Thread: Knew concept fret saw

Amen to that, Chris - there ain't nothing quite like practice to improve your hand skills! Just mastering that cumbersome-looking bow-saw Frank is wielding to make the initial tail cuts would take me a lifetime! Interestingly, I noticed he over-cut several of them on the back side, tch! tch! But judging from what I have seen on old furniture, a lot of British cabinetmakers deliberately over-cut half-lap D/Ts to make it easier (& doubtless much quicker) to remove the waste.

Paul, I first saw Frank's twisted saw in an early FWW article. I thought it looked like a brilliant idea, so I tried it and ended up making nothing but a mess so quickly abandoned that idea. It takes a while to get that smooth action of dropping the 'vertical' end of the saw blade down the original kerf, then pushing at just the right point for the horizontal part of the blade to engage smoothly and follow the base line. He makes it look an absolute doddle.

With fretsaws, that many of you favour, the very narrow blade allows relatively easy turning for the 'horizontal' cut, but the penalty is those fine teeth cut painfully slowly. A coping saw blade is a bit less maneuverable, but cuts a bit quicker thanks to the coarser teeth. That was my go-to tool for the job for a very long time. Then I started using an 'ultra-thin' D/T saw, and coping saw blades are too thick to pass easily down the kerf left by a 15 thou blade. So I switched to a 10" bowsaw, and made a blade for it from the same 15 thou plate: 10 inch saw.jpg

The blade is about 3.5mm wide, which is about as narrow as I can make it with my relatively crude setup, so it won't turn as sharply as a coping saw blade, but at 15tpi, it cuts fast. So my method is to cut out the waste in two cuts. The first cut starts about 2/3rds down the right side and swings to the left corner: DT2.jpg

Then cut 2 comes back across to the right corner: DT3.jpg

I don't attempt to cut to the scribe line, I keep the cuts at least a mm above it. In 'real' cabinet woods like Qld Maple etc., I can usually remove the remaining waste very cleanly with a couple of light taps of the chisel from each side. In really hard woods, I take more care & try to cut as close to the line as I can, to avoid the chisel's being forced back into the 'good' wood when struck. I doubt I am even half as quick as Frank, but any quicker for me & the mistake rate just goes up....

Cheers,