cheers,

Hi Ian,

He wasn't saying no difference between rip and crosscut he said no noticeable difference in crosscut performance between crosscut and his hybrid cut which has less rake than dedicated crosscut but more than rip, and about half the bevel/fleam than crosscut. Mark says that this results in faster and more accurate crosscuts due to less strokes and less strokes also = less wear. He believes that the quality of end-grain cut is just as good as dedicated crosscut.

I'm just clarifying what he said, I have no idea personally.

Also my understanding is Mark personally sharpens all the saws he sells and services so I'm pretty confident he isn't lacking experience or skills; particularly based on all the positive feedback I've read.

Originally Posted by DomAU

...... he said no noticeable difference in crosscut performance between crosscut and his hybrid cut which has less rake than dedicated crosscut but more than rip, and about half the bevel/fleam than crosscut. Mark says that this results in faster and more accurate crosscuts due to less strokes and less strokes also = less wear. He believes that the quality of end-grain cut is just as good as dedicated crosscut......

Hi Dom, - I wasn't going for you, just giving an opinion, which may have been more emphatic than I would normally give.

In my early days of saw-making I experimented a lot with 'hybrid' saw teeth, and was at first very enthusiastic about them, but as I got better at sharpening crosscut teeth, I came to the conclusion that they were really noticeably better than my 'hybrids'. Note that word 'noticeable' - so much depends on subjective appraisal! However, I'll try to justify my claim with a bit of analysis, & what I reckon is that the most important bit of a crosscut tooth is the 'sharpness' of the leading edge of the tooth, & particularly that part which has set, or sticks out past the plate thickness, if you will. This part does most of the work, severing fibres, so I think it's important it be both sharp & consistent, for smooth crosscutting. But the 'sharper' it is (i.e., the shallower the cutting bevel), the more delicate the edge & the more rapidly it will dull (as for any cutting edge), so you strike a compromise that gives decent slicing & respectable dulling rate. Experience has shown that somewhere between 15 & 20 degrees of fleam is a pretty good angle for our hardwoods. Rake is relatively unimportant on a crosscut tooth, you have to vary it quite a lot before you can detect much difference in smoothness or speed of cutting. This is quite different from rip teeth - a few degrees change in rake is usually quite noticeable, particularly with larger teeth ripping in harder woods, and more-so with sharp teeth than dull ones (they bite more). Any high teeth also create more 'shudder' on ripsaws, particularly as you bring the saw down perpendicular to the grain direction, as when finishing a tenon cheek, for e.g.

Anyway, after a while, I decided that 'hybrid' filing was not the answer I thought it was, and I was better off with one or the other, each doing the job it does best. This is just my opinion, and I'm more than happy for there to be lots of others....

Cheers,

No worries Ian, I just wanted to clarify what I said as I thought that maybe it was misinterpreted due to poor wording from me and I didn't want to miss-represent what Mark from Bad Axe told me.

Guess sharpening is a fairly subjective matter all around with no universal opinions or answers.

My Lie Nielsens are dedicated rip and cross cut so it seems I may not be missing anything vs hybrid-cut. Or maybe I am. Either way I will eventually try for myself and I look forward to the journey; particularly learning to sharpen myself so I can find my own sweet-spot eventually through trial and error.

Originally Posted by DomAU

....My Lie Nielsens are dedicated rip and cross cut so it seems I may not be missing anything vs hybrid-cut. Or maybe I am...

Well, I don't think you'll feel left short, I'm sure your new saws will do their stuff very nicely for you. Think of it this way, if you'd had all hybrid saws you'd be on a steeper learning curve from the beginning, but when the time comes to sharpen your LNs, you've got some rip teeth to get some practice on. That gives you a chance to gain some confidence before you tackle those fleamed teeth.

I'm sure you'll be ok, most saw sharpeners are just ordinary mortals like us......

Cheers,

So i finally got my hands on some western saws after coming back from a holiday in the UK.

20170612_165415.jpg

Got some time today to play with them and to be honest i'm impressed. I didn't expect it to be so easy to transition from the Japanese saws but these Lie Nielsens are great. The dovetail saw in particular is very nice to use. I've seen youtube videos of people struggling to start a cut or having to drag the saw backwards a few strokes to get started but the LN is super smooth and easy. Just place on the line and start cutting with full strokes.

I did find the large 0.032" plate 11tpi 16" tenon saw can be a bit tricky/sticky for me on narrow boards (less than 15mm) but assume that's to be expected. I need to concentrate on keeping weight off the blade in this case. No issues with thicker timber.

I was also surprised to find that the dovetail saw leaves almost as smooth a cut as my Japanese dozuki, despite my lack of experience. Small samples below with japanese on far left and LN the two on right.

20170612_164910.jpg

I think i'm going to be very happy using both western and japanese saws going forward but now certainly gravitate towards western a little more. Cut one quick dovetail with just as good results as Japanese so happy there too.

Originally Posted by DomAU

I did find the large 0.032" plate 11tpi 16" tenon saw can be a bit tricky/sticky for me on narrow boards .......

This thickness measurement intrigued me, Dom, so I put the calipers on my dozuki (from Carbatec) and found the plate thickness to be 0.20 mm or 0.00787 inches. I have not transposed the decimal point!


Cheers

Graeme

Originally Posted by GraemeCook

This thickness measurement intrigued me, Dom, so I put the calipers on my dozuki (from Carbatec) and found the plate thickness to be 0.20 mm or 0.00787 inches. I have not transposed the decimal point!


Cheers

Graeme

Yep. The LN dovetail is 0.015" so only twice the thickness of the Japanese saw. Once tooth set is factored in the difference in cut width is not too dramatic.

