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

Are you cutting all your dovetails freehand or using a magnetic guide for assistance. I have just embarked on the dovetail journey and thinking are the virtues of the guide true, or are you better off learning them freehand from the start.
Which chisels are you using for your chopping out of waste?
From the talk here do I take it that Lee Valley ship to Australia and for reasonable shipping costs?
By the way, your work looks first class. I don't know how you get through it so quickly.

Originally Posted by Treecycle

From the talk here do I take it that Lee Valley ship to Australia and for reasonable shipping costs?

Good Morning Treecycle

I often buy LV from Axminster in UK; their specials can be very special. In January I bought a LV twin screw vise for £135 (about $220) versus $420 in Oz.

But you have to research every item; occasionally Oz prices are best, sometimes they are exhorbitant.

And post 9/11 many US companies no longer like to export due to the amount of bureaucratic paperwork imposed on them. A terrorist might reek havoc with a tennon saw!


Cheers

Graeme

Originally Posted by Treecycle

Are you cutting all your dovetails freehand or using a magnetic guide for assistance. I have just embarked on the dovetail journey and thinking are the virtues of the guide true, or are you better off learning them freehand from the start.
Which chisels are you using for your chopping out of waste?
From the talk here do I take it that Lee Valley ship to Australia and for reasonable shipping costs?
By the way, your work looks first class. I don't know how you get through it so quickly.

Hi mate,

I am cutting freehand and I certainly recommend this over using a guide. The whole attraction for me using hand-tools is the feeling that you are in control and really working the wood; unconstrained by jigs etc. I love the freedom of quickly marking out a joint, grabbing a saw and going for it; no setting up of jigs, routers, etc. I feel that even a guide would take away from this feeling for me.

The other thing is that if you are a little off on the angle of the tails, it doesn't really matter as you use the tail to mark out the pins; so you'll still get a nice fit. More important is getting the cut straight and square across the width of the timber.

I generally use veritas pmv11 chisels but also have some Japanese Koyamaichi chisels as well. I find the edge breaks down on the Koyamaichi's a little sooner than the Veritas however. I also use a fret-saw to cut the majority of the waste from the pins and tails before chiseling the rest. For half-blind dovetails I am just using a chisel for the lot, although I was thinking yesterday that I could still use the fret saw to get rid of some of the waste first and save the chisel edge a little.

Thanks for the compliment but I'm sure that my work is not exactly world-class; but hopefully by the time I've cut another 90 joints I'll be closer to the mark Practise, practise, practise right.

From the pictures DomAU I thought they looked VERY well made indeed.

I've been waiting for a response from Bad Axe Tools regarding a couple of follow-up questions I had, but am growing impatient as I haven't had a response since last Tuesday.

I was probably going to order their Stiletto Dovetail saw, 0.018" plate, 15ppi, rip cut, 12" plate length, 1 5/8 to 1 3/4 tapered plate. I was also going to pick up the Bayonet Carcase saw - 14" plate, 14ppi cross-cut, 2" to 2 1/8" plate depth, 14" plate length, 0.018" thick.

I had a good look at the Gramercy saws, however I'm not sure that I'd like the really high hang angle of the handle.

So I'm leaning back towards Lie Nielson and am considering the tapered dovetail saw - 0.015" plate, 10" length, 1 3/8 to 1 5/8" plate depth, 15ppi as well as a Lie Nielsen Carcase saw - either the tapered thin plate 0.015" plate, 14" length 14ppi cross cut, or the 0.020 standard plate, 14" length, 14ppi cross cut.

So the Lie Nielsen saws have thinner plates that the Bad Axe's I was looking at (0.015 vs 0.018") but otherwise very similar. The only downsides are milled vs folded spine (important?), hammer set teeth on the Bad Axe (not sure but assume not on the Lie Nielsen?) and customization on the Bad Axe. On the plus side, I'd save about $540- by buying the Lie Nielsen's vs the Bad Axe and from what I have read the difference in actual performance may be negligible / virtually identical?

