Thread: Saw file guide

Ok still experimenting with no set taper cut saws...

Changed the saw to 8TPI - tool a photo(after I used the blade)

teeth.jpg

The new teeth are aggressive but ultimately not as fast as a well sharpened crosscut saw. But far and away better than the original hard point teeth. No even in the same solar system really. The 12 TPI version was bit slow, but this version based on Disston latter 77 sas is fast enough.
Cuts remain "smooth"
Starts remain very easy with the higher TPI

Rips well. On a very limited test on 90mm deep pine, it looked like it was keeping up with my disston D8 - 5 TPi I think. Also sharp.

No sure why that RIP well. The crosscut saw was not in the race.

"superpowers"

Loosely tested this but with plate parallel and referenced to the surface it seems one "shave" very fine surface imperfections. Could be useful to clean up tenon shoulders as the saw does not cause breakout on the edges. May also be useful as a flush cutter. The Japanese flush cut saw I use does leave ""some scratches" particularly when is the saw is bent to get to the offending item. A no set panel saw saw should have the reach to flush cut without "bending"

The saws are exceptionally smooth cutting the end gain of softwoods. Examine the softwood end cut it took me moment to consider it looked "odd" cost it was so smooth. to check if was unusual,planed the softwood example on sharp plane - endgrain was pulled apart a little and the tears were visible on close inspection. The sawn cut was near perfect. Even the lines that are visible with hardwood where not visible


Modifying a Simonds Saw to no set
Restored the damaged teeth on the Simonds 101/ 1923-1926 make Beech handle (thanks Paul). Filed these to no set configuration.
Cuts smooth rips well but one problem - binding on the crosscuts.
Comments
Taper in the Simonds blade measures "similar" to the taper made to the original Carcass saw.
The binding was not present when the blade had parafin wax on the surface.

Theory - Rust did the saw no good at all. After cleaning the blade surface is still too bumpy to run without set. The carcass saw that was surface grinder feels "slicker'
Normally I would increase set to sort, but this project demands other ideas..

Next Idea - give the Simonds saw a light surface grind each face- good thing the etch is not visible. Grinding that off in the name of science would seem like sacrilege..

Will let you know if that sorts the binding when I get there..

Reading this thread made me curious about the ripping capabilities of my Disston 77 backsaw. Here it is.
20230610_163210.jpg

It has never occurred to me to even try to rip with it, figuring that the teeth were optimised slicing through the cross grain fibres rather than shovelling out material along the grain.

So i gave it a go, results below.

20230610_163256.jpg

The cut on the right is 10 strokes with the 77. The one on the left is 10 strokes with my go to carcase saw (12" Disston 4). Both have comparable tpi, although the rip filed saw is also 2 inches shorter, which has handicapped it a bit.

I must admit i stopped testing here as it was obvious to me that the 77 is not cut out to compete with a specially filed rip saw. But what about the surface quality of the cuts? Here is the results on the same piece of scrap. Left is the 77. Right is the rip saw.

20230610_163720.jpg

There you are, night and day. This is the real advantage of the 77. Although many have noted, the surface quality off the saw in a crosscut operation is rarely critical. It's also downright rough compared to a TCT blade on a table saw or even radial arm saw, so the utility of a taper ground crosscut backsaw is somewhat limited.

Cheers, Zac.

Zac

Is your No.77 filed rip or crosscut? There is still the same distinction even for the No-set saws.

Regards
Paul

Sorry Paul I should have mentioned. Mine is filed cross-cut (by Ian) with the 45 degree fleam that was being discussed above. Both saws in the test were approx 12 tpi.

Yes, the tpi of Zac's saw was kept to what it came to me with, which I assumed was the factory setting As I said, I didn't apply the full 45 degrees of fleam at first, it looked so strange I thought it must have been a mistake in the Disston instructions! So I eased it back, which was a big mistake, as I've recounted in the original thread on the saw.

Zac's demo of a properly-sharpened rip saw of equal tpi going head to head with his 77 is exactly what I would have expected, I would have been very surprised if the 77 had out-shone it (even if Iwas the sharpener ). I agree that the main role of these saws is to make very fine cuts cross-grain, and I've also said many times that good carbide cutoff blades can do an even better job! However, there are times when a potato-powered saw is a much better choice for the job in hand (increasingly so for me, as I move more & more into smaller stuff and just enjoy the quiet peace of using good hand tools! ).

