Thread: Making Hand Saws

Seeing all those newly-sharpened blades tumbling all over each other into a giant bucket says a lot about the respect modern manufacturers have for their own product!

Of course, they do the small jobs that are required of them when the 'lectric stuff can't be brought safely to bear, and I confess to keeping a couple for pruning trees & sawing wood that might contain hardware, but I feel a bit sad that so many folks will only know these lifeless, hybrid-toothed, too-short for a comfortable stroke saws, and never experience the pleasure of a freshly-sharpened well-tensioned 26 inch blade, teeth specific to the task at hand, and a handle that actually invites you to pick it up & hold it.....

Cheers,

I agree but we are showing our age, Ian.

A friend recently gave me a saw that looked very much like the ones in that video, that he found on the hard rubbish.

I cut it up and am making filleting knives out of it. Here's a picture of the first one nearly ready to put a nice redgum (old fence post) handle on, and the saw it came from.

The friend who found that saw for me has over time brought me a few Disstons and Warranted Superiors as well - nothing too exciting but some that are usable and some that are good for sharpening practice.

Saws like the one in the video aren't much as saws but when they get thrown out they are a good source of steel at the right price

20190624_150221.jpg20190703_110708.jpg

Originally Posted by doug3030

.....Saws like the one in the video aren't much as saws but when they get thrown out they are a good source of steel at the right price...

Yep, provided they haven't been left out in the rain for months, or the many other ways folks find to maltreat them.

That seems like an excellent re-use for dead hard-points, Doug, but I would have thought the temper of typical saw steel was a bit soft for knives. Do you harden them a bit, or just sharpen them more often??

Cheers,

Originally Posted by IanW

That seems like an excellent re-use for dead hard-points, Doug, but I would have thought the temper of typical saw steel was a bit soft for knives. Do you harden them a bit, or just sharpen them more often?

That is a bit of a contentious issue Ian, the steel is only 1 mm thick with the cutting edge ground down to about 0.2 mm. A full-on quench treatment would result in a warp beyond recognition more often than not without quenching plates and other specialist techniques that I don't wish to get involved with - at least not yet.

I believe that this type of saw is made of something close to L6 steel as opposed to the 1095 we get for handmade backsaws.

I have been making sure I don't overheat the metal when grinding and will see how the first one goes without further hardening.

If it proves to be too soft I will try a partial hardening by putting it in the forge for a very short time so that the thin part of the blade reaches critical temperature but the main body remains cooler and quench in preheated oil and see if that can harden just the edge without warping. Then temper as usual.

I have an experienced semi-professional bladesmith advising me as required so it's all a learning curve for me.

Don't know what 'L6' is, Doug. I've discovered it's nigh-on impossible to find out what most manufacturers use, but my bet is it wouldn't be far from 1095 in composition. The Brits & Europeans use a different nomenclature & slightly different proportions of some of the minor elements in their steels, but the behaviour would have to end up being pretty similar. I had a link to a British suplier of steel for saw makers & the stuff they sell is close to 1085 in composition.

I wuz asking if you intended hardening out of self-interest. I use old saw plate for marking knife blades, and I find it's a little bit soft for that purpose as it comes from the saw, so I've tried a few ways to toughen 'em up a bit. What I've found works ok is to oil quench them in old sump oil. It's not as savage as using water, and doesn't maximise hardening, but that's ok because it saves tempering, which would be very tricky on such small bits, unless I could get time on the kitchen oven, but if I got caught doing that it would see me banned from setting foot in the kitchen during daylight hours for all time!

I don't get any warping of the marking knife blades, but I can appreciate your larger pieces could easily turn into an iron pretzel. You'll just have to sharpen more frequently - that's ok, the material is cheap so it won't matter if you use up your knife quickly. Or maybe it's time to build yourself a solar-powered induction hardener....

Cheers,

L6 COMPOSITION

C	Mn	Si	Cr	Ni
0.70	0.60	0.25	0.70	1.40

1095 composition c = 0.90 -1.03, Mn = 0.30 - 0.50, P = 0.03, S = 0.05

Actually they are quite a bit different from what I have copied and pasted above.

I am at the stage where I mostly listen to those who I know have more knowledge of it than I do.

I also thought that sawplate like that would be something similar to 1095, but apparently that was a wrong assumption on my part.

