Sharpening and setting your own saws

[chook]

I am writing this as an encouragement to anybody who has ever thought about looking after the sharpness and saw set on their saws instead of sending them away to have them sharpened.

I am not clumsy with my hands but I am not naturally talented either. Any good work I have made has come after much trial and error and lots of mistakes and practice. SO I was hesitant to begin the sharpening of my own saws. They cost me a bit of cash to buy and I figured I could easily stuff them up. Anyway I was wrong.

I have now sharpened both cross cut and rip saws and today I set the teeth on a cross cut carcass saw. I have learned that when you sharpen a saw you reduce the set a bit and my carcass saw (a 14 TPI Veritas thing) was just a bit grabby in the kerf. It worked! The saw works just great.

A blunt saw is a pain to use. I suspect that even an imperfectly sharpened saw is better than a blunt one. SO my advice to anybody who is thinking about sending their saw away is this. Get a saw file and a saw set (the markets have them. I have two saw sets and I don't think I paid any more than $15 for either of them.). And have a go. What is the worst that can happen? If the saw is not working properly anyway, chances are you will make it work better. And if worse come to worse you can always take it to a saw doctor later. There are plenty of good videos on the net to get you started.

I am not sure, however that I would, at my present rudimentary skill level, want to try my hand on anything finer than 14TPI.

[rob streeper]

Good for you! No magic to sharpening saws and if you know enough to properly use the saw you have the necessary dexterity to sharpen the saw. Files, a saw vise, a set and a jointer are all you need.

[chook]

Good for you! No magic to sharpening saws and if you know enough to properly use the saw you have the necessary dexterity to sharpen the saw. Files, a saw vise, a set and a jointer are all you need.

One of the many advantages of the Forum is that I read of other men who do stuff and I figure that if they can I might be a chance. Ian W. has been a great help. It is very satisfying to take a blunt badly set saw and turn it into a useful tool.

[burraboy]

Good for you! No magic to sharpening saws and if you know enough to properly use the saw you have the necessary dexterity to sharpen the saw. Files, a saw vise, a set and a jointer are all you need.

A good pair of magnifying specs helps too!

[planemaker]

Well done chook.

regards Stewie;

[IanW]

A good pair of magnifying specs helps too!

You're not just a-woofin there, burra. When folks ask me how I sharpen small saws, I tell them I use my reading specs and a head-band magnifier. That's so I can see the saw, I have to do the rest by braille! The larger the teeth, the easier they are to deal with, not just because they are easier to see, but there is more gullet to register the file in, so as long as you don't lean on one side more than the other, you should have less trouble maintaining the existing rake angle. With small teeth, it's all too easy to inadvertently alter rake angles.

Good stuff, Chook - glad to see early saw sharpeners encouraging others to have a go. As you say, it's not that difficult if the existing teeth are just dull, and you take your time. The danger period is when you begin to think you are getting competent, and start going a bit quickly (DAMHIKT ). Rip profiles are not much of a challenge, but crosscuts, where you are dealing with two angles (or three, if you want sloped gullets with your fleam), require more than a little care. Even after sharpening many saws, I occasionally make a bit of a botch of it if I don't pay attention on a crosscut saw with smaller teeth. But you are absolutely right in that even a not-so-well-sharpened saw is usually far better than a dull saw (fortunately!)

When sharpening crosscuts, I would advise beginners to stick with the existing fleam angles & not bother with sloping the gullets 'til you gain some confidence. They don't add much extra to the process, once you get the idea, but in the beginning, it's just one more thing to have to worry about keeping constant when you are struggling to be consistent.

My other bit of advise is to maybe sharpen your saws in a batch, when possible, rather than one here & one there. If you are like me, you'll find the second & third saws always go a bit quicker & end up a bit neater than the first saw of the day.....

Cheers,

[Luke Maddux]

My Uncle always gets into me about having a "Never List".

"Never going to drive a station wagon" was on the list...

IMG_1233.jpg

Fail.

And how could I forget "Never going to buy expensive chisels"

image1 (6).jpg

Those are modified Lie Nielsens... Double fail.

Never going to sharpen my own saws was well entrenched on the Never List, even after i began to see the light (dark?) and begin using hand tools. But when the time came, I decided to man up and do it. The first, and actually only, saw I've sharpened was a ~130yr old Disston D8 with an 11tpi crosscut profile. The first time I did it it was pretty average, I admit, but it made it cut better than it was after sitting around for a century not being used, that's for sure. In the end my saw file was way too large and I probably took most of the fleam off of it by, basically, not understanding what fleam was.

The other day I fell into about a ton (literally) of Red Gum timber, some of which was about 400mm wide. I do my sawing to length by hand, and I'm working on a pretty serious furniture project, so I wanted it to perform to its best capability.

I found that on what is now my third round of sharpening this saw I'm beginning to feel really good about it. The height, rake, and fleam of each tooth are really beginning to match well, and it cuts extremely well and stays straight. I hear those qualities are important in a saw...

I still haven't tackled the sharpening of joinery saws, but it's coming soon. I have a LOT of dovetails to cut in this Red Gum for the project on which I'm currently working.

So, in the end, the "Never List" grows shorter and my Uncle was right... again. Having said that, I'm still confident I will "Never" own a pair of cowboy boots. You can quote me on that one.