But I heartily support any & all experimentation with saws & teeth such as Martin is engaged in. There is so much saw lore that has been lost during the 70 years or so since handsaw use went into steep decline, and 'mucking about' with things like tapered plate & tooth profiles & discussing it in forums is a great way to recover some of that lost knowledge, I reckon.

Cheers,
ian

_ first progress - surface grinding the faces did drop friction, but I ripped some timber the tracking was not straight. Rejointed the panel saw, tracking was straight - and then the binding problem when away. Not quite as free running as set a saw, but it stopped getting stuck.

One problem I have not resolve to how to effectively reform teeth at the 45 degree flem. The reduction in material with 45 degrees flemis significant and if a tooth's under height, one needs to careful to not "erase" a tooth. The may be a skill thing but the teeth are narrow , relatively speaking
I assume this part of the reason for the safe edge file Disston made.
May make am indexed blade at double spacing avoid relying on my skills, deepen the gullet on the 45 degree angle.


Hi Zac. Thankyou for trying ripping with your Diston 77.

I may not be filing exactly as Disston 77 requirements. What I am trying to do is zero rake and 45 degree Flem. The saw does rip rapidly when freshly sharpened. I have a hypothesus that the saws sharp edges are splitting the timber, but evidence to support the idea is scant. I did have I narrow strip rip split in line with saw during a cut.


I also tried ripping with the saw jointed on some teeth and the saw lost all of its ability to rip cut.

Will test again when I have correct the teeth on the panel saw.

Originally Posted by MartinCH

.... One problem I have not resolve to how to effectively reform teeth at the 45 degree flem. The reduction in material with 45 degrees flemis significant and if a tooth's under height, one needs to careful to not "erase" a tooth. The may be a skill thing but the teeth are narrow , relatively speaking
I assume this part of the reason for the safe edge file Disston made.....

Martin, I think the special file was for an earlier tooth pattern which had more acute gullet angles. For the later 60* included angle teeth they recommended standard 60* files, the same as for other saws.

Forty five degrees of fleam does produce very "odd" looking teeth, they look dumpy, with large round-bottomed gullets:
45 teeth.jpg

As you increase fleam angle, the corner of the file cuts a more flattened arc, creating the wide. shallow gullet you see above. Iirc, I ended up using a file that was at least one degree of 'slimness' less than I would normally use for that pitch (it might even have been two, it's been 7 years already since I was mucking about with fleam angles!). Anyway, using a slimmer file made the gullets look a little more 'normal'.

My conclusions after my own experimenting is that what makes the 45* fleam work (cross-cutting) is the full edge of the teeth acting like mini plane blades, 'planing' the sides of the cut very smooth. This reduces friction markedly compared with the rougher cut of set teeth & contributes more to free-running than the taper does. Try any tapered handsaw with un-set conventional teeth & see how far it goes without binding! Yet I found an untapered blade sharpened with 45* fleam will run very well without set (although I never tried it in other than well-seasoned wood).

So using this tooth profile for ripping seems counter-intuitive to me & I'm surprised you are getting them to cut at all, let alone well. Crosscut teeth are designed to cut at the leading edges and only the outer edges are cutting on conventional set teeth. The fibres between the tooth edges are cut at both ends & easily dislodged & pushed out of the cut. When you switch to ripping, the fibres are parallel to the saw blade and although the action of the 45* teeth should still produce smooth walls in the kerf, there is nothing to sever the fibres in the centre of the kerf, they have to be blugeoned off by the inner edges of the teeth. It will work for some woods but in most it should lead to inefficient & slow cutting, in theory!

There are definitely things to like about no-set saws. If you put in the time & become adept at sharpening them, it can be very handy to have one or two on hand. I just found it more difficult to keep the one I made in tip top shape (due in part, at least, to its 'softer' steel compared with a 77). These days I find I rarely have a need for super-smooth cuts off hand saws, so after a while I just reformed the teeth to a conventional crosscut profile with set to make life easier. It was a lot of fun fooling about with different tooth profiles, I think I learnt a bit more about saws in the process even if I eventually came round the circle & back to boring conventional teeth.....

