Thread: Three Ways to Saw Straight with a Handsaw

Mark, cut, plane smooth.

No need for gadgets.

That kerf looked nice and tight ... just keep going.

Originally Posted by D.W.

Mark, cut, plane smooth.

No need for gadgets.

Agreed, the more you muck abut with extra gadgets, the longer it'll take you to learn to use a tool properly. It's like clinging to trainer-wheels.

The best gadget I know to ensure a clean straight saw cut is a sharp, properly set saw......

The table top was moving as he cut which does not help either.

Learning to cut straight was the first main skill taught at a local Tech school night class that I did many years ago when first starting

Originally Posted by Chesand

.....Learning to cut straight was the first main skill taught at a local Tech school night class that I did many years ago when first starting

Yairs, it's pretty fundamental to all woodworking, isn't it?

Plenty of quite respectable people have advocated various devices as sawing guides, but I fail to see their advantage in most situations. Starting off & following the line for the first 10-15mm seems to me to be the crucial bit, because there is more scope for a bit of wobble until the blade engages in the kerf a bit. After some practice, you can usually place the saw within a degree or three of the proposed line of cut without much thought. After that, if the saw is at all sharp & properly set, you should be able to manage any slight adjustments needed to keep it as close to the line as you wish (& your sight allows!). A guide might help you keep the saw to the proposed line a bit easier when starting, but if the saw isn't tracking straight, a guide won't prevent it from going off-course, you'll still be fighting with it, so you are no better off.

Practice is the most useful aid to accurate sawing, imo. A very nice saw customised to your hand & set up to your personal preferences helps for sure, but it isn't essential. The crappy hard-point thingy I use as my 'sacrificial' saw cut perfectly straight lines (or at least it did until I amputated a 4" nail with it. ).

Cheers,

Originally Posted by IanW

Agreed, the more you muck abut with extra gadgets, the longer it'll take you to learn to use a tool properly. It's like clinging to trainer-wheels.

The best gadget I know to ensure a clean straight saw cut is a sharp, properly set saw......

.... and polished to a mirror finish. The reflection doubles the appearance of error, and is thus easier to minimize.

Joe

Too many jigs/tools today seem to be an attempt to "buy" skill.

You can't buy skill. You have to earn it.

Cheers

Doug

If I need to make dead on cuts I use a marking knife to scribe the line then use a chisel to make a little vertical sided knife wall to get the saw started. I find a scribed line with a marking knife is mostly enough. You can often adjust a cut to perfect with shooting board.

The one time I use a guide block is when I cut dovetails. I have fiddled about with getting nice clean shoulders using different methods but for me I get the cleanest straightest shoulders on dovetails by clamping a guide block to the shoulder line and using that to help me chisel down to a clean straight line across the entire joint.

Originally Posted by chook

.... I find a scribed line with a marking knife is mostly enough. You can often adjust a cut to perfect with shooting board...

Absolutely! For many applications a sawn end is adequate (the end of a blind tenon doesn't have to be perfect!) and quite achievable off-saw. When you want a perfect end, use the shooting board - as you imply, the scribe line shows you when you've arrived, as it does when thicknessing with a hand plane.

Originally Posted by chook

....The one time I use a guide block is when I cut dovetails. I have fiddled about with getting nice clean shoulders using different methods but for me I get the cleanest, straightest shoulders on dovetails by clamping a guide block to the shoulder line and using that to help me chisel down to a clean straight line across the entire joint.

Well, I really don't think you should need to pare dovetails other than when you make a slight error, which we all do at times, I'm sure. But if you can make a saw, you should be able to use it. If a saw will cut straight against a guide, it will cut straight without it, & vice versa. Who hasn't struggled with dovetails to begin with? I would probably still be mucking about paring tails and fiddling endlessly to get a fit, too, & probably wouldn't have thought it possible to get such clean fits off-saw if I hadn't watched skilled hands doing it with apparent ease. The last chest of drawers I made had something like 200 dovetails to be cut & fitted - I would have given up in disgust if I'd had to move and set a guide for every pin on that job! It just boils down to sawing straight lines close to, or on a mark, and I reckon that is well within the ability of most people if they apply themselves to the task (& wear their specs! ). For sure, it doesn't come overnight, but the more you try, the better you'll be. Finding a decent saw that feels right in your hand, and sticking with it til it does precisely what you want it to do is the best route. Chuck the trainer wheels and ride free, Chook....

Cheers,

Originally Posted by IanW

Starting off & following the line for the first 10-15mm seems to me to be the crucial bit, because there is more scope for a bit of wobble until the blade engages in the kerf a bit.

Cheers,

Ian

I agree. In fact once the saw is "engaged" it is pretty difficult to change direction. This is particularly true for the older style saws with their full depth, but still true for back saws etc.

