Thread: Figure skating blade

Sumu what can one say but bloody fantastic work

You could say a real nice Finish touch

Thanks a lot, mate .

Those leftover pieces are sometimes indispensable, just because in them, there can be found some peace of mind inside. Grab one and start whittling, you never know what there might be found. I usually have no plan nor blueprints when I work with these things. I do that stuff enough during the dayjob.

I have a couple of large boxes full of these pieces, just leftovers or results of experiments and so on. Sometimes when the idea strikes, I just glue and clamp some of them as a big chunk and try to make something. Sometimes it does not quite work, and I'll end up with improved chunk of leftover to be thrown back into those boxes .

Sometimes it is good. The backsaw pictured below is made of those test pieces, where I studied router jig, and how to avoid tearout, measurements and tried to cope with that general bitchiness what a router jig can offer. Anyway, these got thrown into the boxes, and some time ago I picked two of them back and made that backsaw handle.

It is my first self-made back saw, ment to be dovetail use. It is important saw, because I made a major mistake while doing it. The mistake is that I attached both the back brass and the saw leaf with tightening bolts. If everything is dead straight, nest for the back piece and the kerf cut, and if they are dead paraller with each other, and if the kerf cut is absolutely in the middle of the nest, and if you can be sure that handle wood is uniform even under tightened pressure, then it will work. But if some of those conditions is not fulfilled, there is a danger to get a propeller shaped saw leaf.

You see, tightening up the handle-back-sawleaf system when any of the cuts or fittings is too asymmetrical, it could just force the back brass to this direction, and saw leaf to that direction. The result is a propeller shaped object. There is some of that effect in this saw.

But, If you attach only the leaf and the handle with both bolts, there is no such problem. The back only supports the leaf and keeps it straight and acts as a weight. Pushing force is delivered only to the sawleaf, like there is in almost all handsaws.

The handle rough shaping was done with a coping saw, and then carved and scraped with that puukko seen in the picture. I used my old Pikatera tenon saw to cut the kerf. This time I had to use upright power drill to make those holes for saw bolts.

I did the carving at our kitchen table. My kids attended too with their small knives, whittled some soft pine before going to sleep, and I continued when I was happy with it. I cleaned and polished it afterwards, but i have no picture on that at the moment.

I had a nice glass of french "turpentine" on top of that .

sumu

I think those skates you made are very clever(and the saw)...... please excuse ....but do the kids actually skate on them....stupid question probably.

Reminds me of a song bits n pieces

nice handle sumu

Ray

[quote=apricotripper;590419
...... please excuse ....but do the kids actually skate on them....stupid question probably.
[/quote]


I'd say the only reasonable figure skate materials are hardened and tempered stainless steels (martensitic 4xx series), coated at first with nickel strike and the chromed (or gold plated or such).

For stainless steel types, if you wish, see: http://www.msm.cam.ac.uk/phase-trans...stainless.html

And no, there is no such thing as a stupid question, at least in my case there isn't, mate. Ask anything on these things I put here, what ever it might be.

sumu

Ta Sumo

Love the saw handle sumu, great work.

What a great idea the skate blades are. Have a greenie.

Did you make the blade & back for the saw? I made my blade from 0.3mm spring steel, and filed the teeth by hand using a hacksaw blade as a template. The brass back was heated, quenched and bent a bit at a time. Would like to hear more about your d/t saw - it looks pretty good. I agree about only fixing the blade t the handle, not the back.

Hello guys .

AlexS,

The saw leaf is 0,6mm thick, and it is taken from an tool set where was one crappy plastic handle and 6 different blades for it, price was about $10 in aussie money. 4 of them were non-tip hardened, which meant that the entire leaf was hardened, up to decent 52-56 Rc according to our hardness tester. I cutted away that previous slot, it did not fit there with the new handle.

The back is 25mm x 6mm brass bar, standard stock, supposingly no special alloying there.

I made the back by actually ploughing the groove with a small but rigid turret mill. I attached a 0.6 mm thick circular saw -type of metals machining bit in the spindle.

I tried by milling first, but it showed out to be too tricky, the saw bit had too much tendency to travel off the line, kinda bent away. There were no good machining parameters to be found, not for speed, not for chip size. Saw bit appeared to be just too worn out, kinda asymmetrically. By the way, although those saw bits were new, they have tendency to travel with wrong machining parameters because they have very minor set in their teeth, if any.

I took the saw blade off, honed a couple of teeth with a diamond file (like with a rip saw) and placed it back to the spindle. I locked the spindle, and just by operating the crossfeed table, I took nice chips to make a groove. Completed groove depth is 3,5 mm, I'd say it took 12 steadyspeed passes to make it. I was careful. There may occur all kinds of resonances during the shaping work, so careful at first.

That method resembles those shapers used for keyway groove cutting, like planing the groove, like in some pictures here: http://www.jamesriser.com/Sheldon/Shaper.html
It has to be very rigid framed, shaping is quite tough work.

The handsaw leaf is attached in the groove as follows: I straightened the leaf back with a single cut mill file, like preparing a scraper. Then I made the burrs on both sides. Finally I pushed the saw leaf into the groove. It is attached there quite well, kinda anchored in place.

sumu

Thanks for that description Sumu. Looks like a good result.

Hi Sumu,

Nice work. I would love to know how you found this woodworking bulletin board.

You might be interested to know that there are quite a lot of Finnish people in Australia. My Mother's father was born in Finland. My Mother's maiden name is Markkanen.

Where I come from in Queensland there were so many Fins that there is a Finland Road in the area.

Unfortunately the language was never passed down (which was common amongst immigrants in Australia) but I hope to visit Finland one day. Hopefully we will be able to communicate somehow

Hello ,

Mark,

Originally Posted by markharrison

Hi Sumu,
I would love to know how you found this woodworking bulletin board.

Well, Actually I found the website of HNT Gordon planes first, then checked out around the internet if there were any reviews, and found some Dr. Cohen's articles here. Since then it was like a cascading reaction, kinda floodgates opened. I lurked for a while and I think I have read about one fourth of the stories here so that I can say I understood them . The most important threads to me have been these handplaning topics, but these WIPs coverin this and that are top of the line stuff, too.

As a surname, "Markkanen" is not the most common, but widely recognized by everyone here. You may visit the Finnish Government Population Register Centre. This is their search page in english. If You wish, choose surname search for Markkanen:
https://192.49.222.187/Nimipalvelu/default.asp?L=3

Nowadays most of the Finns up to 40-50 years old usually can speak decent english.
It is kinda must thing, there is still only a bit over 5 million finnish-speaking, and almost everyone in one country. It would be quite difficult to get along without knowing anything about the rest of the world.

I hope to visit there someday, things are just now too busy to consider anything more intensive. One day, one day...

Kippis,

sumu

Thanks for the link. I didn't realise we were that rare. These numbers would not include my Mother (who was born in the 1940's) or her family (my Grandfather was born in Finland but prior to the Great War of 1914-1918) so I suspect that there are a few more around than this would show.