Not enough dovetails pics on a dovetail thread.
Needed to cut some more last night so decided to cut a slightly longer one and make a small bench hook out of it (still to do the top stop part - no dovetails there so who cares though )

20170417_101918.jpg
My process;
Mark out the tails with a marking gauge and a little 1/8 dovetail square. I just eyeball the spacing and size of the pins at the moment as I'm not doing any show pieces just practising. Cut the tails.
20170416_164131.jpg
Cut the majority of the waste with fret saw.

20170416_164546.jpg
Chisel out the waste in a couple of steps from both sidesides working to the baseline.
20170416_170418.jpg
Mark the pins onto the pin board using the tail board and a thin cohen marking knife. Incidentally, I leave the tails as they are straight off the saw- I don't think there is any way to adjust these in any case as there simply isn't room for a chisel etc?

Again cut the waste out roughly with a fret saw. Pins a bit rough this time - rushing.
20170416_205216.jpg
Chisel to the baseline in stages from both sides, pare pins down if/as required and hammer joint together.
20170416_212306.jpg

11/100 done! Need to try some more interesting variations I think.

Dom

I have not compared .015" against .018" thick saw plate but I would not think the difference would be noticeable.

Gramercy have detailed drawings available on line, so if you did buy their Dovetail saw ( or Kit ) it should not be difficult to make another handle with a different hang angle to suit.
I would also suggest you buy a Dovetail saw of 20tpi for finer work ( I have the Wenzlof ), and buy a carcass saw at 15 tpi 9 Rip ) for larger dovetails and other joinery.

Regards

Regards

Dom
With all this practice, and plans for more saws, Perhaps a Saw Till should be next

Regards

Originally Posted by DomAU

...... The only downsides are
1) milled vs folded spine (important?),
2) hammer set teeth on the Bad Axe (not sure but assume not on the Lie Nielsen?)
3)and customization on the Bad Axe. .....

....On the plus side, I'd save about $540- by buying the Lie Nielsen's vs the Bad Axe and from what I have read the difference in actual performance may be negligible / virtually identical?

Well, I'll stick my neck out: Of the three "downsides" I'd say #1 is irrelevant. A milled back should be at least as good a fit as a folded one. I suspect it's cheaper to fold backs if you've got the gear, while slitting can easily go pear-shaped, as anyone who has done a few can attest! If the back is on firmly, and the saw plate straight, it's doing its job.

2) There was a thread on this a year or two back. To my mind, no-one came up with a convincing reason why one method is, or should be, superior to the other. Again, I suspect that a highly skilled person can hammer-set a saw quicker than anyone with pliers-type set can do the job, so it's the method of choice where a large number of saws need to be set. In any case, within a relatively short time of purchasing your hammer-set saw, you are going to have to re-set it. I'd lay strong odds that an amateur with a decent pliers-type set will do a far better job, far quicker, than same said amateur trying to hammer-set!

3) Well, getting a handle that fits your hand like a glove would be an up-side, imo. The rest of the customisation is purely cosmetic.

I think you are highly likely to be pretty happy with either makers products. While they are all undoubtedly good saws, the law of diminishing returns applies rather savagely to the boutique tools business. Given the unavoidable hands-on nature of saw-making & the cost of labour, every little bit of extra attention is going to add $$$s to a saw.

On your last thought, let me jut say that I'm often reminded, when I read the glowing reports of the boutique saws, of an experiment made at the BBC many years ago. Everyone knows that a Stradivarius violin is the absolute acme - the best violins ever made & lusted after by every wannabe concert violinist, but only the best get to play the best, particularly as they change hands rarely, and then for stratospheric prices! Well, this BBC bloke must've been a bit of a skeptic, so he got hold of a Strad and a decent-quality violin by a modern maker, & a fiddler of reasonable talent to play them. He then got an audience of folks well-versed in the violin, which included two very well-known names (Isaac Stern was one, can't remember who the other was, atm, but it was someone of almost equal stature in the fiddling world). So the chap with the violins stood behind a curtain & played a succession of pieces using the two in random order. All the audience had to do was note which violin was playing, the Strad or the ring-in. Everybody, including the two eminent violinists, were unequal to the task, they picked the 'right' one just as often as the 'wrong' one. The BBC bloke reckons neither of the two 'eminents' would speak to him again.....

