Thread: Saw topping

We seem to be a bit short on handsaw gurus at the moment on this forum. In the absence of any real gurus I'll throw in a less than guru status comment to kick discussion along.

I watched old saw doctors at work when I was a child. They would look along the saws that came in and decide if they needed topping. Some saws from some owners rarely needed it, especially the ones that were regularly returned for sharpening, while others would get a comment along the lines of..."old Tom has been having a go at this one himself... gunna have to give it a good crew cut first."

A good saw doctor can control their file strokes so that tooth height and geometry is maintained. They just sight down the teeth after filing to double check that there are no proud teeth that need an extra stroke. A proud tooth is a problem as it deprives a number of adjacent teeth from wood contact. The occasional short tooth is not an issue... they will come back into service with subsequent sharpenings. I don't claim to be a saw doctor's boot lace, but that is what I also do. I've never topped one of my own saws or any that I regularly sharpen for others if they keep the file away from it.

Tooth setting is a separate but related matter. I won't get into whether to sharpen before or after tooth setting other than to say I hammer and anvil set the teeth on my big one and two man crosscut saws... and setting that way after sharpening would mangle the sharp crisp cutting edges on the teeth. Tooth patterns on larger crosscut saws can be very different to workshop crosscut bench saws where the teeth pattern are usually a simple alternating left/right.

The tooth pattern on Japanese pull saws are another whole kettle of fish. Fortunately any of their saw blades that we can afford are throw away and not worth the trouble to try too resharpened. Their handforged saws blades that are meant to be resharpened are so expensive (like A$350) that you can probably afford to have them returned to Japan for re-sharpening by a professional metate. I've yet to decide if I'll try to resharpened my Mitsukawa myself. I've had a go with a feather file on a few J disposable blades as much for practice as any anticipation of a reusable blade. But, unlike standard bandsaw blades, the steel is tempered so hard you risk snapping the teeth off and are a real challenge to get the multifaceted teeth profile right on such a thin plate.