Thread: Coping saws?

Good coping saws seem to be in short supply. Lee Valley carries a couple that seem to be high quality but they are not cheap.

I have an Eclipse 7CP that seems to do the job. The wood handle feels good in the hand and is just the right size. Some of the newer saws with plastic/rubber handles feel too big for my tastes.

Is there any great differences in coping saws other than durability?

I think that you should look out for a good fretsaw. These use finer blades, which can slip down the saw kerf. The result is less waste to pare.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Originally Posted by derekcohen

I think that you should look out for a good fretsaw. These use finer blades, which can slip down the saw kerf. The result is less waste to pare.

Regards from Perth

Derek

I would agree with that. I use a fretsaw. I tried a coping saw but the fret saw works better for the reason Derek says.

Hi Redbeard,
There are several issues with coping saws, IMO. The first is the shoddy construction of the cheap ones. After having two handles disintegrate in as many weeks, I decided to make a small bowsaw to take coping saw blades. My first saw wouldn't have won prizes for looks, but it worked well enough, and I subsequently made a more aesthetically pleasing version (though it's no more functional than the prototype. )

The second issue is those crappy, dull blades. I know I'm getting old & re-inventing the past, but I swear the blades one could buy 30 years ago came sharper & were more durable than the things you get now. The good news is, they are easy enough to sharpen if you have a vise that can hold them (I have extended aluminium jaws in a metal-work vise - very handy for this purpose) and a needle file. A light stroke or two on each tooth does wonders for their cutting ability.

The third issue is the thickness of the blades, as Derek alluded to. Not only is the metal thicker than my dovetail saw, but the set is very coarse. This allows them to turn in a tighter radius, of course, but if you are into D/Ts with pins that come to a saw-width point, you can't get the coping saw blade in to cut the waste without wrecking your knife pointed socket. Fretsaws have a wider choice of blades, and blades they are much thinner. They also have much deeper frames, making it easier to saw out waste on wide boards without having to turn blades left or right so the frame doesn't foul the work.

But I don't like fretsaws for cutting out waste from dovetails, either. The very fine tooth pitch & short blades make for much tedium when doing lots of d/ts in thickish stock in wide boards. My "ultimate" solution was to make my own 10" bowsaw, using the same blade stock the the d/t saw itself was made from (pic 1). At 4mm wide, and with a finer set, the blade won't turn quite as sharply as a coping saw blade does, but it fits exactly in the slot left by the D/T saw and turns well enough to remove most of the waste from the narrowest pin sockets (pic 2). I rarely use knife-pint pins anyway - too flimsy for my taste & that's camera distortion of my saw cuts, they're straight, I swear (though I did over-cut badly in my haste to get the picture! ). Having a longer, more comfortable stroke means much quicker sawing. I stiill have to turn the blade on wide jobs like carcase bottoms, but that's a minor inconvenience when weighed aginst the advantages. I guess it takes a little acquired skill to make a bow saw blade, but the rest of the job is not that difficult.....

Incidentally, I wonder if needing to remove waste this way is a 'modern' thing? Until I started using really fine D/T saws, I rarely bothered to pre-cut the waste - just chopped it out with chisels. But the very fine kerfs left by my saw make that very awkward. The bevel of the chisel jams the waste in the socket like a Morse taper, and it can be quite difficult to remove. That doesn't happen anywhere near as easily when the saw kerfs are wide.

Cheers,

Redbeard,
I use a coping saw that is over 50 years old and it is the same design as the ones avaliable today The blades an not suited for accurate cuts. For dovetails I would only take the waste wood out with the coping saw and finish with a sharp chisel.

les

Originally Posted by les88

Redbeard,
I use a coping saw that is over 50 years old and it is the same design as the ones avaliable today The blades an not suited for accurate cuts. For dovetails I would only take the waste wood out with the coping saw and finish with a sharp chisel.

les

Les, I think that's what we are all talking about - nipping out the waste after sawing the straight sides with a 'proper' saw, not using coping or fret saws for the entire operation. At least I was.......

Cheers,

There are so many ways to skin a cat. Choose a method that suits you best. There are going to be pros and cons with each.

Some will prefer chopping out the waste.

