Thread: Anyone built a roubo frame saw?

Originally Posted by IanW

Second hand bandsaw blade? That's likely to be very dull, and need sharpening, which won't be possible with a file if the teeth are impulse hardened (very few are not, these days). You could do it with a 'lectric chainsaw sharpener, I suppose, but haven't tried it, so can't speak from experience on that point....

If its not too blunt then a light touch up with a Dremel on the back of teeth will work. Derek Cohen has a thread on how to do this. Better still would be to take a whisker off the front of the tooth and while do this reduce the tooth "hook" to make it less aggressive.

While I continue to have access to a bandsaw blade sharpening I should have a go at sharpening a section of blade to suit hand sawing operation. The main problem is that it is a right PITA to set up the sharpener so once it's working I am reluctant to change the settings.

Originally Posted by IanW

Um, it seems unlikely to me that you'd ever use a frame saw for crosscutting - you can only saw what will fit within the frame. I s'pose you could crosscut a very short board, but these are essentially ripping/re-sawing tools...

Cheers,

Must agree with you and Delbs, as you have used the terminology. But ....

Must plead that I am the victim of that old woodworking lurgy where different tools have the same name and the same tool has different names... Confusing!

The terminology that I am most familiar with is:

• continental frame saw - wooden handle and blade on the edge - often called a bow saw,
• bow saw - metal tube handle, often Sandvik brand - also called a bush saw,
• gang saw - multiple blades in a wooden frame - the "roubo frame saw" would then be a single bladed version,
• I have only ever seen one version like your "Roubo frame saw" - a demonstration at a country show about 40 years ago. It was a massive two-man saw with frame made from about 60mm round bush timber and a blade about 100mm wide and 2m long. From memory it was called a "pit rip saw" or something similar - a long time ago.

Something like this, but without the handle extension:

Pit Saw.jpg


Here is a picture of three of my frame saws - with 200, 400 and 600mm blades:

Frame Saw.JPG

Graeme

I grew up with a bow saw being one of those tubular metal devices and I had to be enlightened that this was not the sole extent of the uses. (For the moment your pic of three frame saws is not loading up.)

If Delbs or anybody else is interested, I have a number of old bandsaw blades that I have salvaged from the waste skip at work. They come from our metal cutting bandsaw. The teeth are for metal so would be no good even if the blade was not blunt.

P1060730 (Medium).JPGP1060731 (Medium).JPGP1060732 (Medium).JPG

However....... They could be re-toothed if the old induction hardened teeth were cut off first. A little while back I cut off a small section to see how feasible this might be and to make sure the steel could be cut and filed

P1060733 (Medium).JPG

That side of things was fairly easy. The blades are probably a little over 3.6m long (bent loosely in half they stood about 1.8m high. If anybody would like to try a blade I can cut the band and roll it more tightly so it will fit in a small satchel. Cost would be $10 anywhere in Oz. No guarantees other than it is what I say it is. Blade thickness I measured at .042", which is right in line with a vintage 28" rip hand saw. Blade width is probably a little less than ideal. I forgot to measure it, but I think from memory it was 25mm. The teeth are small but in cutting them off a couple of mm will be lost.

I "rescued" these blades with exactly this project in mind, but time has beaten me and it hasn't happened.

Regards
Paul

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

...(For the moment your pic of three frame saws is not loading up.)...

Thanks, Paul. Don't know what happened so I re-enterred the photo and it seems to be displaying.


Graeme

Graeme, while your saws do have a sort of 'frame', current usage of the term seems to be confined to the saw in the top pic of your post, which has a symmetrical 'frame'. Your saws are more commonly referred to as "bowsaws" in my reading. It can lead to a bit of confusion, because you could use a bowsaw for crosscutting boards within the limits of your frame depth & blade length, but a saw like that in your top picture would not be at all practical for crosscutting. Which is why I queried why one would ever want to put a crosscut blade in a frame saw.

Another term which you see, particularly in older British publications is "turning saw", i.e., a bowsaw with a narrow blade for cutting tight circles.

