Thread: Hand saws - Crosscut vs Rip teeth.

To say there is only "two types" of teeth on handsaws is kinda right ... but massively oversimplifies the depth of the subject

Firstly ... the terminology is most applicable to vintage/semi-vintage saws (and the high-quality newly-made equivalents of course) made of (hopefully tapered) tensioned spring steel ... and in the role of cutting wood.

A lot of the modern saws have induction-hardened teeth. This makes them basically a one-off user unless you grind away the hardened (darkened) area and start over from scratch. Even then they are unlikely to be tapered in thickness.

(See here the process from scratch: Handsaw maker)

So it isn't apples and apples for a start. Regarding the modern 'stuff' they can have a standard rip tooth pattern. I've written about a <spits-on-the-floor> $5 so-called handsaw that wasn't worth using as a fly-swatter. Its teeth were just tall triangles raked back at maybe 15 degrees at the front face. But no 'fleam' if you understand that term. A perfect configuration to be useless at everything (wood-related), pretty much.

I have also shown an Irwin I have with multi-faceted japanese-style teeth, but designed to cut on the push stroke. These are close to a traditional "cross-cut" tooth.

I guess there might be research going into saws best for modern materials (ie not wood) ... but probably all the discussion on here regarding filing saws will be about traditional saws and their use for cutting wood - hard, soft, dry, green.

IanW linked to a good blog very recently. The guy is discussing japanese saw-teeth, but his photos are illustrative:
giant Cypress: Japanese woodworking tool punk &bull; Posts Tagged &lsquo;Japanese saw sharpening&rsquo;
giant Cypress: Japanese woodworking tool punk &bull; Rip this joint: Japanese saw sharpening

Now ... back to considering the standard western saw tooth ... it is mainly characterised by two quantities ... rake and fleam. (You can go further but that's enough to start with )

I guess you have looked at the classic link: Welcome to Vintage Saw's Saw Filing Treatise
(I always think it is interesting they talk about crosscut teeth before rip teeth)

A 'classic' rip tooth is shaped with 0-5 degrees (lets say) of rake and zero fleam. A crosscut tooth has a decent wump of rake (15-30 or more degrees) and fleam as well to make for a knife-like cutting action.

So - filing a saw yourself - you could choose any combination of rake and fleam you liked if you knew it was going to work better for whatever type of wood you were working on.

Going further, some people will file a greater amount of rake on the teeth at the front of a ripsaw (relaxed rake), and have a rake closer to zero on the rest of the teeth. This is because vertical teeth (zero rake) cut aggressively, but can be difficult to get started on the edge of a board.

Hope that helps.
Cheers,
Paul

Originally Posted by Roy66

But what about all the other types of hand saw - e.g. for cutting insultation, masonry, plastic, drywall etc. What type of teeth do these have?

Some examples found here(!) ... G-MAN Tools - Hand saws Premium

I'd suggest checking out Grimshaw on saws - well work the read and should answer every question on saws you had plus a hundred you hadn't thought of!