I prefer using a fretsaw. What I want draw attention to is that the area of most difficulty is not the tail waste removal. There is so little of it when you make slim dovetails. A fretsaw does, however, allow you to finish with a stroke or two of a chisel ..





Instead, it is the larger area of the pins where sawing close to the line can really aid one ..

In hard woods, like this Jarrah, I would not want to chop out all the waste ..





And a coping saw does not turn tightly enough to remove the waste in one saw cut ..



If one marks accurately, saws to a knifed line, then removing the waste at the baseline leaves very little work to do. Almost all my dovetails require little or no tuning. Try this out ...

http://www.inthewoodshop.com/Furnitu...sinJarrah.html

Regards from Perth

Derek

Originally Posted by IanW

Incidentally, I wonder if needing to remove waste this way is a 'modern' thing? Until I started using really fine D/T saws, I rarely bothered to pre-cut the waste - just chopped it out with chisels. But the very fine kerfs left by my saw make that very awkward. The bevel of the chisel jams the waste in the socket like a Morse taper, and it can be quite difficult to remove. That doesn't happen anywhere near as easily when the saw kerfs are wide.

Cheers,

Ian, it depends what you mean by modern but its not a new thing, its been done for at least generations that i know of and i suspect a lot longer, ...thats how i was taught and so on...

no doubt it depends where your from etc etc but there is a different method that we used, different i think, to what you guys seem to be indicating at least (except perhaps Les his sounds correct for this method)..that is the waste is not 'chopped' out with a chisel and nor were we taught to finish the tail with a fret or coping saw, of course one would want to push the limits if racing against someone else and if you cut the tails out neatly then so be it but we were taught not to stuff it up, so, after the initial two cuts with a back saw, cut the waste away with a coping saw not attempting to cut to the lines (coping saws arnt that accurate) and its not necessary that the coping saw fit in the back saw's kerf, one sweeping cut, stated fresh from one side at the top, down to the opposing bottom corner of the tail, the extra time it takes to cut that distance down could be measured in parts of a second or so i'm sure, if your coping saw fit in the kerf so be it, just so long as you dont damage the edges, but it doesnt matter one bit if it doesnt and often preffered so the edges stay unmarked/smooth. the second cut with the coping saw is short, started down low and to the other corner of course, pair off the rest with a chisel.

thats still a very good method, i've tried the others and i dont mind the contemporary way of using the fret saw and getting really close or even spot on, have to cut like the clappers though or you get nowhere fast...i'd say the need to fit in the kerf lines comes from the more modern fad of making 'knife point' dovetails joints...i hear some people overseas have some history with chopping the DT but we used to do it the way i mentioned above, still a very good method i think

those coping saws are darn near identical to what they were decades ago, used to make make laugh seeing them on the shelfs, thinking it was the one constant in tools, even if they are crappy and wonder all over the place, even as apprentices we used to complain that there had to be a better coping saw, didnt matter for dovetailing but scribing cuts etc need to be nicer so you develop a knack.

i have a few very old types, in some ways they are better but work about the same and have same sorts of trouble (its just the nature of coping saws), the fret saw like in dereks pics have a fancy method of tensioning the blade that works pretty good, very pricey compared to coping saws though, the standard handle is no better than the cheapest coping saw out there disappointedly but easy enough to change


cheers
chippy

Chips, the method you descibed is exactly how I go about it, too. I guess there are just as many 'old' ways as new ways - the bloke who was my main mentor would have served his time as a cabinetnmaker in the early 20s. He insisted on sawing to the line & chopping out waste with chisels only, & everything had to fit perfectly, right off the saw. I don't know why he was against removing the bulk of the waste with a fret/coping/bowsaw, he never gave me a cogent reason. It was just the way he was taught, I suppose. I've since read articles where other people insisted on chisels-only, so the argument hasn't gone away, it seems. I feel a teeny bit guilty using a bowsaw or coping saw, but Harold can't see me now... .

The main reason I like to remove as much waste as possible before chiselling out the last bit is for the aforesaid reason - chopping tends to jamb a large chunk of wood in the gap, plus it just makes it easier. I try to cut close enough to the scribe line that I can finish each side with two chisel whacks, the first with the chisel <1mm from the scribe line, and the second with the chisel placed in the scribe line for the final, clean cut. That works nicely for 'real' cabinet woods like Qld Maple, but I doubt I could do the same with Jarrah...