Cheers,
Ian

I like the concept of tooth experimentation, although it is difficult to obtain truly objective information as has been pointed out to me. Firstly we need identical saws to be treated differently and that is not easy unless you happen to be a saw manufacturer with unlimited saw plates for testing.

However, I still believe some experimentation is worthwhile.

Here are some comments for the testers to ponder. From a Simonds 1923 publication:

Simonds saw sharpening 1923.png

That is tpi so the equivalent ppi is 6ppi for hardwood and 5ppi for softwood. No great revelations there.

This one is more controversial from a Simonds 1924 publication:

Rip and Mitre sharpening. Simonds 1924.jpg

The above applies to mitre saws (as used in a mitre block device) and rip saws and appeared in a 1924 Simonds publication. Effectively it will give what we call today "sloped" gullets, although I prefer to call them angled teeth. I would make the comment that this application is unusual on rip teeth being more commonly applied to crosscut teeth. I would be interested to see the effect.

Could be the next project in experimentation. I would add that the experts of yesterday did not always get things quite right in their desire to capture the market, which sometimes over shadowed practicality . Therefore, don't necessarily expect an earth-shattering result.



Regards
Paul

Ps: I think the recommended oil comes from a whale!

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

That is tpi so the equivalent ppi is 6ppi for hardwood and 5ppi for softwood. No great revelations there. ...

You must be on late shift Paul - it's t'other way round. PPI counts the number of tooth tips (points) that fall between the inch marks where TPI counts only the number of full teeth and so is one less than the PPI.

Whatever, I find it hard to accept that a difference of one tooth per inch would even be noticeable for most of us. I suppose 1 out of 6 is 16.6%, & maybe it would be noticed over a long cut in the softer wood 'cos the gullets can carry more sawdust and keep the teeth cutting efficiently??

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

This one is more controversial from a Simonds 1924 publication:

Rip and Mitre sharpening. Simonds 1924.jpg

If I'm understanding the instructions correctly, that's filing sloped gullets, so I assume that's what you mean by 'contrioversial'?

I wish they had given their reason(s) why they think it's the better way a bit more clearly - "blunter" teeth doesn't sound like a good recipe for better cutting does it? I'll have to ponder this one for a bit to see what I can make of it. I've always thought the sloped gullets were to carry more sawdust, and so that makes semse for a mitre saw 'cos the cuts tend to be longer...

Cheers,

Originally Posted by IanW

You must be on late shift Paul - it's t'other way round. PPI counts the number of tooth tips (points) that fall between the inch marks where TPI counts only the number of full teeth and so is one less than the PPI.

Whatever, I find it hard to accept that a difference of one tooth per inch would even be noticeable for most of us. I suppose 1 out of 6 is 16.6%, & maybe it would be noticed over a long cut in the softer wood 'cos the gullets can carry more sawdust and keep the teeth cutting efficiently??



If I'm understanding the instructions correctly, that's filing sloped gullets, so I assume that's what you mean by 'contrioversial'?

I wish they had given their reason(s) why they think it's the better way a bit more clearly - "blunter" teeth doesn't sound like a good recipe for better cutting does it? I'll have to ponder this one for a bit to see what I can make of it. I've always thought the sloped gullets were to carry more sawdust, and so that makes semse for a mitre saw 'cos the cuts tend to be longer...

Cheers,

Umm...

Ian

You are quite right and my mind jumped ahead of me there. My reasoning was that a 7tpi rip blade in a handsaw is a rare creature and I "converted" in my mind that it must be one digit less in each case. As you have said, it is one number more, so that makes a nonsense of their statement. While I am not saying there has never been an 8ppi rip handsaw, I have never seen one. Perhaps Simonds were on night shift when they wrote the piece as I don't think it stacks up.

My "controversial" reference was not only to sloped gullets, but sloped gullets on a rip configuration and "controversial" because not everybody subscribes to the worth of this style of filing. My own view is that any perceived benefit has little to do with the gullet as, with one side high and the other low, the carrying capacity of the sawdust is the same being averaged out. My own belief it is to do with the angle of the teeth, hence my labeling as "angled teeth."