Not having been exposed to bowsaws for everyday use, I find them awkward and cannot cut a decent straight line with one, but in my Tage Frid books, there are many pictures of the old chap blithely whacking out dovetails or cross-cutting boards with a bowsaw that looks like it could cut firewood in its spare time! However, I have long had a small turning saw (250mm blade), which gets used for something or other almost every day and is definitely a tool I can't live without. This is about the 4th or 5th iteration: reassembled.jpg

My first couple had hardware made out of bolts, and worked ok, but when I wanted use the blade twisted in the frame, it didn't like to stay put. Slipping an o-ring from a tap stem between handle & frame arm was a quick-fix for that, but a more elegant solution became available when I got a metal lathe. Turning a very slight taper on the shaft of the handle where it fits in he arm allows it to lock firmly when the blade is tensioned but still be moved as necessary. This pic is of the fittings for a smaller saw for coping-saw blades & the little brass peg on the opposite end makes it easier to align the blade: Handle fitted.jpg

And for a final bit of silliness, I bored out the compression arm so I can store spare blades in there: Beam hole.jpg

That proved to be a bit of a challenge. I used a long twist-bit from each end, carefully aimed by eye, which still left a good section in the middle, so I made a crude boring bar from some brass rod to finish he hole. So my saw now carries a couple of spare blades (well-wrapped in anti-rust paper): drills.jpg

Cheers,

I had to smile when I saw the development of this thread as I have been down the nomenclature path before.

There was once upon a time a big demand for this "frame" style of saw in a crosscut configuration. Just so I can't be deemed to speaking out of the wrong orifice I have put together a few pix from old catalogues (then I have to return to the urgent work of the day).

This is from a Simonds catalogue :

Simonds wood saws 1912.jpg

I believe these saw were primarily intended for cross cutting firewood and you can see in the last pix below the "bucks" for this purpose. Ian did make the point that they are restricted in their depth of cut. This version was intended to address that:

Simonds wood saw deep cut.jpg

The cheaper versions only had a single brace: In this 1912 catalogue Simonds offered seven different models.

Simonds wood saw single brace.jpg

Needless to say, almost, Disston offered fifteen models in the early 1920s

Disston wood saws 1918.jpg

Atkins too had their share (about nine models I think):

Atkins wood saws 1918.jpg

When trolling (or is it trawling, or surfing? ) through the archives if often come up with other stuff and here is something that flies in the face of much that we have said or surmised and new names: A web saw and a cabinet saw from Disston .

Disston wood cabinet and web saw frames..jpg

The wood saws were frequently offered in bright painted versions as you can see above and were typically supplied with 30" and 32" blades.

Regards
Paul

Originally Posted by IanW

...Not having been exposed to bowsaws for everyday use, I find them awkward and cannot cut a decent straight line with one, but in my Tage Frid books, there are many pictures of the old chap blithely whacking out dovetails or cross-cutting boards with a bowsaw that looks like it could cut firewood in its spare time!....."

I also smiled when I saw Paul's comments.

My mother's family were stone masons and builders for at least 200 years including leaving UK in 1811 through to c.1975. They did the whole package - quarried the stone, built the house and did the joinery for windows, doors and furniture.

They used frame saws - their terminology - for joinery work, and also used quite large ones for sawing sandstone, which they called free stone. Smaller saws with blades up to 3 ft (perhaps) and maybe 2 inches wide were used for most carpentry and joinery tasks. The blades were rotated 90 degrees for ripping down a plank. My great uncles insisted that the frame saw was faster, cut smoother and more accurately than any "English saw" - their name for the conventional rip and cross-cut saws, even though the family originated from Yorkshire.

Tage Frid mentions that the bow saw that he favoured was dominant in continental europe, and the hand panel saw was dominant in the UK and the USA - the "Anglo world". This seems a fair truism.

One thing that I have noticed with the frame saw is that people who have not been brought up exposed to that tool have assumed that the protruding knob that looks like a handle is used as a handle when sawing. Its not. It is used when inserting and rotating the blade. When sawing, one grips the frame itself - it gives you a lot more control and feel for the cutting in progress. I have taken the liberty to notate your photo, and also enclose a photo of Tage Frid so that you can see how he holds the saw for precise dovetail cuts.

Frame Saw 2.jpg Tage Frid.jpg

My great uncles held the saws like Tage Frid for delicate work, and moved their hand up the frame by about 1" for power strokes.

Actually Graeme, that's precisely how I hold my saw. I would suggest it's a grip grip that just comes naturally because you need to control the mass of the saw frame. However, p'raps I had a subconcious memory of that picture when I first used a bowsaw. I think it's from one of his "Tage Frid Teaches Woodworking" books, is it not? I have them in my bookcase but haven't opened one for at least 30 years (though I certainly read them all avidly when I first got them).

And he picture you posted illustrates exactly what I was blabbing about - that saw looks like a man on a boy's errand to me (one of my dad's favourite sayings), but he seems perfectly relaxed about it all. As we have agreed, it's all about wotcher-usta....