And while I am reasonably adept with a coping saw, my little bowsaw is just easier to drive, & cuts more quickly, for most jobs I use it for. If I were coping a houseful of complicated 12" wide architraving joints as I did on a major renno job back when I was young & keen, I'd use the coping saw because of its tighter turning radius (and a lot better, now that I've learnt to sharpen new blades properly before trying to use them!)

And yes, the reason I suggested that coping saw blades are too thick is precisely because it increases the gap for a knife-point pin socket - doesn't matter a hoot on wider pins, because you just cut in at any convenient point, avoiding messing up the straight cuts. I almost never make knife point pins, but they're a passion for some....

Cheers,

Originally Posted by IanW

Chips, the method you descibed is exactly how I go about it, too. I guess there are just as many 'old' ways as new ways - the bloke who was my main mentor would have served his time as a cabinetnmaker in the early 20s. He insisted on sawing to the line & chopping out waste with chisels only, & everything had to fit perfectly, right off the saw. I don't know why he was against removing the bulk of the waste with a fret/coping/bowsaw, he never gave me a cogent reason. It was just the way he was taught, I suppose. I've since read articles where other people insisted on chisels-only, so the argument hasn't gone away, it seems. I feel a teeny bit guilty using a bowsaw or coping saw, but Harold can't see me now... .

G'day Ian, who knows what was going through his head, personally i'm not one for 'insisting' it be done one way or the other in regards to the people i have shown/taught, messed up their lives (so long as you do it the way i say in the end hahaha LOL, JK). i tend to show a couple of ways and then show why i favour one way better, sometime lads will do it the opposite way just to be argumentative or try, kinda natural i always thought.

Originally Posted by IanW

The main reason I like to remove as much waste as possible before chiselling out the last bit is for the aforesaid reason - chopping tends to jamb a large chunk of wood in the gap, plus it just makes it easier. I try to cut close enough to the scribe line that I can finish each side with two chisel whacks, the first with the chisel <1mm from the scribe line, and the second with the chisel placed in the scribe line for the final, clean cut. That works nicely for 'real' cabinet woods like Qld Maple, but I doubt I could do the same with Jarrah...

jamming is the problem of course, full stop, that doesnt work, the method is flawed. regardless of saw kerf width and by extension the small amount of extra space you gain from a wider kerf, its a somewhat kooky method on the face of it IMO...of course it doesnt matter the kerf width if you 'chop' in the same fashion of say you would a mortise, for lack of a better description, first one way ,then the other.

that is you chop first, using the flat back of the chisel against the line, nice and square, depth of chop will vary depending on bevel angle of your chisel and type of wood (another good reason to use ordinary O1 steel rather than A2), and then you must cut a relief cut/chop at an angle back toward the flat chop you just made, this gives you releif, so no jamming. you continue this way until about half way through and then flip over and then do the same on the other side, the relief cut angle more flat this time

IMO there is nothing wrong with doing the later way, using a chisel only, its sorta elegant but slower than using a coping saw, the first way of just chopping until it jambs is just, well, kinda crazy or fruitless and a good way to mar or damage your work.

if you like using chisels its fun (just thought i'd throw that in-besides who doesnt and you have to get some use out of those pretty thungs), makes a neat join so long as your accurate (beginners would need a guide for the back of the chisel perhaps).

whilst i said using the coping saw is the method i would and do teach someone doesnt mean there arnt opportunities to use the other methods. for instance in cedar, soft pine or merantie or the like, we would not chop , with a mallet or hammer, but just use a sharp narrow bevel chisel and body weight, almost like watchin a miter press for picture frames in action, a couple of presses and the DT was done..obviously thats not the way one should promote as the correct way to do DT (how do you verbalise that) so you keep it to yourself but the point being in easy to cut 'soft' woods it can be simpler to make a few slices by hand including the relief cut with a chisel to remove waste area than it would be to use a coping saw.

so chop with a chisel or use a coping saw, both work (if done correctly) but using a coping saw is quicker in general, it saves doing that back chopping to make a relief to clear the waste, on both sides. i think its a little easier and safer method to teach someone for consistent results too, but i'm not going to stake my life on it......small gains, big arguments by the looks of it if its lasted for years as you say, to tell the truth i never thought anything of it till i read the forum

Originally Posted by IanW

And while I am reasonably adept with a coping saw, my little bowsaw is just easier to drive, & cuts more quickly, for most jobs I use it for. If I were coping a houseful of complicated 12" wide architraving joints as I did on a major renno job back when I was young & keen, I'd use the coping saw because of its tighter turning radius (and a lot better, now that I've learnt to sharpen new blades properly before trying to use them!)