Originally Posted by GraemeCook

This thickness measurement intrigued me, Dom, so I put the calipers on my dozuki (from Carbatec) and found the plate thickness to be 0.20 mm or 0.00787 inches. I have not transposed the decimal point! ....

Graeme, are you sure of the accuracy of your calipers? A thickness of ~8 thou seems incredibly thin to me - just a tad more than half of the 15 thou thickness that I consider the practical minimum for a 'push' saw (& a narrow one at that!). I did a quick check with Mr. Google and found dozukis advertised at .3mm (~12 thou), which is gobsmackingly thin, but still 50% thicker than your saw. Assuming your calipers are correct, that's one mighty thin saw blade you have!

Cheers,

Originally Posted by IanW

Graeme, are you sure of the accuracy of your calipers? A thickness of ~8 thou seems incredibly thin to me - just a tad more than half of the 15 thou thickness that I consider the practical minimum for a 'push' saw (& a narrow one at that!). I did a quick check with Mr. Google and found dozukis advertised at .3mm (~12 thou), which is gobsmackingly thin, but still 50% thicker than your saw. Assuming your calipers are correct, that's one mighty thin saw blade you have!

Cheers,

I couldn't resist checking myself so just ran out and measured the LN dovetail and my Gyokucho / Razorsaw dozuki's with my Mitutoyo micrometer. LN 0.01520" Dozuki's 0.01225". I thought the Dozukis would be thinner than that tbh.

Originally Posted by DomAU

So i finally got my hands on some western saws after coming back from a holiday in the UK.

20170612_165415.jpg

Got some time today to play with them and to be honest i'm impressed. I didn't expect it to be so easy to transition from the Japanese saws but these Lie Nielsens are great. The dovetail saw in particular is very nice to use.

I did find the large 0.032" plate 11tpi 16" tenon saw can be a bit tricky/sticky for me on narrow boards (less than 15mm) but assume that's to be expected. I need to concentrate on keeping weight off the blade in this case. No issues with thicker timber.

I would suggest that a 16" tenon saw and a 15 mm (~5/8") board are a poor match.

One reason saws vary in length and tooth pitch is so that you can match the saw to the task. IMO, 16" is too long for 15 mm thick stuff, the dovetail is a better match.
But, cutting in the other direction -- as though you were cutting a tenon cheek -- the 16" should be ideal

Originally Posted by DomAU

I couldn't resist checking myself so just ran out and measured the LN dovetail and my Gyokucho / Razorsaw dozuki's with my Mitutoyo micrometer. LN 0.01520" Dozuki's 0.01225". I thought the Dozukis would be thinner than that tbh.

Dom, would you really want your saws any thinner? They'd be getting pretty delicate even at 12 thou, imo.

Probably shouldn't distract this thread with a discussion on saw plate thickness, but it's a subject I've pondered quite a bit since I started taking saws & saw-making seriously. I began with a vague notion that 'thin is good', based partly on my earliest experience with a really nice saw, owned & maintained by an old cabinetmaker who would have served his time in the very early 1930s. I'd never before used a small saw that cut so straight & easily - you really could "halve the line" with it! But I'd also uncritically swallowed the line that thin saws cut more quickly 'because you are removing less wood'. The latter is fact, the first is fiction. They don't cut any quicker, they cut with less effort, which may give the illusion of cutting more quickly........

And as Ian said, you should try to match the saw to the job as far as possible. An old rule of thumb is to have a minimum of 6 teeth in the cut. But like all rules of thumb, it's subject to lots of variables. With a large, heavy saw, and softish wood, you may find there's still too much pressure on individual teeth, & a lighter saw of the same pitch would be easier to manage. I use a 16" 10tpi saw like your big 'un to saw tenon cheeks in hard woods 70-100 mm wide, but would use a lighter saw with 12tpi for softwood of similar widths. It's not that big a deal, it just makes the job a bit more comfortable & controllable, and I probably have one or two more backsaws than the average bloke...

I think you made a pretty good choice with what you have there. While it's nice to have the perfect saw for a particular task, the ones you've got will cover just about any sawing task in general cabinet work well enough. In my earlier years, I only had a couple of saws, so they had to do all sorts of jobs I wouldn't expect of them nowdays. However, they did the job & did it well enough, which tells me something - I have more saws than I really need.....

Cheers,

Originally Posted by IanW

Dom, would you really want your saws any thinner? They'd be getting pretty delicate even at 12 thou, imo.

Cheers,

No, you're quite right, 0.012" is thin enough. I just assumed that the japanese "pull" saw would be proportionally a lot thinner than the LN dovetail "push" saw. 0.015" vs 0.012" doesn't seem like that big a difference given the substantially higher buckling forces on the western saw. Also, visually, the japanese saw appeared proportionally thinner to my eyes than the measurements show.

I do note that some other brands of japanese saw offer dozuki's with 0.2mm thick blades, or approx .0079" as per Graeme's measurements. I don't see any real issue with going too thin for a japanese saw given the lack of any real buckling forces (unless you ham-fist it sideways on the return stroke!).

Originally Posted by DomAU

..... I don't see any real issue with going too thin for a japanese saw given the lack of any real buckling forces (unless you ham-fist it sideways on the return stroke!).

That, or try to sharpen it! Really thin plate is a nuisance, it's like trying to cut too thin a piece of wood with a low tpi saw. Files have realatively coarse teeth for the thickness of a saw tooth, and tend to catch & skate on thin-plate teeth much more than on thicker plate. But then no-one sharpens Japanese saws, so I suppose it doesn't matter.......

Cheers,