I do like listening to Stern playing his Strad, and I sincerely believe that he sincerely believed that he played better with it than he would have with any other. I also believe that if you believe a $400 saw cuts better than a $50 saw after they've been sharpened by the same (competent) person, then it must be so......

Cheers,

Thanks Ian,

The last point you make is, in my opinion, reasonably important, in that if you believe you have the best tool available then you can be sure that any issues are your fault not the tool. It also increases confidence and lets face it, it's also nice owning and using nice tools (even if it's only a cosmetic thing). I do woodworking because I enjoy the process of making and that includes the enjoyment of using quality tools.

Having said that, I think that for me right now I am missing out on several of the main benefits of buying a bad-axe saw in any case. I don't really know what I want with regard to plate thickness, tooth pitch, set and filing so having the ability to chose doesn't help me. I also feel that part of the "value" of bad-axe is getting Mark to sharpen your saw and re-sharpen it for $15- when required; this doesn't work for Australian customers as it would cost many times this to ship the saws back and forth, not to mention time away from a part of your self haha. My hand size is also "average" according to the sizing guide on the bad-axe site, so custom sizing probably won't help much either.

So I think the Lie Nielsen, being a quality tool, albeit not boutique perhaps, is probably a good way for me to begin. Then when I have some time-up and have a better idea of what I want I can order a custom saw made exactly the way I want.

The money saved at this point could get me a pair of HNT Gordon side-rebbate planes with dovetail fence to cut sliding carcass dovetail joints which I plan to use quite a lot.

If I don't get a response from Mark by tomorrow then this is definitely the way I'll go. If I get a response then I'll probably rip my hair out a little longer with indecision . I would also feel really guilty asking for advice etc and then not going through with an order.

Thanks again everyone.

Originally Posted by Basilg

Dom

I have not compared .015" against .018" thick saw plate but I would not think the difference would be noticeable.

Gramercy have detailed drawings available on line, so if you did buy their Dovetail saw ( or Kit ) it should not be difficult to make another handle with a different hang angle to suit.
I would also suggest you buy a Dovetail saw of 20tpi for finer work ( I have the Wenzlof ), and buy a carcass saw at 15 tpi 9 Rip ) for larger dovetails and other joinery.

Regards

Regards

Hi Basil,

The Lie Nielsen dovetail saw is 0.015 plate as is the carcass saw. I was a little worried about the thin plate kinking or flexing particularly in a longer cross cut for the carcass saw which is 2" tall. Maybe I'd be better off with the non-tapered version of the carcass which is 0.020" ?

When you say a 20tpi for finer work do you mean thinner work? Or to get a better quality / smoother cut?

Hi Dom

I have several dovetail saws - some from Veritas, LN, Gramercy, Wenzloff, and IT, one from our own IanW (great saw!), plus a few I have made or vintage I have restored. No one needs that many, but I enjoy joinery, and it is just a hobby. All get used, and have been used, some for two nearly decades.

So which is best? Well, they all cut dovetails as well as each other. The reason, to put it bluntly, is that the saw is only as good as the sawyer. In addition, after years of using them, they have all been touched up by myself, and so they are no longer original.

Which has the best ergonomics? Difficult to decide from memory as I sit and type this. The Gramercy is different and special. It is the closest to a Japanese saw in delicacy. The LN came from the factory with very aggressive teeth (zero rake), and it took some while before I felt comfortable with this saw. Now it is a favourite. Ian's saw is very similar to the LN, but a little scaled down. Great saw. The Veritas is possibly the easiest dovetail saw to use as the teeth have 14 degrees of rake. Very smooth.

Note, these saws are all 14 or 15 tpi (The Gramercy is 19 tpi). The handles and the hang of the Veritas and LN are essentially identical. You cannot go wrong with these. The Gramercy is different, and I would say that this saw is really for the more experienced, who has developed a very light hand.

Folded vs slotted? I cannot tell the difference.

Bottom line: all the saws will cut sweet dovetails. Eventually you will need to file the teeth. Choose the saw that makes you smile.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Thanks for the wrap, Derek! That was one of my early saws when I was playing with 'hybrid' teeth and not very sure of what rake angles should be for given tasks, so it is possibly a bit more aggressive than if I were to tooth it now. You can easily make it what you like, of course!