Regards
Paul

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

Ian

I agree. In fact once the saw is "engaged" it is pretty difficult to change direction. This is particularly true for the older style saws with their full depth, but still true for back saws etc.

Regards
Paul

Paul - the ability to 'steer' as I like to refer to it, is largely controlled by the amount of set. A saw with plenty of set cuts a wide enough kerf that you can twist the blade enough one way or the other and alter direction. The corollary of this is that an 'over-set' saw can wander all over the place (it's like trying to keep a car with a sloppy front-end on the road!). You'll find yourself constantly making small corrections and you end up with a cut surface that looks like it was gnawed rather than sawn. With little or no set, the kerf is only the width of the saw plate or barely more, and your saw will simply stay on the line you commence on, there will be little or no room for correction after the first few mm of cut. You will get a cleaner cut, usually, as long as they are shallow, but if you need to make deep cuts, you'll have binding and hard work.

So my aim is to achieve a middle ground, and have a saw that I can 'steer' a little bit if needed, but get as clean a cut as possible. I did a bit of testing with backsaws quite a while back, and decided that for the sorts of woods & MCs I usually work with, a set that gives a kerf around 15% wider than the sawplate was the goldilocks point for me. Taper ground handsaws may require less clearance in dry wood, or may need more, if you are cutting wood with fairly high MC, like the hardwood builders of old did. Everyone's mileage will vary, so it's a matter of finding what amount of set suits your purposes best.

Cheers,

It is not to make a tight fit between the pins and the tails that I use a guide block. I would imagine that using a guide block to guide a saw when you cut the pins and the tails would be both time consuming and on thin boards very difficult. Getting a nice neat fit there has never been an issue. I have come to really appreciate the Veritas dovetail saws I have which seem to work,almost by some sort of magic. I suspect that one reason why people have trouble using a saw is that they use the wrong sort of saw or a badly sharpened saw. When I invested in some good ones life became much easier.

Where I have sometimes been not so happy is with the shoulders of the joints. I use a guide block to help me chisel the waste out across the width of the board so that the shoulders are tight. When I cut dovetails I remove the waste with a fret saw. Then I chisel out the waste. Over the years I have tried all sorts of methods to get neat shoulders. I have experimented in recent times with something Derek Cohen recommended which was to score the shoulders with a marking knife then establish a knife wall before chiselling out the waste. That was okay but in recent times I have settled on clamping, with a holdfast, a block of timber across the shoulders and using that as a guide to set the shoulder line. It was suggested to me that this would slow things down. Well for me it has sped things up but speed is never a criteria for me anyway. I have been very pleased with the results. I saw this one the wood show that was on Bris 31 last year.

Do you undercut them, from one side or both?
Cheers,
Paul

Originally Posted by pmcgee

Do you undercut them, from one side or both?
Cheers,
Paul

Sometimes yes, sometimes no, Paul. We were told at school to cut in a fraction on both dovetail pins & tenon shoulders. The operative word is 'a fraction' - it needs just the tiniest inward lean. It's done from both sides so that the lowest spot is approximately in the middle. Mostly I just cut perpendicular, these days & don't worry about scooping out the middle.

Chook, ok, I see where you were coming from now. When you said 'paring the pins' I took it that you were paring the vertical sides. Using a guide block across the board as you describe isn't as bad as what I envisaged. I guess it stops the chisel from being forced back into the 'show' side of the line, but you can avoid this without having to muck about clamping bits across your board.

When I first started back into serious dovetailing, I was getting gappy results because I followed the method we were shown at school. That was to put the chisel in the scribe line, give it a hearty whack, then cut back to it from the waste side to remove a wedge of wood. Repeat that 'til you were halfway through, then flip the board & do the same from the other side. That's ok if a) you have a nice, crisp-cutting wood like Qld Maple (which is what we were mostly given to work on at school, believe it or not! ) and b) your chisels are sharpened at a very low angle. If you are trying to cut relatively soft wood, and particularly if you use a chisel with the high bevel angles recommended for steels like A2, the chisel will be forced back, as well as down, when you strike it, thus shifting the bottom of the recess back into the 'good' wood, & it will show as a small gap on assembly. The solution is to keep the initial 'down' cuts a fraction in front of the line (on the waste side, that is) and remove all but that last whisker of wood. Once the bulk is out of the way, place the chisel in the scribe line and with either hand pressure or a gentle rap of the mallet, cut halfway though (this is when you can apply a slight 'undercut' if you so choose). Flip, repeat, and you should have a perfect set of recesses. I do cut much of the waste out with a bowsaw, nowadays, to speed things up. If you are confident enough of your saw & sawing ability, you can cut the waste to within a half mm or less of the line, and then chisel from the scribe line directly, but if there is more than a half mm or so of waste left, it's best to sneak up on it, I find.

Cheers,