I have a few plans for some marking knives and possibly some marking gauge cutters from the offcuts from this job.

In fact, I have a lot of toolmaking projects on my list right now

Originally Posted by doug3030

A friend recently gave me a saw that looked very much like the ones in that video, that he found on the hard rubbish.

I cut it up and am making filleting knives out of it. Here's a picture of the first one nearly ready to put a nice redgum (old fence post) handle on, and the saw it came from.

The friend who found that saw for me has over time brought me a few Disstons and Warranted Superiors as well - nothing too exciting but some that are usable and some that are good for sharpening practice.

Saws like the one in the video aren't much as saws but when they get thrown out they are a good source of steel at the right price

20190624_150221.jpg20190703_110708.jpg

that's a pretty good idea for those saws if they're hard enough to hold a knife edge. Agree on the steel - not much of what I've seen other than boutique saws has a plain higher carbon steel. Anything inexpensive is something more soft and a lot more gummy than vintage saws.

Originally Posted by doug3030

......

Actually they are quite a bit different from what I have copied and pasted above.

I am at the stage where I mostly listen to those who I know have more knowledge of it than I do.

I also thought that sawplate like that would be something similar to 1095, but apparently that was a wrong assumption on my part......

Doug, I'm no metallurgist either, & as I said, have no idea what steel hardpoint saw-makers use. How certain are you that your plate is L6? I've always assumed the metal in hardpoint saws would have properties that make it more suited to the induction hardening process, so it's likely it would contain a different mix of the minor elements compared to 1095, for e.g. In the video, there doesn't seem to be any forced quenching after it passes the heating head, so presumably it air-quenches to just the right hardness. P'raps the relatively low C content of L6 means it doesn't become too brittle when it air-hardens - an ordinary file won't touch the hardened teeth, which puts the final hardness somewhere north of Rc60, so they are getting up near their theoretical maximum hardness.

This is about all I could find on L6 with a quick search, but apart from telling you it can get pretty hard, it doesn't indicate any other properties that might be desirable:

"L6 tool steel properties
L2 and L6 form the group L steels. The L6 tool steels contain 0.70% carbon with a quenched hardness of about 64 HRC. The alloying elements in these tools steels are chromium and molybdenum, and 1.50% nickel to increase toughness. These tool steels can maintain hardness above 60 HRC for sections of 75 mm ...."

With the recycled plates I've used (mostly old Irwins), the metal was very similar in its working properties to the stuff we imported for the sawmakig class which you attended. I can't remember what that was, but I vaguely recall it wasn't far off 1095 in carbon composition, but there were certainly some minor differences in the alloying elements. The 'genuine' 1095, which I've used a fair bit, is usually a little bit harder (to file), but still comfortably within the range of any old saws I've taken a file to (there is quite a wide range in hardness of old saws!).

Cheers,

Originally Posted by IanW

Doug, I'm no metallurgist either, & as I said, have no idea what steel hardpoint saw-makers use. How certain are you that your plate is L6?

Ian, I have been "told" that it is L6 or close to it - by someone with more experience than me in these matters. Debates on knife-making forums about what type of steel you can recover from something in a scrapyard or rubbish pile are akin to the discussions on woodwork forums on "what wood is this?" with a photo of a piece of timber that's been in the ocean for 100 years and nobody knows where it was grown or what the bark, leaves and flowers looked like. The discussion is generally ended by some moderator with no sense of adventure telling everyone to go and buy new bar stock because it is not very expensive and you know exactly what you have, then closing the thread.

I find that the best way to learn is to accept what my mentor says even if I think he is wrong, which he rarely is. Then I follow his instructions and if things don't work out how he said they would then he thinks it through and tells me he was wrong, then we both learn and go on happy. If I tell him he is wrong I risk losing a good friend and a good resource. Our relationship is very much a two way street, with me helping him with my woodworking knowledge too. You should have seen his face when I set up his 14" bandsaw properly and he could cut precisely with it for the first time.

Originally Posted by IanW

I've always assumed the metal in hardpoint saws would have properties that make it more suited to the induction hardening process, so it's likely it would contain a different mix of the minor elements compared to 1095, for e.g. In the video, there doesn't seem to be any forced quenching after it passes the heating head, so presumably it air-quenches to just the right hardness. P'raps the relatively low C content of L6 means it doesn't become too brittle when it air-hardens - an ordinary file won't touch the hardened teeth, which puts the final hardness somewhere north of Rc60, so they are getting up near their theoretical maximum hardness.