I totally agree with what I take to be your point - just about any half-decent saw can do a good job if it's properly set & sharpened for the job. You can even do a good job with one of those cheap plastic-handled, hard-tooth thingies that some call backsaws, with a bit of practice (but I wouldn't want that to be too widely known! ). However, there's nothing like having a tool that you find both aesthetically & ergonomically pleasing. I know some of it is all in my mind, but anything that helps to do better work is ok in my view! So I'd be the last one to denigrate anyone for lusting after a tool that they think is beautiful and suited to their needs.

I have one or two saws, too, but over time, I've gravitated to a few that I reach for, for a given task, they just do the job so well. But if the 'favourite' is dull or temporarily out of reach, I'll just use the next-best. It won't feel as 'natural', perhaps, or cause a teeny bit more break-out, or whatever, but 99.9% of the time, that won't matter a hoot to the final job. My point is that most of us become accustomed to the tools we use regularly, and for us, they will do a 'better' job than any other - like Stern & his Strad.

When I first got into saw-making seriously, and began to wrestle with its mysteries, I made the arrogant mistake of thinking that the features I found 'good' about handles, tooth pitches, rake angles, etc., were universal truths. Fortunately, I was soon disabused when I had other folks with plenty of sawing experience try out some of my 'wonder saws'. I'm still more than happy to discourse endlessly on the merits of tooth pitches & rake angles in relation to rip/crosscut, matching saw length & job size, spine weights, blade gauges or hang-angles of grips, but it's infinitely better to have the person with me, and a few saws to demonstrate my points with. It doesn't matter whether they agree with anything I say or not, the important thing to me is they can go away with a few objective criteria to think about in the future when contemplating buying or modifying a saw. But I'm no longer in the least surprised when someone tells me they much prefer the very opposite of what I find 'good'!

So for these and other reasons, I say to folks like DomAu, unless you're a little ways down the track using backsaws, & have tried a few saws and have a pretty clear idea of what suits, I wouldn't advise splashing out on an expensive set of saws straight off. A reviewer may have found they are the bees' knees, but you may well find yourself stuck with a far less attractive part of the insect's anatomy! If you're starting out with 'western' style backsaws, a softly-softly approach would be the go. If you're a raw beginner, get your hands on an oldie, & if possible, have it properly sharpened by someone who actually knows the difference between a crosscut & a rip saw (quite a few saw sharpening places don't seem to!) and give it a good workout, to find out what it does best. Before long, you will start to form some much clearer ideas about what a saw needs to be to suit you & what you mostly want it to do. There's only one way to gain experience, after all...

Cheers,

Since this thread has kind of begun to get into the "Is it worth the extra money" realm, I'm going to throw something in...

It keeps getting reiterated over and over that the saw is only as good as the person using it and sharpening it. That's just all that it comes down to. If you want something that's made by Bad Axe because you just want a Bad Axe (Wenzloff, Blackburn, Lie Nielsen) saw, then get the saw, but it's not fundamentally better than an antique store score as long as the antique isn't damaged, the plate is straight, etc. etc... There's not any one thing that is going to tip it in an obvious direction from a performance stance. Once you knock the rust off and sharpen it, a 100yr old Disston saw is the exact same thing that the Bad Axe is going to be after you sharpen it the first time.

So really it's not worth questioning the fundamentals of the saw. It's just about what you want.

When I first started buying planes, I bought Lee Valley and Lie Nielsen bench planes. I ultimately sold them (all of them) to get Stanleys. They all do the same thing. The difference was that, in addition to costing a fraction of a fraction of the price, the Stanleys gave me the opportunity, or, rather, they forced me, to learn to understand the functionality of the tool while I was restoring its condition and troubleshooting all of the problems I encountered in doing so. So I, personally, think I got more for less out of my Stanley planes than I otherwise would have with premium branded planes, because you're just buying a perfect item and not one with which you have to build a relationship and "court" into working for you.

I can't imagine saws are much different.

Cheers,
Luke