And yes, the reason I suggested that coping saw blades are too thick is precisely because it increases the gap for a knife-point pin socket - doesn't matter a hoot on wider pins, because you just cut in at any convenient point, avoiding messing up the straight cuts. I almost never make knife point pins, but they're a passion for some....

Cheers,

i do like the nice bow saws, your bow sounds good, i like the look of iot too, i'd like to give it whirl one day



cheers
chippy

Originally Posted by ch!ppy

.....you chop first, using the flat back of the chisel against the line, nice and square, depth of chop will vary depending on bevel angle of your chisel and type of wood (another good reason to use ordinary O1 steel rather than A2), and then you must cut a relief cut/chop at an angle back toward the flat chop you just made, this gives you releif, so no jamming. you continue this way until about half way through and then flip over and then do the same on the other side, the relief cut angle more flat this time.......

Yep, this is how I would do it, too, if I didn't saw out the bulk of the waste.

But it's on that last tap, as the wood parts, that the wedge-shaped chunk of waste can be forced forward, jamming itself in the socket. It's not a big deal, only tends to happen on finer sockets, and probably only 1 out of 3 times, but it's just a minor annoyance. You can usually tap it out with the chisel, but occasionally the chisel buries itself in the chip, jamming it even tighter (insert appropriate expletives here ). You can avoid it with a bit of care, and making sure the 'relief' is generous, to be sure, but I don't always work so carefully & deliberately, I confess. By removing all but a mm-and-a-bit with pre-sawing, I know that I can reliably square up to the line with a couple of light taps each side, so for me, the small amount of extra time taken putting down the D/T saw & using the bowsaw is regained several times over.

Agreed, I can't give you any reason why Harold insisted on the chisel-only method, because he was not one to disscuss pros & cons, unfortunately. I can only speculate that he thought it was quicker overall to do it that way, and for someone who had been doing it for 45 years, it undoubtedly was - he certainly made it look easy!

My teaching philosophy is like yours. I would not tell people "THIS is how to do it" but "this is the most widely-used method for doing it", and try to explain the advantages & any disadvantages of doing it that way. It's the end result that matters, really, so if you can do as good a job or better in the same time with another method, I have no problem with it. I actually like to see people try other methods, rather than be passive sponges, soaking up dogmas. As often as not they revert to doing it the way they were shown, but occasionally, the alternative way really is better, if only for them. And what's that old saw about "The man who never made a mistake.......?"

And as to giving my bowaw a whirl - you are welcome to drop in to the shed any time you are up in warmer climes - just give me a few hours notice & I'll even whip up a batch of Anzac bikkies. I'm sure we will have no trouble filling in an hour or two....

Cheers,

Redbeard

I have just completed a small 12 inch bow saw using pins and a set of 3 blades from Tools for working wood which you can find here :Gramercy Tools Turning Saw Parts.

The frame is made from Tassy Oak and the handles and toggle from Brigalow, the finish I used on the frame is soap and on the handles and toggle Carnauba wax.

I am very pleased with the way the saw performs, and the quality of the pins and blades supplied by TFWW

Regards

Originally Posted by Basilg

Redbeard
I have just completed a small 12 inch bow saw using pins and a set of 3 blades from Tools for working wood which you can find here :Gramercy Tools Turning Saw Parts.
The frame is made from Tassy Oak and the handles and toggle from Brigalow, the finish I used on the frame is soap and on the handles and toggle Carnauba wax.
I am very pleased with the way the saw performs, and the quality of the pins and blades supplied by TFWW
Regards

Please excuse my ignorance (there's a lot of it) ... when you say "soap" ... ?

Thanks,
Paul