I had a discussion with my knife-making mentor about drilling through the plate for handle pins, suggesting that I could try to clamp the blade in a heat-sink and heat the handle with a mapp torch to anneal it. He said he has tried that himself but it air-quenches itself because it cools so fast being thin and it remains hard after cooling. The accepted "Knifemaker" workaround for this is to cut a cross in the steel centred on the hole you wish to drill, using a dremel or other rotary tool with a small cutting disk in it then drill through the cross with the hardest drill bit you can find. I haven't tried this yet.

Originally Posted by IanW

With the recycled plates I've used (mostly old Irwins), the metal was very similar in its working properties to the stuff we imported for the sawmakig class which you attended. I can't remember what that was, but I vaguely recall it wasn't far off 1095 in carbon composition, but there were certainly some minor differences in the alloying elements. The 'genuine' 1095, which I've used a fair bit, is usually a little bit harder (to file), but still comfortably within the range of any old saws I've taken a file to (there is quite a wide range in hardness of old saws!).

I have learned a lot about steels since the sawmaking course, Ian, but still know b#66&r all about it on the overall scale of things. It was definitely 10xx - that I can remember, whether it was 95 or 85 or whatever I'm not sure.

I did find a chart recently of the steel composition of Disston sawplates through history, including where they sourced their steel from including making their own. Despite minor differences in the minor materials they were all preety much simple high-carbon steels.

Doug, I can help you out with the drilling. Unless your saw is very different from any of the ones I've cannibalised, it drills quite easily with carbide drills. Sutton make a line which is called a 'builder's drill' or something similar. It has blue paint in the flutes, which will help you recognise it. They have fairly crude tips & are not good at starting accurately, so punch a decent dimple where you want the hole to be centred. You can force a HSS drill through sawplate, but it'll expire on the next hole, whereas you'll get dozens of clean holes in 1mm sawplate out of these 'blue wonders'. You can buy solid carbide drills, which as at east as good, but not easily...

Cheers,

Originally Posted by IanW

Doug, I can help you out with the drilling. Unless your saw is very different from any of the ones I've cannibalised, it drills quite easily with carbide drills. Sutton make a line which is called a 'builder's drill' or something similar. It has blue paint in the flutes, which will help you recognise it. They have fairly crude tips & are not good at starting accurately, so punch a decent dimple where you want the hole to be centred.

Interesting ...

Last week I went to a EOFY Members Night at the local Total Tools. In addition to eating heaps of free pizza and drinking free beer, I also ran into the local Suttons rep, who was in attendance for the event.

I asked him about carbide drill bits and he said the toughest ones that Total Tools stock is the Cobalt bits, of which I already have a metric and an imperial set. He told me that he thought there was a cobalt bit range in their industrial outlets, which apparently does not include total tools. Those ones are probably what he meant. Anyway he gave me a little combination torch/bottle opener so I would go away.

Yesterday my E-pay set of seven (or maybe eight) Chinese carbide bits lobbed in the vicinity of the letterbox (Austpost delivery guy threw it from the van and bolted even though it required a signature). They cost me the princely sum of $14.99 including postage. Hopefully they will be good for a hole or two. The tips match the description you gave for the Sutton ones. I will let you know how they go.

Doug

Very interested to hear how your Chinese carbide bits go. Recently I purchased some four flute carbide tile drills for this specific purpose of drilling holes in saw plates and would like to tell you how good they are, but I can't because despite having had them for a month or more I have not tried them yet. Now, where did I put them....

Regards
Paul

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

.... would like to tell you how good they are, but I can't because despite having had them for a month or more I have not tried them yet. Now, where did I put them....

Well c'mon Paul, dig 'em out and give them a whirl - I'm curious too.....

Doug, the bits I'm talking about aren't the cobalt ones, but iirc, cost about the same as I recall. The cobalts would probably drill a few more holes in saw plate than HSS bits, but I'd be surprised if they outlast carbide. It's been a while now since I last bought one of the bits I'm talking about, so don't have a package to get the product code off, but I'll have a good look next time i go to the local Hardware store & see if I can get you more info. If your new wonder bits do the job, you're all set now, anyway....

Cheers,