Thread: What hand saws to buy?

Originally Posted by IanW

Saw sharpening is certainly not easy, but if you want to work with sharp saws, I think it's a necessity. If you practice a bit on an old clunker, you will soon get to a level that gives you a useable tool in less than 10 minutes. A file costs way less than taking a single saw to a sharpening service, and will sharpen quite a few saws, depending on how much attention each needs. Apart from the cost & inconvenience of taking saws to sharpening services, there is the problem that you will be unlikely to get a decent job, particularly on crosscuts. The number of places left with anyone skilled at sharpening hand saws could be counted on one hand, I think. Cheers,

I think that it is coming back even if only pushed by the amateur woodworker.
I remember my FIL being appalled when he was working at a boatbuilders and the contractor came round to pick up the tradesmen's saws for sharpening. He advised them that no-one touched his saws. At least that was the polite version.
Cheers,
Jim

Originally Posted by jimbur

.....I think that it is coming back even if only pushed by the amateur woodworker....

Jim, I hope you are right that the art of saw sharpening is coming back into vogue. I haven't seen much evidence of it up this way, yet. TCT circular blades, no problem, but the young blokes where I got my teeth cut don't know there is a difference between crosscut & rip teeth on a handsaw....

Cheers,

Originally Posted by IanW

Jim, I hope you are right that the art of saw sharpening is coming back into vogue. I haven't seen much evidence of it up this way, yet. TCT circular blades, no problem, but the young blokes where I got my teeth cut don't know there is a difference between crosscut & rip teeth on a handsaw....

Cheers,

Blue-Devilled took a saw of mine into a bloke in Melbourne and had it cut to 8tpi rip for me. Did a good job too.
Cheers,
Jim

ps. should have said it started as a 6 point with some broken teeth. Now it's ideal for ripping small stuff.

My very first saw was a new Disston 6 pointer bought while I was still at school. I had sharpened it occasionally but when it came time to set it I broke teeth off everywhere and couldn't understand why. I knew the temper was too great for a coarse set but didn't know how to fix it. I put it in the fire full of hot coals to de-temper but of course buggered it right up. What I should have done was quickly wave a flame along the blade tips but I didn't know that at the time.

Originally Posted by dakotax3

...... What I should have done was quickly wave a flame along the blade tips but I didn't know that at the time.

dak - I guess you could temper teeth that way, but I would be surprised if you ended up with an even degree of hardness unless you really knew what you were about. What I have seen recommended is to put the blade in an oven at its highest setting for an hour. I haven't tried it myself, but it sounds plausible, since tempering is supposed to be a temperature plus time process. I did try leaving an over-hard saw in the sun all day, which was another recommendation I saw somewhere. That did nothing - the teeth broke off just as happily after as before.

I often wonder how such saws got to be like that? The ones I've struck were minted long before impulse hardening was invented, so I presume they either left the factory that way (QC bloke had a day off), or had some sort of accident afterwards....

Cheers,

Maybe you were just trying to set the saw to much. I knock a few teeth off River Lett saw of mine and then decided that I didn't need to set any more. It had enough set as it was. Still cuts well despite the "lack" of set. It has just enough.

Hmmmm, how did we get on to this? Saws to buy? Sharp ones!

Cheers,
Virg.

Great thread. I've been crawling along this journey for a few years now. I have the Veritas pair, and while I don't think they're pretty, they are very good tools, which work straight out of the box. With the tiny amount of shop time I get, they aren't close to needing sharpening yet.

For longer handsaws, I have a drawer full of 'vintage' saws but like T4me I don't want to spend time restoring tools, I want to spend time working wood. For the mean time, I've gone back to hard point disposable saws. In the longer term (when I've saved some more cash), I am planning to send a couple of the vintage saws to Travis Edwards, a forum member who will do some restoration on them. Then when they're set up, I'll learn to sharpen them. I took the same route with planes, and I'm much happier knowing that I'm starting with a well set up tool.

When I'm earning a fortune, I'll buy a Wenzloff or similar... Still need to learn to sharpen it though.

Originally Posted by rhancock

Great thread. I've been crawling along this journey for a few years now. I have the Veritas pair, and while I don't think they're pretty, they are very good tools, which work straight out of the box. With the tiny amount of shop time I get, they aren't close to needing sharpening yet.

For longer handsaws, I have a drawer full of 'vintage' saws but like T4me I don't want to spend time restoring tools, I want to spend time working wood. For the mean time, I've gone back to hard point disposable saws.

I gotta say, for $20-30, a hardware store saw is hard to beat. Long lasting (considering my eldest cuts as much concrete as wood when he's playing with it) and they do a pretty decent job. It's no problem to dress the ends if I'm trying to make something pretty. You guys are sposed to be talking me into something expensive, not out of it...

Tools,
we all know how things are with the SWTSMBO, we're all married to her sisters.

IanW,
I've seen saw doctors move a gas torch along the full length of a handsaw in a vice but allowing the flame to blow over the teeth only, not the blade. It doesn't take much and they turn blue pretty quick so you must keep moving; a quick process.

Originally Posted by dakotax3

Tools,
we all know how things are with the SWTSMBO, we're all married to her sisters.

Bwahahaha

Originally Posted by dakotax3

IanW,
I've seen saw doctors move a gas torch along the full length of a handsaw in a vice but allowing the flame to blow over the teeth only, not the blade. It doesn't take much and they turn blue pretty quick so you must keep moving; a quick process.

dak - I'm sure it could work; I guess I meant that it would be a dicey business in my hands. If you knew exactly what you were doing, it might be ok, but I think it would very difficult to control how much softening you get.