Cheers,
Luke

[IanW]

......I still haven't tackled the sharpening of joinery saws, but it's coming soon. I have a LOT of dovetails to cut in this Red Gum for the project on which I'm currently working.....

Yairs, Luke, I think you might have to touch up those saws once or twice on this job, though you'll be surprised how long they'll keep on cutting, even in R.G., which fortunately for you, is only medium hard (on the Eucalypt scale, that is!). Dullness tends to sneak up on us (in every sense ) and sometimes it takes me a while to realise a saw is underperforming badly & needs attention. After a touch-up, the difference is so stark, I ask myself how I could've let it go so long. I find this more with saws than any other tool. Is it just my poor judgement or is it the aforesaid gradual dulling that allows it to sneak up on me for so long

Hmmm, sharpening saws in cowboy boots - please get a picture for us......

Cheers,

[Purfler]

i think saw sharpening is really important, I only wish I was good at it. I seem to have a quite large number of saws, especially brass backed. I tend t pay very little for them, fix them up and give them away. The idea of using a tool that is more than a century old (my favourite is close to 150) that works better than anything new is really appealing. It raises the finger to the throw away society that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. I guess I'm getting old and cynical, but the traditional skills are more important to me each day than the stuff that passes as progress. I now have two saw vices, a bunch of triangular files and more saws than you could poke a stick at and I could not be happier

More power to the sharpeners!

Tim

[Hoodie]

I find that once the hard yards are done on an old saw by jointing, setting and sharpening properly, a touch up takes only a few minutes to restore the nice feel. You don't have to remove much material and all the profiles are already there to follow for a quick and easy job.
cheers

[ManiakMatt]

G’day Everyone,

I have a very old saw of my Grandfather’s. He was a carpenter and born in Scotland a while back.

It it rusty and the teeth are well rounded. Where do I start?

Is it possible to get a list of tools to get set up for sharpening my own tools, and is there a guide section in the forum?

I think this is my first post, so I will also introduce myself.

I am in Brisbane and just starting to realise the enjoyment of taking the time to enjoy the journey of making. I also love to make sure I am not adding to the disposable culture.

Cheers,
Matt

[ManiakMatt]

Found the guide!

Hand Saw Sharpening - A Primer - The Wood Works Book & Tool Co.

[Bushmiller]

Welcome to the Forum Matt

I am not familiar with that link but briefly perused it. The first thing I noticed was the files, but it is not specific enough. Each length of file comes in four configurations, regular taper, slim taper, extra slim taper and Double extra slim taper. Normally in each length you will want double extra slim taper (DEST). If you use a 4" (100mm) reg taper file on a 12ppi saw, for example, you will end up with tiny teeth! As this is a fundamental issue I might regard the link a little suspiciously.

You may be interested to watch this video:

Sharpening Western Saws - Bing video

It is by a one time member of the Forum here and is easy to watch, although as it covers just about everything from types of saw to restoration and sharpening, it is long.

Regards
Paul

[IanW]

Welcome, Matt. As you're about to discover, you've asked a big question!. There is a "sharpening" section on the Forum, but I think it's all about plane blades & chisels rather than saws. It's probably best avoided when starting out - the plethora of opinions can be a little confusing, at times.

Someone asked a similar question in a recent post & I pointed them to this "saw filing treatise" as an alternative to Paul's video. Not to denigrate the video in any way, but being an old phart, I prefer text that I can digest slowly & re-read the bits that don't seem clear on the first pass. However, under-forties don't seem to be as keen on the written word.

What the 'treatise' does have is a convenient little table indicating file sizes appropriate to the teeth-per-inch (tpi) of the saws. What Paul said about normally needing the slimmest file in the size is sort of true, but not entirely. The "slim" part of the designation refers to the file itself, not the degree of taper as many newcomers (including myself) think. I think it's better to understand why the "slimness" matters, so bear with me a bit & I'll try to give a brief explanation:

All regular triangular files have the same cross-section, which is an equilateral triangle, but the corners are slightly rounded. As the file becomes "slimmer" in any given length, the corners become sharper and the teeth finer. Why that matters is because if you use a file with a large diameter corner on very small teeth, you'll get a large gullet (the gap between teeth) and funny little pointy teeth and the larger teeth of the file will leave a coarser surface. But the rounding of the corners & tpi changes with each degree of "slimness" in the same file length, so as you go from say a 4 inch file to a 5 inch, there is an overlap in the cross-section profiles & tpi. You can use, say, a DEST 5 inch file where you used a ST 4 inch & the gulltes will roughly be the same. It's all a bit confusing at the beginning, so best to stick with a table that lays it out clearly until you become truly familiar with files (which come in a greater variety than any other tool made by man!).

Anyway, you're in good company here, most of us are definitely not throw-away saw people. So have at your grandpa's saw. Saw sharpening isn't as easy as falling off a log, but it can certainly be done well enough for purpose by anyone prepared to put in the effort to learn. As you'll discover, sawing with a well-sharpened old style saw beats the heck out of sawing with one of those horrible plastic-handled throwaways by a country mile!

Cheers,

[Sam]

Ian and Paul thanks for your input. Can I be pain and maybe OT slightly and ask where we’re at with sourcing files ? Any current recommendations ?