Regards
Paul

'Sokay 'ol buddy - I'm having so many lapses lately I'm getting nervous that the marbles are starting to escape by the handful rather than one or two at a time! I shamefully confess to a perverse pleasure at picking up a mistake by someone who is usually pretty careful. You'll no doubt have an opportunity to return the favour soon......

WRT the sloped gullets controversy, there are so many shibboleths about various aspects of woodworking & the tools to do it with, which is hardly surprising since people have been at it for many thousands of years. Many do have a basis born of reason & careful observation, but others are just pronouncements that get repeated over & over until their antiquity alone lends them credence. Even 'truths' that seem patently obvious sometimes don't stand up to careful scrutiny, & I'm thinking here of the scientific world where I spent much of my life. As you pointed out somewhere above, designing proper trials of saws, free of observer bias, is nigh on impossible. But an individual can always learn something from comparing saws that can help them decide what works best for them. That's why I applaud any & all experimentation, I think there is nothing better than testing your ideas, even if you do end up, as I have often done, accepting that conventional wisdom had got it about right afterall.

Just 'mucking around" with tools will improve your understanding & ability to use them, so it's never wasted time, whatever your significant other tells you. At least that's my mantra....

Cheers,

Hi All - Getting better at this filing 45 degree flem caper. When filing the scope of teeth on both sides changes. This was occasional confusing me as to where I was.

Note - there two reasons why was bothering with this sort of filing
The smooth cut was indeed one but the second was accuracy. When using say bench hooks the set, interferes with accuracy.
It all very well relying on skill but there is a reason table saws and so on have fences.


As for rip cuts, this what I see when I cut with this saw. cut depth.jpg

The no set saw takes noticeably less forces to push and is considerably smoother.
Cannot comment on longevity at this time.
All saws are sharp...
I have read all the comments But it not what Is happening when I saw.
Note there is no particular reason why the rips are on slight angle, if I correct it will not make much difference, IMO.

RIP saw is a disston D8 26 inch long - No taper saw Simonds 10 1/2 22 inch.

and I learnt something dumb today..

I haven't used bench hooks much and panel saws only for crude cuts... When cutting on the bench with the panel saw I struggled tp plunge straight down. It was vexing as I am pretty accurate with carcass saws. I assume my hand is attuned to feeling the weight of back and correcting, rather than visual corrections.
The bench hook end block was relatively low and effectively hidden
It was annoying. I am quite sure craftsmen of the past would have no trouble so tried again. After several "bad" cuts start looking alternative strategy.

Ideas

Change the bench hook with a taller end - could do but some work to execute and yet another large thing in the chop
Put a square on the bench and use that as visual reference. Quick and worked but was clumsy. easy to knock over the square and sometime is would fall under the saw...

And then the winning idea
Look vertically down at the saw blade. Watch that the saw was vertical and aligned parallel with the side of the Bench hook - don't actually watch the cut or at least the bulk of the cut. That was perfect. Worked straight away. Even the sawing was better, reduction in misalignment jambs.
The longer panel type saw also has the length for quick cuts

And all that's needed is a line.

Whatever works is good!

About 35 years or so ago, I went through a phase of not being able to saw a straight line to save myself. It was after I'd moved away from the saw-doc who'd been sharpening my saws for years & I'd started doing it myself, though I didn't immediately make the connection as it took a few sharpenings on each saw for me to get them thoroughly messed up. That took a couple of years because I was getting very little, & very intermittent workshop time, so at first I put it down to lack of practice. In the end it got so bad I'd completely lost confidence in my saws & sawing ability & was using the tablesaw for any cut I could rather than saw by hand!

I tried a local saw sharpener, but when my favourite crosscut backsaw came back sharpened rip, I finally decided I had to get serious about learning to sharpen properly myself. It didn't happen overnight, but as my sharpening improved, so did my sawing ability, and there came a time when I was reaching for a hand saw to make precise cuts again.

I guess the moral of the story is that good sawing takes both decent saws & a bit of skill on the part of the operator - you can't have it all one way...

Cheers,