Virg, for the saw I was talking about, it was just plain too hard. I should have realised this, because I destroyed a new file reforming the teeth, which were in very rough shape when I acquired it. I usually go for a lighter set, too, so I don't think it was a case of expecting them to bend to my will too far....

I'm a bit of a Luddite, I confess, but I too keep a couple of hard-point saws for rough stuff. I carry one in my ute, and it has been very handy on more than one occasion, to reduce found wood to manageable sizes for thre trip home...

This discussion is interesting to me because I have often wondered about saw plate hardness -i.e. 'regular' saws, not hard-points. It's a subject that hasn't received the sort of attention that plane blades and chisels have drawn (which may be a good thing! ). What I can find on it, says that saw steel is hardened to 52-54 Rockwell, which is hard, but still able to be filed. There is definitely some variation in just how hard they come, however - you don't have to file too many saws to discover that. Most are pretty close to the median, but you do strike a few outliers that are noticeably softer or harder. Funny thing is, I have never equated that to dulling more quickly, or holding a sharpen longer. For starters, hardness & abrasion resistance are not necessarily the same thing, so that's one reason, but it is also quite likely because saws are used intermittently, and you don't keep track of how much work each has done, as easily as you do with a plane, for e.g. If you were to do a carefully controlled trial, the way people do with plane blades & chisels, you would undoubtedly pick up differences. However, my point here is that I don't perceive any differences in practice, so I conclude they are relatively minor with respect to daily use.

I do know that since learning to sharpen saws a bit better, I am much fussier, and don't put up with dull saws the way I used to - makes sawing a much more enjoyable (& predictable!) task.

Cheers,

Originally Posted by dakotax3

.........

A builder friend of mine allows for the purchase of one cheapish 8pointer on every job he does. He does not know how to sharpen these things nor can he be bothered. I can and used to regularly but not for years now. On the coarser saws, 8 point and upwards, it's not all that hard once you know the fundamentals. Nowdays, the information is at at your fingertips. People are giving away sawsets today because no-one can use them yet they are soooooo easy to use.

Go get yourself a flat file, a sawset, a 3 cornered file and learn to use them in that order. A little know how and you'll be off like a shot.

interesting thread to read




i can see where your builder friend is coming from but seems extravagant to charge on every job for a new saw! nowadays with power tools i cant see one being spent by the end of a job anyway..i do charge for tools as well but for me its more like X amount for me and X amount for my tools/machinery overall

i can see how it comes about they dont know how to sharpen their own saws, i dont think any of my old apprentices now qualified carpenters or cabinet makers every really bother to sharpen their own (and it follows their apprentices dont either).

no doubt that was my fault for not instilling into them to do it each day as was case for me, my old boss made us sharpen our saws first thing in the morning and if they needed it during the day, although we had to be quick about it, the boss would get pretty @#$% off if we wernt real quick about it , sharpening really didnt take more than a few minutes, most of the time was taken up making the wooden vise to hold it, which was nothing more than a few blocks of timber nailed or clamped together.

lol, the rotten bugger used to make me cut the whole house and roof out by hand whenever the whim took him (or if the machinery broke down which happened often enough back then), when i was young i would grumble about it and ask WHY, he would just say you need the practise and besides my boss made me do it! truth is when he first started they didnt use friggin power tools so naturally he had to do it by hand. ah, he was good bloke really and i think he used to make me do it by hand if he knew it was a slow week ahead..eventually though he succumbed to sending the saws out to be sharpened to save on time (he loved making a dollar, dont we all!) but i always resisted and sharpened them after hours because we had to pay for our own sharpening fees, on apprentice wages i wasnt too keen to give it over to Adelaide saw works..

even though i did teach my lads how to sharpen i often used to send theirs off to adelaide saw works to save time (times money) and pay for it myself..and so thats how it happens <shrugs>...nowadays they dont hand sharpen at all which is disappointing to me but then thats how things are now, the client pays for it in the end. theres a heap of other things my apprentices dont do now even though i taught them the correct way, they take shortcuts to save time or money or care less about it nowdays in many respects, which they agree with me on or i wouldn't say it

i agree as you say its easy to hand sharpen saws, even on a job it is worth it , it takes scarcely a few minutes to touch up a saw, even for a beginner its only a few minutes more, in a home workshop i really fail to see why not to hand sharpen, its all part of the 'woodworking' imo, do you send your plane blades or chisels out too ! it takes longer to take the saw somewhere to be sharpened than it does to sharpen several saws and on top of that you are without your saw, perhaps your favourite or best suited to the job for up to several days. As a boss on a job its different if your inclined to save every minute and not have a worker who gets paid pretty good money hovering over his saw like artisan getting his daily therapy as he brushes each tooth and drags on his cigarette. if your paying wages then you send the saws out but you also have to invest in multiple identical saws. multiple saws in home workshop is kinda silly from an economical viewpoint although of course some people end up collecting multiples, but if they are anything like me they have their favourites and its them i dont want to be without for the sake of a few minutes

cheers
chippy

It explains why secondhand saws are so cheap. I've ended up with multiple saws because I couldn't bear to see them going to landfill. My favourite disston panel saw cost me $3 at an op shop and the bloke said, "you do realise it needs sharpening?"
Cheers,
Jim