Cheers,

Photo was from an article by Tage Frid in Fine Woodworking Magazine, January 1996.

I also have all his books. Agree, its what you are used to. Same with Japanese tools - there is a definite learning curve in doing things backwards.

Im looking for something around 1" thick, this blade could do the trick?

Laguna Shearforce 25mm x 3860mm Bandsaw Blade | Carbatec

https://www.machineryhouse.com.au/W425C

Just after a length that ill try and snap the length i need and then build the frame and tensioners around it. ive been contemplating bad axe tool and as nice as it is i cant justify $300 USD approx for two primitive hand saws.

If anyone thinks theres a larger more economical bandsaw blade out there im not aware of feel free to let me know

I am not so sure, Delbs. The Laguna blade has 3-4 TPI whilst the Starrett blade (Machinery House) has only 1.25 TPI. This would be extremely wide spacing for a handsaw - Perhaps the range 8 to 14 TPI would be more appropriate, depending on intended use. And the teeth shape and rake would be sub-optimal.

This means that you would have to file off all existing teeth and start again. A lot of work.

Another option might be to use a second hand band saw blade:

• A TAFE or a commercial joinery near you would fairly regularly replace band saw blades.
• Take up Paul's offer above. It should be quite easy and cheap to stick an old blade in a pizza box and mail it to Melbourne.
• Or buy specialist blades from Dieter!

If you look at conventional hand rip saws the ppi ranged typically from 4ppi to 6ppi in 1/2ppi increments. The coarser pitches were used for the softer timbers. I would suggest that the frame saw should be in this region. Of course, one advantage of this type of saw is that you could have a number of blades with a different tooth count and mount them in the same frame (not all at the same time ). This becomes quite economic if you re-purpose an old blade, but not as cheap if you buy purpose made blades.One re-toothed bandsaw blade could make at least four frame saw blades, depending on frame size: Just sayin'


I just checked the ppi on Blackburn tools and they range from 3 1/2ppi to 4 1/2ppi.

Regards
Paul.

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

If you look at conventional hand rip saws the ppi ranged typically from 4ppi to 6ppi in 1/2ppi increments. The coarser pitches were used for the softer timbers.......

Paul, I would suggest that coarser pitches suit deeper cuts rather than softer woods. In fact, if I have the option, I often select a finer pitch for the same thickness of soft woods because coarse teeth tend to bite too hard.

Handsaws were not often used to rip boards thicker than about 2 inches on a typical house build, though no doubt there were exceptions, but I would make a small bet it would have been very uncommon to rip anything more than 6 inches thick in house building. Last year, I ripped up a bunch of 6" thick pine slabs with my 5-3.5tpi progressive pitch Disston. It was passable cutting 6 inch beams, but it really wasn't a happy camper re-sawing the 450mm end pieces. In this situation a narrow blade & very coarse teeth would be a better bet, but there are some caveats: for one, coarse teeth will be hard to start, and secondly, starting problems would be exacerbated by positive rake. Once you do get it started, it's going to be hard work - not sure what my horsepower rating is, but it's no match for the motor on my 17 inch bandsaw, which grunts a bit pulling a 25mm 2tpi (positive rake) blade through a 300mm deep cut.

If you wanted to use bandsaw bade without modifying rake angles, I would suggest that a finer pitch would help with the starting problem, but 6 or more tpi will not be very happy in cuts 300mm or more deep, the gullets of any teeth entering the cut on one side will be well & truly filled before it exits on the other.

Much depends on what you want to saw & how often you do it. If you are going to be doing this several hours a day most days, you'll want your saw to be as suited to the task as it can be. If you are only going to saw a metre or two occasionally, you could tolerate a less than optimal blade. I'd be trying out whatever blades I could get my hands on for a reasonable amount, or for nix. Where I buy my blades, they will sell me short lengths for a very reasonable sum, in fact, they once gave me a metre or so from the end of a roll that was headed for the skip. I was only after thin blade I could cut down for bowsaw blades at the time, I've never asked about leftovers from larger blades, but I'm sure they would have a bit too short to make into a full blade at the end of every roll..

Cheers,

What about getting Henry Bros to chop you a section of appropriate blade?


edit: Ive seen these kinds of blades in some big mitre box saws.... e.g. Frame Saw Blades Archives - Peck Tool

OAM, dammit Delbs. Stop posting these kinds of things... now I want to make one!